Guest Column
Time for Long Branch City Council to demonstrate its commitment to entire community
Brian Unger
Guest Column
Time for Long Branch City Council to demonstrate its commitment to entire community
The Marine Terrace-Ocean Terrace-Seaview Avenue (MTOTSA) redevelopment issue in Long Branch is a crisis of values for the entire city and the region, not just for the 38 homeowners in Beachfront North who risk having their solid working-class homes bulldozed in favor of half-million to million dollar condos. Mayor Adam Schneider is tough-minded, but he has a good heart as well, and this is not the time or the place for toughness. It’s also not your typical Long Branch political issue where the City Council simply closes ranks and speaks with one voice against the opposition. This is a different model, calling for a different response.
Now is the time for each member of the City Council to dig down and think deeply about their role as the city’s redevelopment agency. They need to provide independent leadership, not fellowship and collegiality. That worked for getting the beachfront and the local economy turned around, but true democracy calls for independent and even conflicting opinions. It’s a positive development that Councilman Michael DeStefano spoke up in a recent article in local newspapers. His essay was well reasoned and provided a good history of events going back to 1990, but there’s more than meets the eye here with the MTOTSA slice of beachfront. One hopes that DeStefano’s support for the mayor’s position was not simply the calculated reaction of a staunch political ally, but an authentic statement of political and intellectual independence.
This slice of Beachfront North was never a slum, and probably could have been evaluated separately in the city’s redevelopment plan. The city community as a whole gains nothing from proceeding on the present course toward wholesale demolition of these homes. It is not a wise course for the entire community, and it does not reflect the values of the wider community. Ours is a predominantly working-class and middle-class city of skilled tradespeople, office workers, union members, small business owners, and mid-level business and government employees and managers. We are without a doubt the most ethnically diverse city in Monmouth County. Replacing middle-class homes with half-million and million dollar homes sends the wrong message about our shared values. Even Pratap Talwar, the city’s own planning consultant for Beachfront North, agreed with neighborhood residents that if their vision was to revitalize and upgrade their neighborhood it would meet the goals of his plan.
The city community as a whole would gain morally, ethically and politically from helping this neighborhood improve from within. To simply crush this little neighborhood with sheer force of will and state power is wrong, and undemocratic. City government, including a more proactive City Council, should instead help them with real participatory counsel and professional planning services, come up with a true compromise plan where both sides give and take something, and then make a formal, publicly debated decision on whether the completed alternative proposal merits adoption.
Mayor Schneider and his City Council have been praised for being single-minded and unanimous about "turning the city around." We see the price tags for condominiums proudly displayed on Ocean Boulevard, our home values are rising in the neighborhoods, the education system is thriving, and business is apparently good. Yet we remain by and large a working- and middle-class city. The values we hold to are the simple, ordinary values of working families.
Perhaps eminent domain was needed to help redevelopment get where it is today. But we aren’t there anymore. Redevelopment is well on its way. The administration can now show its commitment to everyone in the community, of every economic class, by preserving the MTOTSA neighborhood as it is, because in this neighborhood the values at stake are not economic or monetary. They are the old-fashioned values of families who cherish their homes more than the mere financial equity the homes represent. Seventy-eight-year-old Anna DeFaria of Marine Terrace has politely (and with dignity) declined Mayor Schneider’s offer of a luxury condo in return for breaking ranks with her neighbors. If that doesn’t tell you something about the moral, ethical and political issues here, nothing will.
The mayor and council have guided the city through economic downturn, disinvestment and abandonment to what might be a better future, at least for some people, and they’ve received the democratic electoral endorsement of the city at large. But this subchapter calls for something else, a flexible approach to save the viable core of the MTOTSA neighborhood, as it is. The entire city, and the entire county and region are watching. The meaning of the outcome will be felt far and wide.
Brian Unger, a Long Branch resident, recently ran for the state Senate in the 11th District.