Long Branch Mayor Adam Schneider continues to show an incredulous disdain for the MTOTSA [Marine Terrace Ocean Terrace and Seaview Avenue] Alliance homeowners who are fighting to save their homes in the oceanfront community.
I have attended numerous City Council meetings and read several newspaper articles where Mayor Schneider has pontificated to the MTOTSA group: "Give us a plan for your community."
Schneider and City Council and Attorney [James] Aaron, the MTOTSA organization gave you a plan from the beginning: "Leave our homes alone." If the city government needs help in understanding what to do, they should ask their professional planner, not MTOTSA.
I attended several of the early redevelopment meetings and both the professional planner and potential developers clearly described the mixed-income housing redevelopment projects that they had participated in Boston, Hoboken, Baltimore Inner Harbor and other communities. These types of redevelopment not only allow the loyal citizens of the community to continue to enjoy areas with ambiance, but it also adds historical interest and quaintness to the otherwise monotony of expensive vinyl and stoned veneered clones.
I noted the developer’s sign now trumpets "$600,000" housing. There was earlier mentioning of units starting at $400,000. [If] Long Branch, as Schneider and City Council says, is a "hot community" — then it is time, as I have said previously, to make these developers (who will probably make huge profits) give some back to the city for community infrastructure that all its loyal, longtime citizens can enjoy — and also provide some funding for MTOTSA residents to "historically" upgrade their properties.
We can now add another Mayor Schneider ignominious idiom to our memory banks of "Get a lawyer!"; and that is: Give me a plan — a plan — a plan. Let me remind the mayor and City Council, you are, and were elected to be, the citizens’ first line of defense.
MTOTSA, stay strong, stay united — there are many helping and coming to your aid!
Avery W. Grant
Long Branch