The front page of the July 12, 2006, News Transcript greets readers with the line: “Another day, another lawsuit” relating to the Sunny Acres development fiasco with the Marl-boro Planning Board originally reported in May of this year. The Sunny Acres project involving an “all-star lineup” of developers, Tony Spalliero, Steve Meiter-man and Terry Sherman, raises important questions regarding Mayor Robert Kleinberg and the Republican view of how Marlboro should be cleaned up in the wake of past development scandals.
As you reported, a conflict has arisen as to whether Mr. Spalliero and his partners won a default approval for 19 homes to be built on Buckley Road because the Planning Board failed to act on the application within the 120 days the state Municipal Land Use Law requires. This lawsuit is just one of a dozen or more actions brought against and/or by the town over zoning and planning board issues in the past two years, costing the township hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal expenses.
Many of these lawsuits are unnecessary and none have been won by the township. It is about time the law firms responsible for poor advice or misfeasance in their handling in the matters be responsible for the additional fees residents are forced to pay.
However the Sunny Acres lawsuit is ultimately concluded by the courts, one glaring issue remains. No true reformer, as Mayor Kleinberg continues to claim he is, would ever permit an attorney, here Dennis Collins, hand-picked by Matt Scannapieco, to continue advising Marl-boro’s Planning Board in its operations.
At the heart of Marlboro’s recent scandal was the corruption by Mr. Scanna-pieco and members of his Planning Board that perverted the development process and over built our town.
After all of the indictments and guilty pleas revolving around the Planning Board and development in Marlboro, a self-styled anti-corruption crusader like Mayor Kleinberg should appreciate the importance of public confidence in the development process. He should have made a clean break with all of Mr. Scannapieco’s past appointees and advisers.
Yet surprisingly, Mayor Kleinberg has allowed Mr. Scannapieco’s Planning Board attorney to continue on Marlboro’s payroll. While Mr. Collins has not personally been implicated in misconduct, the familiar – and predictable – sound of a lawsuit over a Spalliero application that was approved due to a Planning Board “error” should send shudders up the spine of Marlboro residents.
Mainstream Marlboro Republicans apparently approve of Mayor Kleinberg’s lack of action – as this issue has been raised by Democrats so often and so loudly that the all-Republican Township Council and the dozens of Republican Party officials responsible for the direction of the party can not honestly say they are unaware of the situation.
Indeed, since his election, Mayor Kleinberg has been quick to demand the resignation of appointees who he could not fire. Yet Mayor Kleinberg has hesitated in demanding the replacement of key people close to the Scannapieco situation whose status he could influence, and his actions regarding the Planning Board’s attorney are particularly curious.
Before his appointees assumed majority voting control over the Planning Board, Mayor Kleinberg voted against this very attorney’s reappointment. Yet inexplicably, since gaining control of the board, Mayor Kleinberg and his “Klein-berg Team” have reappointed him every year as Planning Board attorney.
This whole situation has an unsettling feel to it. Two-and-one-half years after replacing Matt Scannapieco, Robert Kleinberg’s repetitive claims of cleaning up Marlboro ring hollow because he has cleaned up neither the town nor his own house.
Syed B. Husain
Marlboro