Mike Baxter of West Windsor
One of the areas that has most concerned me about the mayor/Hillier redevelopment plan is the financial projections. Based on what I could see, it looked like our average tax burden would increase $4,000/year and those that parked in the contract lots would have our fees increased to over $2,000/year. Especially with kids going to college and approaching college, $6,000/year is a lot of money for my household.
The mayor/Hillier projections clearly were missing costs, had no discussion of up-front costs and were fraught with enormous upside risk based on very rosy projections.
I was glad to see in August the township had decided to assemble a committee of our fellow citizens to provide an independent review of the project financials. The process took several months to complete, but finally the three committee members were selected. Who does our township select as a committee member — Cosmo Iacavazzi. Mr. Iacavazzi may be a great guy — I don’t know him. But, let’s look at his background: vice president and director of new business development for Commercial Properties Network, former mayor of Hillsborough, current Pennington resident. Some might say that profile for a West Windsor financial committee member sounds like “the fox guarding the hen house.”
So, let’s take a minute to assess this committee member selection: someone that doesn’t live in our town, doesn’t pay taxes in our town, can improve the quality of life in their town by diminishing ours, and is employed by a large development company that can profit from the redevelopment is going to guide and review decisions that will deeply effect our town. Is this really happening? Major decisions that affect our town are being reviewed and made by someone with zero “skin-in-the-game.”
Whatever direction the township re-development project takes, the most important component is that we all understand the financial impacts and risks of the project. There must be absolute transparency in this process. Whatever decisions are made won’t please everyone, but if we reach township consensus based on accurate and comprehensive information, things have gone well. Clearly, the committee composition raises serious red flags.
We need to look no further than our neighbors in Hamilton to see what happens when that is not the case. Re-development decisions were made based on developer’s best interests. The citizens and government of Hamilton would not be scrambling to cancel that re-development plan if their citizens had advance information that clearly enumerated risks, and that the associated financial projections were comprehensive and accurate. Let’s hope we don’t experience the same hardships.

