On May 27, a group of residents from Long Branch presented a number of pointed ethical questions to Mayor Adam Schneider and the City Council, looking for simple answers. The mayor was asked about his involvement in a $2.4 million real estate deal transacted in February 2007, and financed by Central Jersey Bank. The mayor represented the seller in this transaction, and Michael Irene, Zoning Board attorney, represented the buyer. Both had to know that the residential property involved would require extensive Planning and Zoning Board approvals in order to be converted to a commercial use for Strollo’s Lighthouse ice cream parlor.
Neither the mayor nor the Zoning Board attorney publicly disclosed their involvement at this time. It is a serious ethical question whether as public officials these two city officials should have gotten themselves into the middle of a Long Branch real estate development deal. Two City Council members are employees of the bank, a third councilman is a shareholder, and two key city government attorneys serve on the bank’s board of directors. Presumably, a loan of this size was reviewed and discussed by senior bank officials, even board members.
Why didn’t Schneider speak up about this transaction in early 2007 and initiate full public disclosure to the media and the public? Why does he claim that he disclosed this deal to his own “private ethics committee” but not the public, the press, and all the city’s elected officials? Who is on the mayor’s ethics committee? Why did Mr. [James] Callano think that his land purchase would have no problemobtaining critical city approvals?
What business person risks over $2 million obtained from Central Jersey Bank without development plans already substantially approved by the Planning Board and the Zoning Board?
The answers to these questions might show that our city’s ethics rules and regulations are neither followed nor enforced.
Inadvertently, the City Council then requested that the Planning Board review a change in the RC1 zone that would have protected the residential character of the neighborhood along OceanAvenue north and prevented Callano’s development from moving forward. There was no formal application pending from Mr. Callano and nothing on the public record. Everything was secret and in private.
The change to the ordinance was approved and published by the Planning Board in a public notice. The ordinance was sent to the City Council for review and a vote, and still no one involved – not the mayor, not Councilman Anthony Giordano, not Councilman Michael DeStefano, not Planning Board member and city employee Kevin Hayes – no one disclosed in public or initiated a public discussion on what was going on here. It was kept secret. This is improper or even worse.
The ordinance subsequently disappeared and never came up again. The question is, which individuals in city government andwhich lobbyists outside of city government caused this ordinance to protect a residential neighborhood to disappear from the City Council’s agenda?
Until such time as these questions are answered and independently investigated by a competent law enforcement agency, the Callano application before the city’s Planning Board should be indefinitely suspended.
Robert Allison
Long Branch