I am writing regarding the most inappropriate comments printed in a local daily newspaper and attributed to Marlboro Mayor Robert Kleinberg in reference to one of three locations in town where affordable housing is available.
“… [W]e can’t have people living on the backs of taxpayers for $20 a month …” I believe the last time something so unsympathetic and uncaring was uttered by a so-called leader was the famous “let them eat cake” by Marie Antoinette and we know where that led. I won’t even get into great detail about the fact one of our residents has paid taxes to Marlboro for about 15 years longer than the mayor has been alive. Hamilton Park was this World War II hero’s only alternative when medical bills and failing health required him and his wife to sell their home.
Let’s be clear … at this time the residents of Hamilton Park do pay only $20 each per month to the town for the property their owners association sits on. Those are the terms of a lease, as part of a 25-year-old agreement made by the town to relocate a group of people who were holding up construction of the Pathmark Plaza on Route 9 in Marlboro. At that time they were located where Kohl’s now stands.
Twenty-five years ago it was an appropriate amount for the wasteland where the homeowners association financed and created Hamilton Park. It is not now appropriate, which is why for the last five-plus years I have attempted to renegotiate the terms of the lease but I have been met for the last three-and-a-half years with the belligerent refusal of Mayor Kleinberg to come to the table to complete the work started during the prior administration.
This refusal, based on an amount I feel fair, has cost the taxpayers of Marlboro $117,000 so far and if no negotiations take place before the end of the lease it will cost an additional $97,500, for a total of $214,500.
While this is not a tremendous amount of money in the grand scheme of things, to put it in perspective, those taxpayer’s backs the mayor claims to be so concerned about have been saddled, by him, with a 15-year bond ordinance for the purchase of a $210,000 roll-off container truck – a truck the residents of Hamilton Park could have paid for and gassed up for a year if only the mayor had the best interest of the town at heart and not his vendetta against me.
Many homes in Marlboro are on the tax rolls as being appraised at $150,000 which could in fact be sold for $500,000, $600,000, even $700,000. I don’t believe any of those residents approached the town about doing a reappraisal ahead of schedule, yet that is precisely what a community of the poorest residents in Marlboro did out of a sense of appreciation and fairness.
We asked for our agreement to be updated. Our reward is that we, the adults and children alike, are publicly disparaged first by the mayor’s zoning board appointee and then by the elitist elected leader of the town.
I can only hope for the town’s sake that the next mayor will be sensible and committed in his approach not only in doing the right thing for Hamilton Park, but in dealing with the looming affordable housing crisis that we as a town face.
Paul Schlaflin
Marlboro