The following Letter to the Editor was received by Hudson TV from North Bergen resident Robert Walden. It discusses a July 8th public hearing on plans by the township to construct a pre-school inside of Hudson County’s Braddock Park, rather than on land owned by the North Bergen Board of Education:
SAVE HUDSON COUNTY’s BRADDOCK PARK FROM NICK SACCO
Attend and speak out against North Bergen’s plan to build a 2-story preschool in Braddock Park instead of on North Bergen’s BOE owned land on 64th Street at the PUBLIC HEARING on JULY 8 (Tuesday) at 6 P.M., North Bergen High School Auditorium. Here’s why:
2008 North Bergen BOE submitted schematics to NJ DOE for 32 a classroom preschool to be built on NB BOE owned land on 64th Street but NB didn’t commence work “Upon notice that the 64th Street site was encumbered by Green Acres funding; this property was removed from consideration as the site of a permanent preschool facility in North Bergen.” (NB explanation)
It turns out that North Bergen improperly placed the 64th Street BOE land on the ROSI (Recreation Open Space Inventory) and as a result, NB did not commence work on the 32-classroom preschool.
5 years later, in a 02-19-13 letter to NJ DEP, NB admitted it made the ROSI error and asked NJ DEP to remove 64th Street from the ROSI.
03-22-13 DEP agreed that 64th Street should be removed from the ROSI.
10-10-13 NB wrote NJ DEP “…the 64th Street site is viable as of March 2013, and will be utilized to
locate the Pre-K program”.
But NB didn’t commence work in 2013 because NB said that adjacent properties were no longer available because they were sold and developed.
Something is wrong here because on 08-19-16 the NB BOE attorney stated that “since 2014” the adjacent properties “have been developed”.
2020-2025 North Bergen’s DEP diversion application rejects the use of the 64th Street BOE owned land for preschool use, this time not because NB claims that there isn’t room for the 32-classroom preschool and not because there isn’t room for the 14 classroom preschool NB now proposes to build, but because NB is claiming once again that 64th street is park land and should not be used for preschool purposes, even though it is only a few feet away from the NB Early Education Center where NB was supposed to place its preschoolers in 2001.
NJ DEP violated the following environmental regulations when it allowed NB’s diversion application to proceed, with NB using 64th Street as compensatory replacement land instead of building a preschool on it to avoid a diversion.
“It shall be the Department’s presumption that there is a feasible, reasonable and available alternative not involving parkland for the project for which an applicant seeks to divert…The use of parkland for other than recreation and conservation purposes should be a last resort.” – N.J.A.C. 7:36-26.1.”
2012 North Bergen sent out a RFP for proposals to build a combination community/rec center/library/preschool and claimed in its diversion application that the responses it got were too expensive.
04-12-16 NJ DEP wrote NB: “Please explain why the BOE cannot issue a revised RFQ limiting the proposal to a Pre-K school.”
08-19-16 NB responded:
“Costs submitted in response to the RFQ/RFP were far in excess of estimated construction costs of the Board undertaking a project by conventional bid process…removing the Township from the process would not reduce costs to the Board for the same type of project. Reducing the scope by eliminating the library and community elements would result in higher costs per square foot to the Board for the Pre-K facility as the Township would no longer leverage funding.”
“The incurring of increased costs alone shall not disqualify an alternave from consideraon.”
– N.J.A.C. 7:36-26.4(e)2ii and 26.9(e))2ii
2020 North Bergen began building and in 2022 opened a $19.5 million community/rec center/library in downtown NB without any preschool classrooms.
Nevertheless, NJ DEP Green Acres awarded NB $1 million in funding for this Project # 0908-19-048. North Bergen has not sent out another preschool RFP since 2012.
2017 North Bergen Township applied for a NJ DEP Green Acres Grant (#0908-17-032) and DEP approved $1,000,000 for the renovation of a ball field on the NB BOE owned 64th Street land.
The BOE, not the Township should have applied for the grant and Nick Sacco and other officials should have known this.
NJ DEP was aware (because of the diversion application), that the BOE, not the Township, owned the 64th Street land and the grant should not have been approved.
Hudson County’s 2024 Open Space Grants Recommendations Report states that the County recommends giving North Bergen a $250,000 grant toward the nearly $7 million expense of renovating the North Bergen Recreation Center on the BOE’s 64th Street land.***
This should not be a missed opportunity for NB to add preschool classrooms onto the Rec Center building or to demolish the dilapidated Rec Center and build a new combination Rec Center/Preschool.
“It shall be the Department’s presumption that there is a feasible, reasonable and available alternative not involving parkland for the project for which an applicant seeks to divert…The use of parkland for other than recreation and conservation purposes should be a last resort.”
– N.J.A.C. 7:36-26.1.
This “diversion” of park land will bring more people, vehicles, accidents, pollution, garbage, artificial surfaces, flooding and noise to Braddock Park and Braddock Park is supposed to be protected by the State for recreation and open space, not for schools – please attend this hearing and send comments to:
Nancy.Lawrence@dep.nj.gov buildingsandgrounds@northbergen.org
Robert Walden North Bergen, NJ
There is more land available, adjacent to the BOE owned land on 64th Street now than there was back in 2013 when NB claimed adjacent land got developed and therefore there wasn’t room for a preschool.
A .57 acre vacant lot has been for sale for 5 years but NB improperly rejected buying it saying it’s too small for the preschool – it’s adjacent to the nearly 5 acres of BOE owned land!!!