Township Resident Says North Bergen & NJDEP Have Engaged In Misconduct

Hudson TV received the following Letter to the Editor from North Bergen resident Robert Walden pertaining to where pre-school trailers were situated next to the football field in James J. Braddock Park:

NORTH BERGEN and NJDEP OFFICIALS HAVE ENGAGED IN MISCONDUCT

1- The December 17, 2025 North Bergen Resolution No. 66 (below) states that within 30 days of the passage of the resolution, North Bergen would remove all 17 of its BOE Preschool TCUs from Braddock Park and return the site to “pre-trailer conditions“.  The site was previously a softball field.   This deadline expired approximately 9 months ago, but only 15 of the 17 trailers been removed and the site has not been restored to pre-trailer conditions, it is instead overgrown with weeds.
Resolution No. 66-Award of Purchase Order Fisted Dove Excavating
Removal of PreK TCUs from North Hudson Braddock Park, with emergency provisions

Whereas, in accordance with the Administrative Consent Order (ACO) concerning Township of North Bergen and Hudson County, SHC0900005, within thirty (30) calendar days of its issuance, Township of North Bergen shall complete the removal of all unauthorized trailers from the Green Acres funded parkland, and shall return the site to pre-trailer conditions, and
Whereas, The North Bergen Board of Education will remove seventeen (17) Temporary Classroom Unit trailers (TCUs) from the Township’s leasehold in Hudson County Braddock Park, along with the related wood ramps, steps, and canopies, and
Whereas, due to the critical and timely nature of this situation, the Board of Education, under emergency provisions, shall commence the process required to remove the trailers from North Hudson Braddock Park, to comply with the terms of the ACO and to allow work to be completed before winter weather sets in, and
Whereas, because the trailers no longer have power, a fire alarm system, or a security system, they are a hazard until the removals and demolitions are complete, and
Whereas, in anticipation of the tasks required for removal of the trailers and related construction, representatives of the Board contacted the lessor, WillScot, and other vendors to obtain cost proposals for this work, and
Whereas, the Board Architect has reviewed the cost proposals and summarized the cost and schedule options (cost summary attached) and several options were developed to achieve the goal of timely removals, and
Whereas the Board Architect has made a recommendation (attached) for the Board to purchase the trailers from the lessor WillScot, and to employ another vendor to remove and dispose of the trailers and related constructions,
Therefore, be it resolved, pursuant to NJ law, the North Bergen Board of Education, under emergency provisions due to the timely nature of the work, awards a Purchase Order for the Purchase of 17 temporary classroom units from WillScot in the amount of $270,000.00, and awards a Purchase Order for removal of the trailers and related construction to Fisted Dove Excavating, Inc. in an amount not to exceed $160,200.00, as documented in the attached proposals, summary, and letter of recommendation.
025-412
DATED: December 17, 2025
A motion was made by Haissam Jaafar and seconded by Kanaiyalal Patel that the foregoing resolution be approved.
Ayes: Haissam Jaafar, Patricia Bartoli, Sai Rao, Claudia Baselice, Luis Rabelo, Kanaiyalal Patel, and Ruth Shaw
NO FURTHER DISCUSSION

2- NJDEP regulations state that illegal “major” diversions (which the Braddock Park diversion is), are to be compensated for with 5X the amount of new park replacement land as was illegally diverted.

a) North Bergen is proposing compensatory replacement land on 64th Street which is already existing park land owned by the North Bergen BOE.  Pre-existing park land is not allowed to be used as replacement compensation.
North Bergen previously tried to use land under the 14th Street Viaduct in Hoboken as replacement land; on 01-26-16 North Bergen lied in its diversion application when it stated to NJDEP that “The area was never used as parkland” and the area was “vacant and unimproved”.  NJDEP should have, but failed to inspect the site and it was only after much complaining by me that NJDEP finally decided that because this was pre-existing park land, it was ineligible as replacement land.
A lot of evidence has been presented to NJDEP showing that the proposed 64th Street BOE owned land is pre-existing park land, but so far NJDEP has not ruled it ineligible, as it should.
North Bergen lists the 64th Street BOE land as park land on the Township’s website (https://www.northbergen.org/_Content/pdf/parks.pdf) and the land has been approved (improperly) for NJDEP Green Acres and Hudson County Open Space grants.  It contains numerous park/recreational facilities and ZERO classrooms.  North Bergen listed the land on its ROSIs (Recreational Open Space Inventory) and used this as the excuse why it couldn’t build classrooms on the site.  North Bergen’s 05-01-23 Alternatives Chart shows that NB rejected 64th Street as a viable site to build classrooms because it is a “playground/park/rec. site”.

b) NJDEP has thus far left it up to North Bergen to decide how much land North Bergen illegally diverted instead of NJDEP correctly taking the initiative and deciding how much.
As a result, North Bergen understated the amount of land it diverted, claiming it diverted only 6 parking spaces in the preschool parking lot.
This understatement is a North Bergen attempt to circumvent and reduce the amount of compensation North Bergen is required to provide under the law.
Abundant evidence (including an 11-17-13 statement from the Township Manager saying the Preschool uses 30 spaces) proves that the North Bergen Preschool (with 15 TCU classrooms) used more than 6 parking spaces and it wasn’t just the preschool that illegally diverted parking in Braddock Park, so too did the North Bergen Parking Authority (NJDEP has photographic proof), both before and after NJDEP issued North Bergen-Hudson County violation notices in 2011 for illegally diverting the preschool site and the adjacent preschool parking lot.
Why, after 25 years hasn’t NJDEP stepped in and decided how much land North Bergen illegally diverted?

3- On 12-20-16 NJDEP directed North Bergen to compensate Hudson County for leasing the land that the preschool used “for the period of time between the expiration of the 2.5-year temporary lease agreement previously authorized by the Green Acres Program and the vacation of the site by the Pre-K school.”   The 2.5 year lease expired in 2014 and 15 of the 17 Pre-K TCUs vacated Braddock Park in 2025.
NJDEP also stated that the lease payments should “include an annual escalator based on the consumer price index” and the lease payments “must be used for operating, maintenance or capital expenses related to the County’s funded parklands or its recreation program as a whole. However, we also need documentation that the lease payments made during the 2.5-year period previously authorized by the Green Acres Program pursuant to
N.J.A.C. 7:26-25.14 were used for the same purposes.”
According to documents posted on the NJDEP website (https://dep.nj.gov/wp-content/uploads/otpla/plc-public-notices/braddock-park/section-i-cfo-ltr-re-lease-payments.pdf),  North Bergen made lease payments in 2011, 2012, 2017 and 2020 totaling $25,000.  This is only a small fraction of what North Bergen owes Hudson County and neither North Bergen nor Hudson County provided documentation showing that the lease payments were used for park programs as NJDEP directed North Bergen-Hudson County to do.

4- North Bergen Resolution No.66 shows that paid $270,000 to buy dilapidated 24 year-old TCUs and then another $160,200 to get rid of them.  This expense is huge and should be investigated.
Over the course of 25 years, North Bergen spent millions of dollars to lease the same TCUs when it could have instead built a permanent preschool legally on its 64th Street BOE property.
Schematics and plans from around 2012 show that there was enough room on this BOE land to place the TCUs while the school was being built, but North Bergen claimed it couldn’t, because it was park land and it had soil contamination.  Meanwhile according to OPRA responses, it seems North Bergen never tested the soil for contamination at the preschool site in Braddock Park, even though Braddock Park is known to have contaminated soil.

5- The notion that North Bergen had no choice but to place its preschool in Braddock Park in 2001 is ludicrous – North Bergen had viable alternatives since the 1990’s when it began receiving NJ ECPA funds to establish a preschool.  In 2001 North Bergen knew that in order to put a preschool in Braddock Park it would have to provide replacement land because in 2000 it researched building a high school in Braddock Park.

The same NJDEP personnel who facilitated North Bergen’s illegal diversion and approved more than one inappropriate Green Acres grant are today deciding the outcome of North Bergen’s diversion application.
This is unethical.

Robert Walden                                                                                                              North Bergen