Tuesday, October 20, 2026 · Serving all of Hudson County since March 2011Letter to the Editor: North Bergen Officials' Misconduct Needs Fixing, Not More Of The Same
Hudson TV received the following Letter to the Editor from North Bergen resident Robert Walden, founder of the Save Braddock Park-Safe Schools Committee: Editor's note: This is a letter to…
Hudson TV received the following Letter to the Editor from North Bergen resident Robert Walden, founder of the Save Braddock Park-Safe Schools Committee:
Editor’s note: This is a letter to the editor and reflects the writer’s views. Hudson TV has not independently confirmed several of its claims; see the note at the end.
On October 28 the North Bergen Commissioners are poised to accept Nick Sacco Sr.’s resignation as Commissioner/Mayor and choose Hugo Cabrera, a Commissioner for 27 years who is also the Secretary of the Board of Education, to replace Sacco Sr. as Mayor and choose Nick Sacco Jr. to replace Sacco. Sr. as a Commissioner.
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This nepotism and cronyism is apparently legal, so why should anyone care? Because Cabrera and Sacco Jr. lack the skills to fulfill the mission and because they have a history of violating State regulations, jeopardizing lives and unnecessarily raising the taxes of North Bergen/Hudson County taxpayers.
In the 1990s while Nick Sacco was concurrently State Senator/North Bergen Mayor/Assistant Superintendent of Schools, North Bergen received millions of dollars in State educational aid to establish a permanent preschool.
North Bergen designed an Early Childhood Center that was to house the Preschoolers but when it was finished it only had enough room for kindergartners, not for preschoolers.
Sacco and Cabrera could have built a Preschool on 64th Street Board of Education owned land (or elsewhere), but instead they chose to make matters worse…they illegally removed a taxpayer funded ball field in Hudson County’s Braddock Park in order to illegally situate (in violation of State environmental regulations) and dangerously operate North Bergen’s “temporary” 17-trailer Preschool for 24 years, (in violation of State educational regulations).
Neither NJDEP nor NJDOE gave North Bergen written permission to do this.
OPRA responses show that the Braddock Park preschool site was not tested for contamination beforehand, even though contamination has been found elsewhere in the park.
In 2011 (10 years after the preschool opened), North Bergen officials told NJ DEP that the trailers are “antiquated” and they are ” typically leased for five years”, and North Bergen promised to remove them from the park.
Instead, North Bergen spent around $5 million to lease and maintain the trailers, using them until 2025, in violation of State educational regulations.
The trailers had groundhogs living under them, their moldy walls were broken, nails protruded, electrical conduit sagged and tree branches dangerously rested on electric wires just above the roofs.
The preschool roadway was too narrow and lacked sidewalks. The preschool’s 2 parking lots lacked traffic lights and stop signs at their exits onto busy JF Kennedy Blvd.
In 2012 a fire destroyed 2 trailers. Fortunately school was not in session because the trailers lacked emergency exits, another long-standing violation.
Even after the fire the trailers remained without emergency exits! Fortunately, a catastrophe didn’t occur.
Despite evidence to the contrary, North Bergen officials falsely claimed there was no violation and emergency exits were not installed until after I complained in 2017.
In 2016 after members of the public suggested to NJDEP that if North Bergen acquired the vacant High Tech HS, it could reorganize its school system and place all its preschoolers in District facilities, thereby ending its non-compliance with State regulations. NJDEP directed North Bergen to do so.
It took North Bergen another 9 years (2025) to enable this plan and instead of thanking the community for the plan, officials took credit for it and renamed High Tech “Nicholas Sacco Junior High School”.
In 2018 a pedestrian was run over and killed in a crosswalk just a few feet from one of the Preschool parking lot exits which lacked a stop sign/traffic light; after this fatality Hudson County decided to redesign and make safer the one block where this fatality occurred; work still hasn’t begun.
People lived in the woods just a few feet behind the Preschool trailers and in 2021 the Hudson County Sheriff ordered the woods bulldozed after a near murder occurred. The Sheriff stated:
“The proximity to scores of 5-year-old students “is a concern,” the sheriff said. “That’s why we are having the area cleared….Sheriff’s Office Patrol Commander Capt. Anthony DeGennaro said that area of the park, west of the lake, “has historically been a problem area.”…A brutal attack in the park this past May that left a man with serious injuries only made the project to clear areas and created paths for sheriff’s officers who patrol the park more urgent.”
Incredibly, right after the woods were cleared, Commissioner Cabrera wrote a letter-to-the-editor publicly stating “the preschool program is incredibly safe” and he dismissed my safety concerns about people living in the woods as being racist. Cabrera’s letter was withdrawn from publication because the Sheriff’s statements proved that Cabrera was wrong.
On the subject of racism, see this 2016 article about Nick Sacco Jr: https://hudpost.com/nick-sacco-jr-i-didnt-mean-it-to-be-racist/
As a result of North Bergen officials’ poor planning and their violation of environmental regulations, North Bergen taxpayers have nothing to show for the millions of dollars they spent on leasing the Preschool trailers and residents will likely see tax increases to provide the compensatory park replacement land North Bergen and Hudson County are required to provide for their fiduciary irresponsibility and misconduct.
Nick Sacco Sr’s. “coronation” of Nick Sacco Jr. to succeed him as a North Bergen Commissioner is an affront to all decent, hardworking, law-abiding taxpayers.
Sacco Jr. is responsible for much of the wrong-doing detailed here because he is the Principal of the Lincoln Elementary School, which administers the Preschool and Sacco Jr’s. wife is the Director of the Preschool.
Sacco and Cabrera’s involvement in this fiasco demonstrates that they are the wrong people to continue running North Bergen government.
Who will step up to the challenge and turn North Bergen around for the better?
Robert Walden – Founder of the Save Braddock Park-Safe Schools Committee.
North Bergen
Editor’s note
This letter reflects the opinions of its writer, Robert Walden, who has campaigned for years to remove North Bergen’s preschool trailers from James J. Braddock Park. Hudson TV reviewed the letter’s factual claims against public records and published reporting. The letter appears above as submitted.
What the record supports
- Mayor Nicholas Sacco’s resignation takes effect Oct. 28, 2026. The Board of Commissioners will meet that night at 6:30 p.m. at the Nicholas J. Sacco Junior High School, where Commissioner Hugo Cabrera is expected to be appointed mayor. The other commissioners have said they support Nick Sacco Jr. for the open seat. (Township of North Bergen, Oct. 9; meeting notice, Oct. 13)
- Cabrera was elected a commissioner in 1999 and works as Board Secretary for the North Bergen Board of Education. Sacco Jr. is principal of Lincoln Elementary School, and the Lincoln Annex Preschool is listed under that school. (Township of North Bergen; Lincoln School)
- Sacco Sr. has been mayor since 1991 and was a state senator from 1994 to 2024. He also held a North Bergen school district administrator job until 2017. (NJ.com, Jan. 2017)
- The trailers were placed on a ball field in Braddock Park in 2001, as a temporary measure while a building at Lincoln School was finished. That building was then used for kindergarten. The trailers stayed in use through the 2024-25 school year, and the state Department of Environmental Protection said their presence violated Green Acres rules for protected parkland. (NJ.com, Nov. 2014; NJ.com, Sept. 2017; Hudson Reporter, Sept. 2025)
- A fire caused by Hurricane Sandy struck the trailers early on Oct. 30, 2012, when no one was inside. Early reports said one trailer was destroyed and a second was damaged. Later reports said two were destroyed, and the district replaced two. In 2017, all but those two replacement trailers lacked a second exit door, and the district said doors would be added. (NJ.com, Oct. 2012; NJ.com, Sept. 2017)
- A pedestrian was struck in a crosswalk on JFK Boulevard East at the Bruin Stadium parking lot entrance on Oct. 2, 2018, and died of her injuries later that month. (Hudson County View)
- In 2021 the Hudson County Sheriff’s Office cleared trees and brush near the preschool. The quoted passage in the letter comes from NJ.com’s report. Only the parts inside the inner quotation marks are the words of the sheriff and of Capt. Anthony DeGennaro. (NJ.com, Aug. 2021)
- Cabrera wrote a letter in August 2021 defending the preschool. (Hudson County View, Aug. 24, 2021)
- The former High Tech High School campus on 85th Street is now the Nicholas J. Sacco Junior High School, named in 2025. (Township of North Bergen)
What Hudson TV has not been able to confirm
- That North Bergen spent about $5 million to lease and maintain the trailers. No public total has been released. The one figure we found is in a December 2025 Board of Education resolution: $270,000 to buy the trailers and up to $160,200 to remove them. (Hudson TV, Sept. 11, 2026)
- That the site was never tested for contamination before the trailers were installed. The writer cites public records responses that Hudson TV has not seen.
- That officials told the state in 2011 the trailers were “antiquated” and “typically leased for five years.” We have not seen that document. In a 2017 letter, the writer dated the “typically leased for 5 years” statement to Aug. 19, 2016.
- The trailer conditions he describes (groundhogs, mold, broken walls, protruding nails), apart from the tree branches touching power lines, which NJ.com reported in 2017.
- That the access road and parking lot exits lacked sidewalks, stop signs or traffic lights, and that a sheriff’s crash report linked the 2018 crash to preschool traffic.
- That Hudson County decided to redesign that block of JFK Boulevard and that the work has not started.
- That officials knowingly made false statements about the exit doors, or that the doors went in only after the writer complained. In 2017 the superintendent said the older trailers were exempt from a 2014 rule requiring a second door.
- That the state “directed” North Bergen in 2016 to use the High Tech building for preschoolers, or that the idea came from members of the public. Township and county officials announced a High Tech building plan in October 2016. (NJ.com, Jan. 2017)
- That the state gave the township millions of dollars specifically to build a permanent preschool.
- That Cabrera’s 2021 letter called the preschool “incredibly safe,” called the writer’s concerns racist, or was withdrawn from publication. The writer’s own published reply at the time did not mention a racism accusation.
- That Cabrera or Sacco Jr. personally violated state regulations, that Sacco Jr. is responsible for the problems described, or that taxes will rise to pay for replacement parkland.
- That the Lincoln preschool supervisor is Sacco Jr.’s wife.
Where the record differs from the letter
- The letter says Sacco Jr.’s wife “is the Director of the Preschool.” The Lincoln School website lists a different person as Director of Early Childhood. The staff member listed there with the last name Sacco has the title Preschool Supervisor. (Lincoln School contact page)
- The letter says the state Department of Education never gave written permission for the trailers. A 2024 decision by the Commissioner of Education describes the writer’s own petition as seeking “to have NJDOE rescind its approval of the use of the temporary classroom units.” The decision does not say whether that approval existed in 2001. (Commissioner of Education decision 236-24, June 24, 2024)
- The letter holds Sacco Jr. responsible as Lincoln’s principal. Public reporting shows he was not principal there when the trailers were placed in 2001. In 2016 he was a vice principal at North Bergen High School. (HudPost, April 2016; HudPost, Oct. 2026)
Hudson TV welcomes responses from those named in this letter, and any responses will be added to this post.
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