Letter 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:

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.

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 64^th 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