Hudson TV received the following letter to the editor from North Bergen resident Robert Walden criticizing expenses by the Township of North Bergen, the Recreation Center proposed renovations, and the pre-school trailers in Braddock Park:
North Bergen residents received a form letter from Nick Sacco saying property taxes are going up 7.25%.
He also wrote that NB has been spending money from its past budget surpluses, but he doesn’t say how much.
Residents probably don’t know that NB is planning to spend $7 million to renovate the NB Indoor Rec Center on 64th Street/Meadowview Avenue.
This comes after NB spent $20 million to build an indoor community and rec center downtown in 2022.
Community centers and rec centers are both very worthwhile projects, but North Bergen refused to incorporate classrooms into both of these community/recreation centers as NJ DEP told North Bergen it should, so that the North Bergen Preschool could be removed from its illegal location in Braddock Park.
North Bergen’s (NJ DOE approved) realignment plan says ALL the North Bergen preschoolers in Braddock Park would be moved into elementary schools after renovations at High Tech HS are completed and High Tech is converted into a NB junior high school.
The plan was to move 7th and 8th graders out of elementary schools and into the High Tech JHS, thereby creating room in the elementary schools for all the preschoolers.
Now NB is saying there won’t be room in the elementary schools for all the preschoolers and it needs to keep preschoolers in Braddock Park.
Meanwhile, the High Tech renovations are 4 years behind schedule and getting more and more expensive.
This is even more reason for NB to not spend $7 million to renovate the NB Indoor Rec Center unless it adds classrooms on 64th Street, which by-the-way is property owned by the North Bergen Board of Education.
If North Bergen doesn’t add classrooms on the BOE’s 64th Street property, Braddock Park will likely have a 2-story preschool built where the preschool trailers are, bringing more traffic, noise, pollution, accidents, flooding, garbage and people into Braddock Park on a daily basis.
PLEASE SPEAK OUT!
Email officials and tell them you oppose North Bergen spending $7 million to renovate the 64th Street North Bergen Indoor Rec Center unless North Bergen adds classrooms to the rec center or elsewhere on North Bergen BOE’s owned land on 64th Street and it removes the preschool from Braddock Park as NB’s school realignment plan was supposed to do.
Email:
mayorsoffice@northbergen.org
SenStack@njleg.org
shawn.latourette@dep.nj.gov
Nancy.Lawrence@dep.nj.gov
Robert.Guzek@dep.nj.gov
comptrollertips@osc.nj.gov
Robert Walden
North Bergen, NJ 07047