Save Cranbury!

[Stinkyboo27]

The following is the text of an email I sent to Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein earlier today requesting her presence at the Town Council Meeting on Monday, March 17th. Please consider sending her an email requesting her presence and be sure to be there yourself. Cranbury must stand together to stop the passage of the COAH Third Round Rules that will bring as many as 950 new, affordable housing units to our town. Her email is as follows: AswGreenstein@njleg.org

Requesting your attendance....

Dear Linda,

I am a proud resident of Cranbury. I strongly urge you to attend the upcoming council meeting on March 17th at 7:30pm in the Cafeteria of the Cranbury School. The newly proposed COAH Third Round Rules, which call for en masse development of new affordable housing in Cranbury, hold the potential not merely to dilute the historic presence of our great town, but to obliterate our community as we know it. Overpopulated schools, drastically increased traffic levels, substantially higher tax burdens only scratch the surface of the inevitable fallout Cranbury will suffer if these rules are passed. Ultimately, to support this unwanted sprawl, our town may be forced to merge with a larger, neighboring municipality, stealing our identity and making the historic town of Cranbury obsolete.

Cranbury is a very unique town with great history and tradition. We may be small, but we are a community of great means. Our residents are affluent, educated and influential. We are motivated and prepared to fight, tooth and nail, the passage of these rules. We will use the press, the courts and any means necessary to save our town and our way of life!

We expect our representatives to stand by our side, digest the issues and hear our collective plea. As of this writing, there are hundreds of Cranbury residents that will be in attendance at Monday's meeting. There will be no better forum for you to show your support for the people of District 14 than to be present.

I look forward to your help and effort.

[Email]

It's done.

[Guest]

I just received an email on this topic:

[Guest]

I have also sent a letter to the assemblywoman's office urging her attendance.

[Guest2]

Please note the correct time is 7 pm on Monday March 17th!!

[Guest]

How do residents save Cranbury just by attending a meeting? Is there a way to sign a petition or a formal way to make the situation better (e.g. less units built)?

[Guest]

It will take many things: attending the meeting in force, hopefully with state government reps in attendance and the media too (someone should be calling area medai, including the Star Ledger and Trenton Times), signing petitions, writing campaigns to our state reps, editorials to the media, getting local TV stations to come out to our school and quaint Main Street and doing stories about how it is all at risk, etc...

[concerned]

This website was used for doing an online petition when the changes were up for vote regarding school consoliations. It can be sent electronically to our legislatures.

http://www.petitiononline.com/

Hope this helps and see you on Monday!

[Guest]

Can the residents of Cranbuary persuade the state to make an exception? What advantages does Cranbury have to make the rules no applying to her?

[Guest]

Does anyone know how many regular single family homes cranbury currently has? If Cranbury added these 460 COAH homes - what would the ratio of COAH homes to single family homes? An ideas?

[Guest]

[publius]

Since when did NJ become a Fascist regime? I know people who left the former Soviet Union because of such treatment. Why does our highly corruptable government always cave in to special interests (developers) when they are supposed to be working for US? I know that the state gov, and the developers are in bed together. But, why is ALWAYS the People who are getting screwed?

[Guest]

Would some smart lawyers find a loophole to help Cranbury, please?

[Guest]

Previous poster who said this is really just a way to force the township consolidation was right on. The force behind this new bill on the affordable housing is the speaker of the State Assembly and the architect the previous bill last year to try and force small towns to consolidate schools and services or merge. He has dedicated his career to protecting subsidies to the bigger cities like Camden using the tax dollars of smaller township residents, and the supporting the State Unions (who would benefit from larger townships and districts). He is the cliché tri-state area politician, buttering the bread of special interests whom he owes his job to with no real interest in the welfare of the State. He was the same guy who allowed the entire State to shut down last year in the battle with the Governor. He is one of the reasons NJ is practically bankrupt, supporting budgets with massive concessions to unions and special interests.

The point is, he’s not doing this for the benefit of people in need of low income housing. He is doing this specifically to kill Cranbury and other small Townships, specially to force communities to merge and consolidate more power into special interests instead of local citizens. The housing issue is just the Trojan Horse for the real purpose.

He represents everything wrong with New Jersey politics. And he is the most powerful person in the State Assembly and State Democratic Party.

[Guest]

If we’re going to start talking about taking on the enemies of Cranbury, why not start locally? Has no one else noticed that the Managing Editor of the Cranbury Press, Hank Kalet, endorsed the proposals to force smaller townships to merge? He even wrote an editorial in the Cranbury Press in support of it. And I noticed they never published any responses to it. Is it really possible no one objected to a position that is contrary to the interests of virtually the entire population of the Township and the very future of our 300 year old historical municipality? Or did he just decline to give voice to him in his paper?

It is also telling that he also is the managing editor of the South Brunswick Post, coincidentally or not the Township we would most likely be merged with and which stands to benefit the most from the inclusion of our property taxes and inheriting control of our blue ribbon school, not to mention all the dollars that currently go to Princeton for their high school program that would instead feed to their school district when our kids were forced to bus to South Brunswick instead.

That strikes me as a conflict of interest but it doesn’t seem to have stopped him from using our local paper as a voice for this agenda.

Why don’t we start with a campaign to boycott the Cranbury Press until they give us an editor who is interested in Cranbury and the interests of our community? As it is, they seem to have only 1 writer that focuses on us the the paper covers more about Monroe and Jamesburg than Cranbury despite the name of the paper.

[CP]

I could not find the article wrote by Hank Kalet that supports the proposed COAH rules. If this is the view of Cranbury Press, then I will cancel my subscription.

Does anyone know what does it take to block the proposed COAH rules?