Local Awareness and Unanswered Questions

To our pleasant surprise this morning we received a call that said to check out the Barista, the local, independent (keyword here) news source, which we would have done at some point in the day anyway.

There was an article, unprompted by anything but the discovery of our blog, detailing our blog and the issues at hand. The telling part was the debate occurring in the comments area of the article, and the number of posts that occurred over such a short time.

The debate went back and forth about the fairness involved in the entire process.

Let's review some key issues here.

The issue here is not, and never has been, whether or not redevelopment should occur. The sign on our front door which has been there for months and was photographed by the Star Ledger should make that clear. The sign reads "Help Revitalize Bloomfield the Organic Way - Support Local Business."

If this process is fair, then some questions need to be asked:

• Why do I have petition signatures from hundreds of local community members (representing near 90% of the people that enter this store) declaring the following:
  "By signing this petition I declare that I do not support the misuse and abuse of the eminent domain laws by the township of Bloomfield in the downtown / center area. This abuse has been documented and challenged in courts. A law in place for the public good should NOT benefit private developers!"

• Why are the owners of the properties on the other sides of the tracks being prevented from their own redevelopment plan because Forest City is the "official" agency of the town (and also a private, for-profit corporation)?
  
  
• Why is an area zoned as "redevelopment" for five years before a project gets off the ground, making a documented and clear impact on market values? These market values are then considered the "fair" values of the properties, even after being desolated
  
  
• Why were businesses left out of the new plans with no space for them, and then promised relocation assistance under New Jersey state law, only to move and be left with thousands of dollars in unpaid expenses that the town is liable to cover under the law?
  
  
• Why did a county court judge prevent the town from condemning its first set of properties because she felt the plan did not justify the move AND there were too many suspicious interests?

Sadly these are just the tip of a VERY big iceberg of questions left unanswered. The most telling part is the lack of response from ALL OF THE PARTIES who received a letter requesting information sent four weeks ago.