Your Turn
How did town lose money on sale of valuable Golden Triangle?
Guest Column
Miklos Bognar Sr.

Let's start with a little introduction. 2004 was an election year, and the town was running short of money, so the mayor and his team decided to do some asset selling.

The Golden Triangle area was a perfect match. They asked for proposals to buy the land and accepted Toll Brothers plan, which proposed to build a transit village with 200 age-restricted apartments and a new bus terminal and parking deck on the 32-acre parcel for $30 million, with a $4-million down payment and $4.5 thereafter. Why a $4-million down payment? Because this was the amount Mayor William Neary needed to plug the hole in his 2004 re-election year budget that would otherwise have amounted to a $200 increase for every $100,000 of property value.

The negotiations with the details dragged on, and the money was not there when needed, so Mayor Neary's creative financial team and his "yes" Township Council (with the exception of Councilwoman Christi Calvano) approved borrowing $4 million from the money set aside to buy Heavenly Farms, losing $222 a day in interest (it cost the township about $40,000), until Toll Brothers came up with the promised amount. With this move the mayor boxed the township into a corner and lost the upper hand in the negotiations with Toll Brothers, since it became apparent that the township depended on this money.

Toll Brothers seized the opportunity and removed the age restrictions and upped the number of apartments from 200 to 400, giving $25,000 for each extra apartment over the original agreed amount to the township as a goodwill gesture. At the same time, they weaseled out of building the new bus terminal and parking deck that was in the original plan (Sentinel, May 20, 2004).

Now the township is going to build the parking deck at a cost of more than $50 million, which means that for the next 20 years we, the taxpayers, have to come up with $2.5 million a year extra to pay for the bond issue. That's not all. We won't own the air rights over the parking deck that we are paying for, and in 60 years the ownership of the deck will revert to Toll Brothers. And there is more. Toll Brothers is the general contractor for the deck for a fee of 3 percent, which means that we, the taxpayers of East Brunswick, are paying for a reinforced foundation so later they can build (probably offices) on top of it.

Why do we need a parking deck? Towns much richer than we don't have such luxury, but now we have to build it because Mayor Neary and his council (with the exception of Christi Calvano) caved in to the builder. Another reason, according to Councilman David Stahl, is that vehicles and drivers will be protected from the weather (Sentinel, April 27). Interestingly enough, my cars have never had any problem parking outside for the last 40 years.

Township Attorney Michael Baker said in an article in the Aug. 12, 2004 Sentinel that the township does not yet have a concrete idea on how traffic and other issues would be affected. It is now November 2006 - do we have those studies yet?

How did as valuable a piece of land as the Golden Triangle get sold with the town losing money on the deal? Let's do the math because numbers don't lie.

Price of sale: $35 million. Cost of the sale: parking deck construction - $32 million; interest in the bond (20 years) - $18 million; rent paid by Sam's to Toll Brothers after the sale - $1.8 million; interest not charged to Toll Brothers (five years at 5 percent) $1.4 million; interest lost using Heavenly Farms money - $40,000. Total cost of the deal for the East Brunswick taxpayers: $53.24 million.

How will a family on a fixed income, who struggled for years to buy its dream house and helped develop East Brunswick, be able to afford the coming increases in the property tax, thanks to this irresponsible spending?

Truly, they don't care.

Miklos Bognar Sr. is a resident of East Brunswick