Residents fighting borough over redevelopment

STANHOPE - First there was a knock on the door; seconds later the telephone rang. “It’s been like this all day,” said Norma Peterson Fluke, borough resident since 1940. Fluke’s sudden notoriety was the result of an article in The Star Ledger that featured her family’s protest of a proposed redevelopment and rezoning of a section of the town that includes their property. Fluke said she and her daughter, with whom she lives, received calls from as far away as Bloomfield. At one point she opened the door to find eight neighborhood youngsters displaying a petition with more than 100 signatures they collected in support of their neighbors. “We read about it in the paper, and then we all talked about it, and the idea just spread,” said Joe Brown. Billy McKinney chimed in, “It’s a crime. Do we live under communism?” “We want to help because they are nice people,” added Emily Viganola. Fluke’s property, which includes her home and Peterson and Sons Tree Service, is one of six parcels zoned industrial which the borough proposes to rezone residential. The former Compac property, which also lies within the designated area, has already been rezoned for age-restricted housing. The borough is seeking approval to use eminent domain to appropriate these properties and sell them to a developer. Fluke and her daughter, Marjorie, are now at the forefront of a campaign to stop the redevelopment. “My brother runs his business out of the back of the property, but he could not afford to run it if I have to give up this property,” said Fluke, referring to the tree service. Despite the fact that she has never received a complaint nor received a notice of any violation in the 19 years she and her brother have operated the tree service, Fluke said, her property now has been declared “blighted” under the criteria of the redevelopment legislation. Fluke believes the community was “lied to since the mayor led people to believe that it would be age-restricted, but it isn’t; it’s high density.” The family disagrees with Mayor Diana Kuncken’s opinion that because Compac shut down, the other properties in the area will “fall like dominoes.” In response to the accusation of deceit, Kuncken explained that the council followed the correct procedure by first passing a resolution in June of this year for the land use board to determine if those properties qualified for redevelopment. She emphasized that at present, there is no contract and no specific plans. Kuncken said officials met with Rusty Peterson, owner and operator of the tree service, advised him of the plan being considered and that his property would be included. Fluke was not included in the meeting. “At no time did he say we should talk to his sister, who is the owner of the property. It was not intentional that we didn’t speak to Mrs. Fluke,” said Kuncken, who added that the oversight was due to “poor communication or miscommunication.” According to Fluke, school superintendent Nick Brown was quoted in the “Stanhope Borough News,” which is published by the municipality, as saying: “The Mayor has discussed the plan with School Superintendent Nick Brown who is comfortable that the school can handle the potential addition in students.” However, when contacted by The Township Journal, Brown denied saying any such thing. Instead, he said, the board of education sent a letter to the community stating its opposition to the project. “Our school system is filled right now,” said Brown, “We can’t handle 150 kids from a major building project.” According to Brown, such an increase would require the district to hire at least five teachers and the recently instituted cap law would prevent raising the school budget enough to pay for the new hires. He estimated that the additional payroll, benefits package, and other expenses would amount to $250,000 annually. “The board is against the project,” he reiterated. Board President Linda Parisi agreed. “We have brought so much income into the school to defray costs, and we did it without selling any acreage, although there are 40 acres of land surrounding the school,” said Parisi. “I would hate to see it become overcrowded.” In response to Brown’s comments, the mayor said that if the redevelopment were to occur, she did not anticipate those “kind of numbers.” “There are no specific plans,” she said. “We know it will be residential and there will be green space, but there is no agreement or plan.” According to the mayor, any residential development would likely be in the form of “condos - one- and two-bedroom units at the most,” and that it would include senior housing. “We don’t feel it would be a large impact on the school,” Kuncken went on. “With no free-standing houses, we don’t foresee a big impact. It was just to give them an awareness that we were thinking about the project.” The next meeting of the Stanhope Borough Land Use Board is scheduled for Dec. 12.