HomeLatest NewsFeatured HomebuildersHome Buyer ResourcesBinding ArbitrationResource LinksSubmit ComplaintsView ComplaintsTake Action 101!Report Mortgage FraudMortgage Fraud NewsForeclosure NewsConstruction DefectsHome DefectsPhoto GalleryFoundation ProblemsHomeowner Website LinksHOA Reform
Main Menu
Home
Latest News
Featured Homebuilders
Home Buyer Resources
Binding Arbitration
Resource Links
Submit Complaints
View Complaints
Take Action 101!
Report Mortgage Fraud
Mortgage Fraud News
Foreclosure News
Construction Defects
Home Defects
Photo Gallery
Foundation Problems
Homeowner Website Links
HOA Reform
Featured Topics
Builder Death Spiral
Report Mortgage Fraud
Foreclosure Special Report
Mold & New Home Guide
Special News Reports
Centex & Habitability
How Fast Can They Build Them?
TRCC Editorial
Texas TRCC Scandal
Texas Watch - Tell Lawmakers
TRCC Recommendations
Sandra Bullock
People's Lawyer
Prevent Nightmare Homes
Choice Homes
Smart Money
Weekly Update Message
HOBB Archives
About HOBB
Contact Us
Fair Use Notice
Legislative Work
Your House

 HOBB News Alerts
and Updates

Click Here to Subscribe

Support HOBB - Become a Sustaining Member
Who's Online
ABC Special Report
Investigation: New Home Heartbreak
Trump - NAHB Homebuilders Shoddy Construction and Forced Arbitration
New York Times - New Jersey Officials Pleaded Guilty
Monday, 11 July 2005
Officials Pleaded Guilty, but Town Was Changed Forever
The price of corruption in this New Jersey town may best be seen in the many rooflines that snake down Woodcliff Boulevard at a uniform 25-foot setback from the curb. Or perhaps in the postmodern stylings of the luxury five- and six-bedroom homes in the planned community of Lexington Estates.

Officials Pleaded Guilty, but Town Was Changed Forever
By RONALD SMOTHERS
Published: July 11, 2005

MARLBORO TOWNSHIP, N.J., July 6 - The price of corruption in this New Jersey town may best be seen in the many rooflines that snake down Woodcliff Boulevard at a uniform 25-foot setback from the curb. Or perhaps in the postmodern stylings of the luxury five- and six-bedroom homes in the planned community of Lexington Estates.

Enlarge This Image

The Woodcliff Estates is one of the township's subdivisions.

Maybe another way to view it is in the population increase, 100 percent in 15 years, to 40,000 today from 20,000 in 1990.

Or some say it can be summed up in one word: sprawl.

In the last decade, this Monmouth County suburb was transformed from a town that was open and airy to one that is condensed and clustered with new development bordering new development - but where housing for blue-collar families and others of moderate income is in short supply.

Local, state and federal officials say the rapid growth is not an accident but the consequence of development that went largely unchecked because of complicity between builders and local officials.

A federal inquiry into corruption in this town led to the arrests of a former mayor, who pleaded guilty to corruption charges this spring; a former utility authority commissioner and Democratic leader, who on Tuesday pleaded guilty to extortion and bribery charges; and a local developer, who is charged with bribery. At the same time, a flood of subpoenas have been served on current and former town planning and zoning officials.

The arrests and subpoenas are part of a broader sweep of Monmouth County that has led to 19 arrests or indictments of elected and appointed officials or contractors and three guilty pleas this year, with the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the office of United States Attorney Christopher J. Christie continuing.

Investigators and current local officials say they have identified a pattern in which some developers received zoning variances to build sprawling, high-profit housing subdivisions on land that had been set aside for commercial development. In many cases, they were able to build these subdivisions at higher densities than would ordinarily have been allowed.

Often, developers, as well as local officials, justified the rezoning and higher densities of the subdivisions by citing the town's need to meet state goals for building so-called affordable housing.

But what actually happened in most cases, said lawyers for the town and current town officials, was a shell game of land swaps in which units of low- and moderate-income housing that were included in early drafts of plans fell by the wayside, and the resulting developments were solely market-rate housing at the higher density anyway.

From 1995 to 2005, 3,388 new homes were built in this 33-square-mile town, much of which was made up of horse farms and cornfields as recently as 20 years ago. Of that number, only 184 homes that meet the state's definition of affordable for moderate-income families were built, far short of the 1,019 units that the state's Council on Affordable Housing required to be built by July 2004.

As a result, the township, which officials say has already been strained by the surge in development, is still required by the state to immediately build additional units for low- and moderate-income residents.

Mayor Robert Kleinberg, who was a local gadfly until he was elected in 2003 after the investigation of the developers and the former mayor, has appealed to the state to back off its requirement.

"We have argued that because a lot of the land-use actions were criminal and the subject of ongoing investigations, that we should be allowed to put it off for a time," Mr. Kleinberg said." We haven't met our goals because of all the manipulation and wheeling and dealing by town officials and developers."

Mr. Kleinberg and other officials say that the last thing the town needs right now is more housing. In addition to a glut of four- and five-bedroom homes, the town is suffering from schools swelled to bursting, congested local roads, and flooding and drainage problems. He and other officials have said they will build lower-price housing, but would like to put it off until the federal inquiry is complete, and so they can mix it with more taxable commercial properties that will help ease burdens on residents. (The town carries enormous debt because the previous administration chose to borrow rather than raise taxes, Mr. Kleinberg said.)

Kathleen Cali, a resident for decades, asked: "What will affordable housing do now but just increase the number of people in a smaller area, kids in the school and traffic on the roads?"

She added, "Sometimes I can't even get out of my development because of the traffic. It seems that we are going to suffer because of those wrong decisions made by officials in the past."

Charles Richman, the acting commissioner of the state's Department of Community Affairs, which oversees the Council on Affordable Housing, said the town's request for a delay was pending, and might be considered by the council in September.

The impasse is the latest chapter in the state's long history of requiring suburbs to build low- and moderately priced housing or apartments - the result of the landmark 1975 Mount Laurel case.

While many towns have sought to delay or challenge the housing requirements set by the state, according to Peter O'Connor, the lawyer who argued the case, Marlboro's approach is novel.

"It's usually fairly standard, with towns arguing that they lack the infrastructure to meet their requirement, or lack the land or have environmental concerns," said Mr. O'Connor, who is executive director of the Fair Share Housing Center, a public interest law firm promoting low- and moderate-income housing efforts. "But no one has ever made the argument that they are making."

Perhaps few other towns could.

Matthew V. Scannapieco, 54, who was mayor of Marlboro from 1992 to 2003, pleaded guilty in April to accepting $245,000 in bribes from a local developer in exchange for supporting his development plans. In May, Anthony Spalliero, 64, a developer, was arrested on four federal charges of offering bribes in Marlboro, Manalapan and the Monmouth County seat of Freehold, said Mr. Christie, the United States attorney. The properties in Mr. Spalliero's bribery indictment are the same properties for which Mr. Scannapieco pleaded guilty to accepting bribes.

On Tuesday, the town's former Democratic chairman and municipal utility authority commissioner, Richard Vuola, 74, pleaded guilty to extorting money from several developers and carrying out one of the bribery schemes that Mr. Spalliero is accused of originating.

"Richard Vuola joins the rogues gallery of public officials in Monmouth County who used their positions of authority to harm rather than help their communities," Mr. Christie said at the time of the guilty plea. "Marlboro Township was particularly vulnerable and under intense development pressure, something Vuola and others capitalized on from their elected and appointed positions."

In addition, a former member of the town's planning board, Stanley Young, 71, pleaded guilty on June 20 to accepting bribes.

According to Mayor Kleinberg, F.B.I. agents regularly attend meetings of the town's council, planning and zoning boards. During the last week of June, federal agents served two members of planning and zoning boards with subpoenas during one of the public sessions.

"I look at it as if I am a man in a burning building and the F.B.I. are the firemen coming in to rescue me," Mr. Kleinberg said.

Andrew Bayer, the town's lawyer, said that Marlboro's housing problems could be traced back to deals like one in 1993 involving Mr. Spalliero. In that deal, Mr. Spalliero had a contract to buy a parcel of land on the condition that it be rezoned as residential from commercial and be included in the town's low- and moderate-income housing plan, which allowed higher density than is typical.

He would have been able to build 1,019 housing units, with at least 233 set aside for moderate-income families. The land was rezoned and was included in the town's housing plan, thus receiving the higher density allowance, but Mr. Spalliero never bought it.

Two years later, however, the town gave him permission to transfer the special density allowance to three other parcels in the town, though they totaled fewer acres than the original parcel. By 1998, after having submitted a third amendment to the plan, Mr. Spalliero gained permission to build 323 units on a number of scattered sites, including one gated community of homes on 20,000-square-foot lots.

But according to Mr. Bayer, he did not build any low- or moderate-income housing on those sites.

"It is readily apparent that there were a significant number of market units built in Marlboro under the guise of satisfying the town's affordable-housing requirement," Mr. Bayer said. "The result was that we didn't get any affordable housing out of those deals."

Michael Critchley, Mr. Spalliero's lawyer, did not respond to several messages.

Meanwhile, questions have emerged about the 184 moderate-income housing units that actually were built, Mr. Bayer said. Those condominiums and townhouses, none of which are rentals, might have recently been resold at prices high enough to violate the state requirement that such housing remain accessible to moderate-income residents for 30 years. Mr. Bayer said the town has sued those who sold the units.

Mayor Kleinberg said, "We're going to be paying for the corrupt acts of the former officials for a long time to come, and even if they are convicted, it doesn't unbuild the homes, uncrowd the schools or decongest the roads."

The town, which has found its services, and therefore its budget, stretched to the limit, has called for Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey and the State Legislature to consider awarding some sort of emergency fiscal status and aid to communities like Marlboro Township. Mr. Kleinberg is proposing a municipal version of the crime victims compensation fund, arguing that "victims of corruption" are as deserving of state attention as victims of crime.

So far, few lawmakers have responded to the call.

One homeowner, Ms. Cali, who grew up in Brooklyn, said that the swirl of events that led to the overbuilding had been confusing and wearying, but she that had never thought she lived in a corrupt town.

"I thought that that was just the way things were done in the suburbs," she said.



 
< Prev   Next >
Search HOBB.org

Reckless Endangerment
BY: GRETCHEN MORGENSON
and JOSHUA ROSNER

Outsized Ambition, Greed and
Corruption Led to
Economic Armageddon


Amazon
Barnes & Noble

NPR Special Report
Part I Listen Now
Perry Home - No Warranty 
Part II Listen Now
Texas Favors Builders

Washington Post
The housing bubble, in four chapters
BusinessWeek Special Reports
Bonfire of the Builders
Homebuilders helped fuel the housing crisis
Housing: That Sinking Feeling

Consumer Affairs Builder Complaints

IS YOUR STATE NEXT?
As Goes Texas So Goes the Nation
Knowledge and Financial Responsibility are still Optional for Texas Home Builders

OUTSTANDING FOX4 REPORT
TRCC from Bad to Worse
Case of the Crooked House

TRCC AN ARRESTING EXPERIENCE
The Pat and Bob Egert Building & TRCC Experience 

Build it right the first time
An interview with Janet Ahmad

Bad Binding Arbitration Experience?
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
or call 1-210-402-6800

top of page

© 2024 HomeOwners for Better Building
Joomla! is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL License.