John Fio Rito
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Question 5: If you are elected to the Council, what will be your top 3 legislative priorities and what will stand in the way of you making them happen? Be specific, and tell voters what your initiatives will cost.
My top three legislative priorities center on development because it’s currently the biggest threat to this community. They are: 1 – Fully vetting the Cameco affordable housing redevelopment plan and proposed legal settlement regarding Verona’s affordable housing compliance. I think it’s a terribly regressive plan that puts the Township in a horrible position that will affect us for generations. 2 – A sweeping enactment of inclusionary zoning on all new projects so we can meet our State mandate over time and discourage explosive development; 3 – A financial compliance review of the existing PILOTs to ensure the abatements that have been issued are in full compliance with their financial agreements and obligations and create a policy limiting the issuance of PILOTs in the future.
What will stand in the way of making these initiatives happen are the same things that has been a problem for years – short sightedness, ego and special interests. I, however, have an innate ability to get things done as demonstrated by the last 30 years of my adult life as an Army officer and successful entrepreneur; I’m not easily deterred by conflict. As far as cost, it’s minimal. The only cost involved in the above in the legal review and enactment of the respective ordinances.
Cameco. I’ll state until I’m blue in the face that the current Cameco plan is absolutely terrible and we got into this position because we were completely caught off guard and unprepared for this round of affordable housing quotas. We’ve built more than 200 hundred units in the last several years in Verona, none of them affordable because under the previous round of quotas we had already met ours. For the Council to assume that the quota would never increase and to let hundreds of units be built with tax abatements and without adding any affordability was short sighted to put it mildly. Whose fault it is however, is irrelevant at this point; it’s how we move forward. The current plan to build 100 low income, affordable housing units consolidated into a single location so that we can “fix” our shortage in one, stop-gap action is absurd; it will never be “fixed”. Quotas will always increase and we don’t have the money to buy up land and turn it into an affordable housing project every time our mandate changes. Under this strategy, this town will be broken up in to areas of “have and have nots” and it is divisive. I’ve seen it happen in Jersey City over the last 15 year. Developers displace their affordable requirements to other neighborhoods in the City and concentrate affordable units in one location, supposedly “protecting” other neighborhoods. It divides the community. If you ask about the current Cameco plan, the response you will likely receive is that by building 100 affordable housing units now, we will preserve other open spaces and protect them from other “builder’s remedy” lawsuits. Believing that statement is to suspend reality; when our quota changes in 5 years or 10 or 50, the open space we are “protecting” now will be back in the crosshairs as a target for affordable housing development. We need to hold the line right now and modify the Cameco plan to one that is more long term and sustainable.
Inclusionary Zoning. This term simply means that every new development is a mix of market rate and affordable housing. The actual percentage mix can be determined based on community need. Verona currently has a version of this, but it only applies if the developer is asking for a variance or some other change to the zoning rules; this doesn’t go far enough. Unless we mandate inclusionary zoning across the board, including redevelopment areas, it will always be bypassed.
PILOT financial review and future implementation policy. Every PILOT includes a financial agreement between the Township and the developer. Typical PILOT financial agreements follow a standard format and one common term is a cap on developer profit and anything above that cap can be claimed back by the Township; or the PILOT canceled. This is rarely enforced and how exactly “profit” is defined in each agreement can be nebulous, but we most definitely need to have a routine compliance review of the developer’s accounting records to ensure all parties are maintaining their side of the agreement over the entire term of the abatement. Regarding the use of PILOTs in the future, I would adopt a policy that fits the long term goals of Verona. Tax abatements are used as an incentive to build and we don’t need to offer incentives. PILOTs do serve the purpose of reimbursing the Township capital expenditures and increased operating expenses during the project’s stabilization period, but we need to be more judicious in their application. I would propose a policy of limiting tax abatements to 10 years or less; generally less, and increasing the demands made on developers to obtain an abatement. Longer than 10 years robs the school district of needed funds and it also gets us too comfortable with “free” money in our budget. Eventually all PILOTs come to end and when they do, if we are not responsible in our budgeting, we will have to fill a massive deficit by increasing taxes.
In closing, I’ve heard and read other Candidate’s recent statements on development and affordable housing – they now sound a lot like mine. Please do yourself the service of going back 6 weeks to the first Candidate question regarding development and refresh yourself with each Candidate’s response then. Parroting new talking points on development doesn’t demonstrate the required fundamental understanding of this complex topic that we need on the Council to effectively combat overdevelopment.
I ask you to vote for the candidate with the experience and expertise most applicable to the challenges that face our Community; I ask you to vote for me on May 14th.
