Dear Editor:
The North Bergen administration keeps repeating the same rhetoric about the Braddock Park Diversion, which (if approved) would create a pocket park on Paterson Plank Road.
This proposed 1.5 acre park will not be the park the public deserves…much of this land is unusable because it slopes steeply down to Tonnelle Avenue and it was recently in a big landslide that closed Tonnelle Avenue.
Calling this a large, spacious, beautiful green space, a green oasis is very imaginative.
This park will be small and mostly synthetic with a few parking spaces, benches and pieces of playground equipment.
Downtown residents deserve a better park and it should not come at the expense of losing open green space in Braddock Park to a school.
This preschool should never have been brought into the park because doing so violated state regulations.
Mayor Sacco should have kept his word to the public that it would only be there temporarily.
North Bergen has failed to build schools while continuing to enrich itself with tax abatements for more condos and shopping centers.
If it had appointed residents to the search committee, another site for the Preschool would have been found.
Instead, North Bergen opted for what is cheapest, deluding itself that nobody objects to the preschool in Braddock Park and trying to delude the public that the Paterson Plank Park will be great.
The $10 million preschool cost savings is based on comparing the cheap cost of Braddock Park to a few unsuitable and contaminated properties.
Parkland shouldn’t be considered cheap – we all need more of it, we shouldn’t have to lose any.
More than 1500 people have signed this online petition because they don’t want a school in Braddock Park and they don’t believe the rhetoric North Bergen government is disseminating:
www.change.org/p/jose-munoz-save-james-braddock-park-in-north-bergen-nj
Robert Walden