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JerseySmarts.com

How Pier Village Could Fail

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Working in redevelopment and revitalization allows me to meet and greet many different people from many different walks of life. Some of the most interesting people to meet are the Mayors and other elected officials who are so often torn between so many factions that they can barely just do their jobs. However, if you’re looking for some interesting redevelopment talk – sit down with these elected men and women who have to sell the redevelopment plans to their constituents.

One thing that you will ALWAYS hear from the residents is that there is not enough parking in the new development. Anywhere you go, anything you do, you will ALWAYS hear that. And what you’re likely to hear from the elected officials is, “We have met our parking requirements with this design – we’ve even added extra spaces. And remember, if we have a parking problem – that’s a good thing! It means that people are coming here and that’s what we want.”

Well, with all due respect, that is not what you want.

Take Pier Village in Long Branch as an example. This multi-million dollar project is one of the best looking developments in the state. It has great eateries like McLoone’s Pier House and Michael Angelo’s Pizza; it has great attractions like the village square where movies and concerts are held; and it has easy access to a public beach on the Atlantic Ocean. One thing it does not have, however, is parking. Oh sure – if you’ve been to Pier Village and you’ve seen it jam packed you may take the mentality that when the available spaces are filled, there are enough people in the development and on the beach.

Well, I take issue with that. As a member of the Gold’s Gym located at Pier Village, I’m insulted that I’m asked to pay a $60 membership and that I am not provided parking within a mile radius of the gym. That’s obscene. Some may call it robbery.

And yes, I know I can get up and go to a different gym – but if you know anything about the gyms in the area, you know that they’re pretty crappy unless you go to a low-end gym and folks, low-end gyms in the Monmouth County area of New Jersey are crawling with predators. Not interested in that, at all.

So let this be a message, no matter how small and meek, that if you have the ability to design a development and if you plan on this development being a tourist attraction – plan for it properly. Right now at Pier Village there are probably 2,000 cars (some parked, some not) and 20,000 people within a mile radius coming in and out of the project. If they would have only planned this project better and allowed for more parking, they could have easily doubled those numbers.

Too many people you say? Tell that to the folks whose property taxes just keep going up and up because of a decreasing tax base. More people buying goods at those new shops = more tax revenue = lower property taxes.

And it all comes full circle again!

Some of the new “Jon Corzine Taxes”

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Thanks to the Asbury Park Press’ “What taxes are going to be raised?” article from today. The following items were not taxed before, but will now be taxed at 7%:

  • carpet and upholstery cleaning services
  • downloaded movies, music, software and videos
  • flooring and carpeting installation
  • golf, gym and health club memberships
  • landscaping services
  • massage, tanning and tattoo services
  • non-subscription magazines
  • parking lots and garages
  • private investigation services
  • security services
  • self-storage units
  • shipping and handling charged separately

    • I don’t know what shipping and handling charged separately means, but it sounds ridiculous. And what a deplorable, despicable human being this Governor Money Bags is that he’s taxing fucking gym memberships and parking spaces. Is he for real? That’s disgusting. And this slimy swine says that he “understands” that these taxes will hurt us in the beginning, but are needed in the long-run? He has no idea what it’s like to be a working class guy trying to live in this state. He’s fucking delusional.

    This deplorable asshole also raised business taxes and is raiding the state’s disability trust fund of $50 million. Like that’s not a bait and switch maneuver…

    He increased the daily surcharge on rented cars from $2 to $5. Who does that? Who sits in their luxurious Hoboken condo and says, “Hmmm…maybe I’ll raise the car rental surcharge. Yeah! That’s it! Let me raise revenues by imposing an extra surcharge on a service that the state should be disgusted that they’re even taxing anyway…”

    And for those of us with SUVs that don’t quite make 19 miles per gallon? Fuck us! That’s right! We get to pay a random one-time fee for having an automobile that isn’t up to Corzine’s gas standards. I wonder how this one-time bait-and-switch fee is going to fix our state’s fiscal problems? It’s not. It’s obvious that it’s not. And it’s obvious that for guys like me – who would love to drive a new hybrid or a more fuel efficient car if we could afford to buy a one – that our goal of even getting a new car will be set back by this ridiculous, deplorable one-time fee.

    I said it before and it still holds true – New Jersey has a “deplorable” Governor.

    Stay Away from NJHESAA!

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    For all of you high school seniors in New Jersey and current undergraduate students – this one is for you.

    When looking to find a way to finance your education, stay AWAY from the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority! They are, by far, the most rotten folks that I’ve come across in my time as a college student. To begin with – they are NOT a public organization! That’s right, they may be called the NEW JERSEY HESAA, but they are not a public group. What does that mean? That means that they use higher interest rates and give little to no wiggle room when it comes to flexibility on repayment options. This is a private company, yet when you submit your Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), some schools will list the NJHESAA as a source of funding. STAY AWAY!

    And if you want to know what it’s like to deal with them once you graduate and it comes time to repay, it’s even worse. In short, their customer service motto might as well be summed up as “The customer is always wrong…and is a moron, too.”

    Not once have I hung up the phone and not been aggravated after talking to these people. That is if you can get them on the phone! As I type this I am on minute 18 of being on hold since I called to ask them about a payment. That’s right, for 18 minutes of my life I’ve heard nothing but a mellow tune and some completely rude “for shorter wait times, use our automated system” messages.

    Back to their “customer service” people. For those of you that don’t know, you can have your NJHESAA payments deferred if you are still in school. Well, after I graduated from my undergraduate school, I went right for my Master’s Degree. I went to school both during the school year and during the summers – which Rutgers has documented very well for me. Yet still, last summer these asses at the NJHESAA randomly listed me as not being at least a part-time student for the month of June (which was false) and then in August, they reported me to the credit bureaus for not paying my monthly payment.

    Bear in mind, I had no monthly payment and after they realized their mistake in June, they immediately put me back as “deferred” in July. Yet still, they wanted that mysterious, random payment from June 2005 (which they never got because it was completely uncalled for). After battling with them and telling them that they were wrong for putting me into the credit agencies, they still claim that they are 100% right about their mistake. Rutgers told them that they were wrong and I told them that they were wrong, yet they still believe in themselves as being right. Morons. By the way, minute 24 on hold.

    Thankfully, I have Triple Advantage Credit Reporting from Experian and when I told the Experian people about the complete disaster that the NJHESAA is and how they goofed on their records and proved themselves incorrect by reinstating my part-time status in July 2005, they removed the “missed payment” from my record. I like Experian, they do a good job of protecting regular consumers like me from bastard assholes like NJHESAA.

    As a side note, you should know that I have never missed a payment on anything that I’ve ever had to make a payment on. When I was $25K in credit card debt, I still made every monthly payment. When I owed $15K for my new used car, I made every monthly payment. I’ve never missed a cell phone payment or a water bill payment. When I had a landline phone, I paid the scam artists at Verizon every month on time. My credit record indicates this and that is what I believe led Experian to remove the stupid claim that NJHESAA made on my account.

    OH! How could I forget the worst part about an NJHESAA loan? You cannot consolidate it anywhere but with them! That’s right. It’s a private loan and they will only allow you to consolidate it with them. Don’t look for this statement on their website or look for it in any of the promotional materials that you are sent (unless you love reading the fine “fuck you” print at the bottom of the page). They won’t tell you that!

    I can only imagine what would happen if the public-at-large held NJHESAA responsible to its namesake. How dare they go around claiming that they help make college affordable? What a sorry crock of bullshit these assholes are. I’m going to end this post now after a full 30 minutes after being on hold.

    Scumbags. STAY AWAY!

    Now THEY Know What It Feels Like

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    For years I’ve complained that the Ocean Township Police Department were routinely “overboard” in their enforcement of the law against college students. In the last few years, a majority of the “crazy partying college students” whose civil liberties were demolished by this police force moved out of the township. But the overzealous enforcement of questionable laws continues…not against college students, but now against high school students.

    This is the problem with the American justice system. Too often the local police force is viewed as a fundraiser in the grand scheme of the municipal budget. Granted, this is something that no municipal official would EVER admit, but let’s think about this logically for a minute. The police are present to enforce the law. The idea is that if the law is enforced, less people will break it and that once someone is caught breaking the law, they will be less likely to break it again. At the same time, the police are protecting the public welfare by enforcing the law.

    But what happens when the majority of the “rulebreakers” leave an area? Logic tells us that there will be less people breaking the laws because those who broke them are now gone, right? Wrong! In Ocean Township, it seems that the college students who were breaking the law were bringing in quite a pretty penny…so much so that the police now need to seek out new blood to fill the township coffers. And guess what, high school students? Now it’s your turn.

    Of course the best part of this is that the “locals” in Ocean Township and the “adults” in Ocean Township seem to easily forget what it is like to be teenagers. I feel bad for the kids who are getting busted having parties – all they are doing is what we all did as high school students. I will always fail to understand some things about this municipality:

    How can police be allowed to walk directly into people’s houses (they did it routinely to my house when I lived there a few years ago) even while the residents are sleeping? Isn’t that breaking and entering?

    What type of joke is this local “Quality of Life Committee” that they only focus on college rentals? What is their plan of action to stop the atrocities of underage drinking being perpetrated by their sons and daughters? If you read the story above, a local threw a beer bottle at a passing car. I guarantee that not one college student has done such a stupid thing.

    How can the folks who live in this township completely forget about the fact that they were once young? Unless this township is filled with the “other kids” – you know, the ones who never got invited to the parties – then it is mind-boggling how these people do not understand what it is like to be a teenager.

    Oh, here’s a good one that always gets me. Why is the majority silent? Yes, the majority of the locals, families, and adults in this area have no problem with the college students. However, they are in such fear of the vocal minority that they sit there on their hands and say nothing. How do I know this is true? There is a project to expand a bit of Monmouth University that is opposed by some “Coalition of Neighbors” or something in West Long Branch.

    The majority sat there quiet until their tax money was going to be used for a lawsuit. Then you saw another group spring up, twice as big as the complaining group that said, “Shut up, we don’t care about your stupid complaints and we want you to leave our tax money out of this. You are NOT the majority!”

    When will a group like this rise up in Ocean Township and bring some real law and order back to that municipality?

    The Problem with the Post Office

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    There are a number of United States Post Offices in and around the Deal, NJ area. For my small business, I chose to go with the one located in the Oakhurst section for my P.O. Box. I thought that this would be a nice litle way to get an address for my business and to become a part of a larger community.

    Well, trips to the post office suck! I just waited in line for twenty minutes to buy two books of stamps and send 4 letters. That is ridiculous! If I was that slow or that unresponsive to the folks that I deal with in a day, my boss would fire me on the spot and our Board of Directors would openly inquire as to what the hell was going on in the first place!

    I don’t understand how a major post office branch – this site deals with hundreds if not thousands of people each day – can have only two tellers helping customers when the line is out the door. Furthermore, I don’t understand how they can allow one guy to monopolize one of the tellers because he decided today was the day he was sending out 50 packages. Yeah, that was what I had to deal with at the post office.

    Not to mention the fact that stamps seem to be on par with oil. Geez, how much are these things going to go up before e-mail completely rules the day? Actually, it’s not that I mind buying stamps and sending my messages through the postal service, it’s that I don’t like paying for a service that is known to be slow and has an above average rate of poorly handled letters. It’s like throwing money away, almost.

    Anyway, I’m just slightly disappointed with the United States Postal Service. They could do a much better job – they have skilled employees, they have a service that people need, and they have people willing to pay for it. Looks like there is just shoddy management of the individual branches.