Thank you Skip. I was told by knowledgeable sources in the summer of
2000 (before the Real Estate boom in Monmouth County) that if the
state was to take over Asbury Park, real estate values would
immediately explode at least 5 fold. For precisely the same reasons
you mentioned. Dropping the tax burden alone would have caused real
estate values to raise more in line with the surrounding
communities, and having several developers working on the Oceanfront
would have led to a "Oklahoma land rush" type arrangement which
would have injected millions of one-time revenues into the City's
coffers.
Incidentally, these same knowledgeable developers explained exactly
WHY Asbury would find a way to avoid allowing the State to takeover
its finances & take a look at its operating procedures. It seems
people in city government did not appreciate auditors snooping
around into how they did business, and would do ANYTHING to avoid
their practices coming out in daylight. I didn't quite understand
what they meant until Terry Weldon resigned the day the Oceanfront
agreement was signed.
--- In AsburyPark@yahoogroups.com, "Skip Bernstein" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
> Asbury was near bankruptcy, the waterfront was tied up in the
courts
> and no one else wanted the deal. Bull!
>
> Had Weldon not sold this lunacy to council the state would have
> stepped in and taken over. Know what happens then? New Jersey
isn't
> going to continue to tolerate a Connecticut court screwing around
in
> its backyard, and rather than give away the last best buildable
site
> on the Atlantic for pennies on the dollar they alone could have
dealt
> with the horrible imbalance of tax burden and ratables. They'd
have
> done this to insure that a rational offering of parcels to bonafide
> developers would result in building not flipping, and as bonus we'd
> not be fretting over the likes of The Fishman raping historic
buildings.
>
> As to "Is Asbury Park a better place to live now than it was 4
years
> ago?", consider the proposition that if you've not had rain in 40
> years, suddenly it rains; who do you credit, some guy doing a rain
dance?
>
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