Regarding the Asbury Park Press article attached below, I posit the following:
Jim Keady seems to be a nice fellow. Unfortunately, he is in with a bad crowd, and their influence on him is causing him to embarrass Asbury Park, and thus do damage to the City. What an insult that he would call for a Prosecutor to investigate his fellow council members. After the tremendous, successful hard work they have done in uplifting Asbury Park (something the prior 8 administrations failed to do), which success attracted people like Keady to move into Asbury Park in the first place, he insults them with these obtuse, vague assertions of crime. Yes Jim Keady, you are accusing them of committing a crime, because crime is the only thing a prosecutor investigates. How dare you. I said in my column pre-election that Keady was coupled with a certain New Yorker. I have been validated. Anything that gentleman writes on this message board later comes out of Keady's mouth in public. This clerical error regarding the March and June proposals to the Redevelopment Plan has been explained repeatedly to Keady and his New York umbilical cord, yet they still treat it like some Oliver Stone/JFK conspiracy flick. It is a non-issue, the DEP will review the amended application, and then Asbury Park will move forward again. All Keady and crew has accomplished is to hold up development of the Esperanza site for a few short months. He should stand before the retailers in the Merchants Guild, the Chamber of Commerce and the UEZ and apologize. As a founding member of the first, a member of the second and a Director of the third, I'm demanding today that he do so. This isn't some "Public Administration lab clinic" in college Keady is involved with. Asbury Park is real life, and those retailers invested their life savings, knowing they may have to struggle until the beachfront is developed. So what does Keady do? Holds up development. Jim Keady can continue to preach Marxism in church if that's his fancy (which he does), but when he damages Asbury's capitalist retailers he will have to deal with those of us who work so hard to support them. Keady and those who are thinking for him haven't been in Asbury Park long enough to know how fragile Asbury's reputation is with our surrounding Monmouth/Ocean towns. Any word of crime makes them want to stay away from us, and that destroys our retailers. There is simply no crime here, and to suggest otherwise reveals a reckless disregard for the truth. It appears when the Deputy Mayor inquired as to what crime he is alleging, Keady punted and referred to "violation of public trust," which of course is not a crime, but a generic label given to a number of underlying crimes. Keady cannot name the underlying crime about which he complains, because there simply isn't one. This is grandstanding. If Keady did think there was a crime, I assume he and his New York brain trust could muster the combined IQ that would allow them not only to name the crime, but also to figure out that a referral to a Prosecutor is best kept private. One who shouts it out beforehand is simply looking for attention and pandering to special interests special interests as in people who want to see our redevelopment fail because now that Asbury Park has been made a good investment, they wish to start over by bringing in their own developers so they can make money. I'm available to debate these issues with him or his surrogates in person, on equal terms at any time and place they wish. Here is the negative PR for Asbury Park they are responsible for: Councilman seeks prosecutor's help Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 12/10/05 BY NANCY SHIELDS COASTAL MONMOUTH BUREAU ASBURY PARK City Councilman Jim Keady says he does not trust his fellow council members to tell the truth on what they intended the height of a beachfront condominium building to be in 2002 and wants the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office to help him review council documents. The four other council members want Hoboken-based Metro Homes to begin building the approved 224-unit Esperanza on the site between Third and Fourth avenues of the unfinished C-8 steel skeleton, that former developer Joseph Carabetta walked away from in 1991. Keady also says he wants to move forward. But a series of events this fall appeared to open a door for Keady and others mistrustful of the council to claim something is amiss. In the past few months, Metro Homes said it would have to raze the old C-8 structure and start from scratch for safety reasons. The council also discovered that a leading beachfront planner, John Clarke, had three years ago disseminated the wrong beach plan that placed a limit on the height of the building. "So what are you going to say to the county (prosecutor)?" Deputy Mayor James Bruno asked Keady at a City Council meeting Wednesday night? "What are the implications of a violation of public trust?" Keady answered. Keady wants the developer to get a new approval to build the condominium to the higher heights, instead of keeping to the eight- story limit. And Keady wants that leverage so that the developer will give the city something in return. Earlier, Bruno had told Keady that he "should have trust" in his colleagues who were on the council three years ago when Keady was not. "That's why I ran against you," Keady said. Councilman Ed Johnson told Keady that if he had information the council did something wrong, he should go to the prosecutor. But Johnson also warned that if Keady is causing an unnecessary delay in getting the Esperanza built, that action also was a disservice to the public. "It's a double-edged sword," Johnson told him. Council members have made it clear that most city residents, including themselves, at one time or the other wanted to see the skeleton frame come down because it had been a reminder for more than a decade of the city's failure on the waterfront. >From officials' comments in news reports at the time the plan was adopted, the height of the C-8 block was not at issue because builder K. Hovnanian planned to build about 600 homes in buildings eight stories or less in the central ocean blocks. The builder later pulled out. Asbury Partners, the overall beachfront developer, found a new builder in Metro Homes, which received its approvals to be part of the fast-track building now under way by Westminster Communities and Paramount Homes. "Nothing is changed," company president Dean Geibel said Friday. "We're going to build the same type of building . . . . We're going full steam ahead. We're just waiting for the process to be completed now, hopefully sooner rather than later. We're just as excited as we've ever been." Metro Homes and the city are waiting for a go-ahead from state environmental officials who, because of Clarke's mistake, had received the wrong draft of the waterfront plan before giving their permit approval in 2004. The state asked the city to go through the steps to amend the permit. City officials hope to have the issue resolved with the state by year's end. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 1.2 million kids a year are victims of human trafficking. 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