Miscoski adds fuel to fiery debate over warehouses
BY JANE MEGGITT
Staff Writer

UPPER FREEHOLD - Deputy Mayor William Miscoski continued his war of words with Washington Township Mayor David Fried at the Oct. 5 Township Committee meeting.

At the Sept. 26 Planning Board hearing on the proposed warehouse development on Breza Road, Fried asked the board to deny the warehouse application. He called the development "poorly planned" and said it would adversely impact local residents.

Fried said no one from Upper Freehold contacted Washington Township to see how it felt about warehouses on Breza Road. He said Washington Township built warehouses on its borders with Upper Freehold, but that it had done so through joint planning with neighboring municipalities.

Miscoski had responded to Fried's remarks at the hearing. He said he was mayor when the Lynwood Estates subdivision in Upper Freehold fought Washington Township's Matrix warehouse development off Old York Road. Miscoski said he had asked for a meeting with then-Committeeman Fried, who had told him, "This is our town. I'm not going to meet with you. We'll do what we want."

At the Oct. 5 meeting, Miscoski again addressed Fried's comments, saying that he could not believe Fried had the "chutzpah" to come to Upper Freehold and "tell us not to build 1.8 million square feet of warehouses."

"He's got 5 million up already and [is] still moving," Miscoski said.

He said Washington Township "has all the warehouses and the ugliest town center I've ever seen," adding that the neighboring community is "building on every square foot."

"We're going to have Mayor Fried tell us how to do it for Upper Freehold?" Miscoski asked. "I'm appalled he had the guts to come to our town.

"Mayor Fried, stay out of our town," he said. "You've already screwed up your town [so] stay out of ours."

Miscoski also addressed Fried's insinuation that Washington Township may pull out of mutual aid agreements with Upper Freehold if it approved the Breza Road warehouses application.

Miscoski said, "We don't need to go to your fires in Washington Township. As far as I'm concerned, we can cut off Washington Township in a heartbeat."

When asked about Miscoski's most recent comments, Fried said he has always found Miscoski to be "very entertaining." While Fried said he had no problem with warehouses, he said he finds it unfair that Washington Township would be responsible for their police, fire and emergency services.

Upper Freehold Planning Board Secretary Susan Babbitt and Brian Mahoney, spokesperson for the Rockefeller Group, which would develop the warehouses on Breza Road, said that neither the warehouse application nor the Developer's Agreement mentions that Washington Township would have to provide the services Fried said it would.

When asked where he got his information, Fried said that Jack West, Washington Township's planner, asked Upper Freehold's Planning Board about the emergency services for the warehouses at the board's Sept. 26 meeting. The response West received was that Washington Township is next door.

Fried said it's "scary" that Upper Freehold is considering the warehouses with no police presence. Upper Freehold has no police force and instead relies on the New Jersey State Police.

According to Fried, the Matrix warehouse development is responsible for 17 percent of Washington Township's 21,000 annual police calls.

Fried also said the planned affordable housing on the Breza Road tract does not meet the spirit of the regulations, as it would isolate an affordable-housing community. He challenged Miscoski to find the affordable housing in his township and said it has been well integrated.

According to Fried, the Breza Road property was originally planned as a golf course development, but no one on the Upper Freehold Township Committee wanted it to be a golf course at the time of that application. Miscoski is the former owner and current manager of the Cream Ridge Golf Club in Upper Freehold.

Fried said his town has a good history of preserving open space on its borders with other townships, and that Upper Freehold has not reciprocated those efforts.

Fried said a November 2002 Examiner article references a meeting among him, Miscoski and then-Mayor David Horsnall regarding the Matrix warehouses. In the article, Lynwood Estates resident Steven Murphy asks about recent newspaper reports where Horsnall said there had been a series of meetings among Fried, Horsnall and Miscoski during which they did everything they could to minimize the effects of the Matrix warehouses.

Horsnall said that there had been no series of meetings, and Miscoski said there had been one meeting with Fried and Washington Township Planner Doug Tindall.

According to Miscoski, Fried and Tindall were informed that Upper Freehold would fight any variances for the Matrix complex and would be on top of the traffic situation.

"We realized we could not fight their ordinances," Miscoski said. "We did what our planners and lawyers told us we could legally go after."

Regarding the newspaper article, Horsnall said he had meant the whole town, not himself personally or the Township Committee, when he'd said he was successful in blocking variances for the Matrix complex.

When asked to comment about Miscoski's remarks about the town center in Washington Township, Fried said the project has received numerous planning awards, including one from the state Office of Smart Growth (OSG).

"It's won just about every planning award in the state of New Jersey," Fried said.