(Let’s hope our Planning Board won’t!)

NJ law requires every town to provide for affordable housing. Chatham Borough does that.

NJ law does NOT require the Borough to pave over the green, wooded, Borough-owned, .3-acre, vacant lot at 58 North Passaic, right next to our Memorial Park, for a parking lot and four apartments, nor to impose an overlay zone allowing 220 more apartments on the east end of Main Street without having considered any alternatives.

But that’s what the Planning Board is going to do on June 18th unless you act now:  

• Tell your elected representatives mayorcouncil@chathamborough.org and Planning Board that we want to meet the June 30 deadline while preserving the chance to vet a broad menu of alternative, at  public meetings, before the Borough is locked into final choices. Write:

Thomas Belding    Sophia Calcaterra-Hull   Susan Favate       William Heap  Susie Robertson    Matthew Wagner      Jonathan Wilcox       Gregory Xikes

c/o Clerk, Borough Hall, 54 Fairmount Avenue, Chatham, NJ, 07928 

• Attend the Environmental Commission meeting to ask them to call for an chance to consider alternatives that would preserve the vacant, Borough-owned land: Wednesday, June 11th, 7:30 pm, Borough Hall, 54 Fairmount Ave. (Take the elevator to upper level, Room 301.) 

• Ask the Shade Tree Commission to call for alternatives that would preserve precious, mature, Borough-owned trees: shadetree@chathamborough.org

• Ask the Recreation Advisory Committee to call for preserving the vacant lot for recreation as originally intended when the Borough bought it in the 1980s: Suzanne Jenks c/o Clerk, Borough Hall, 54 Fairmount Ave., Chatham, NJ.

For background, sources, and news please visit ChathamChoice.org