Hershel Herskowitz Speaking Up Again About Lakewood

hi this is Herschel hershkowitz I am leaving this video message for the people of Lakewood uh for the people that know me I guess maybe some people that don't know me yet um so I'm leaving this video message basically because I have been getting a lot of phone calls with people asking me why I didn't run for office this year um I guess I probably rent for so many different years that they were wondering why I'm not running this year especially since there's a void left in the township committee and there's really not anybody running that's an incumbent so there might be a chance to win actually uh but I decided not to run because I just didn't want to cause the whole tomorrow in this town anymore it seems that every time I run um the consensus is that I'm just running to make trouble or I'm trying to cause trouble I'm against your Shiva or whatever it is but that's never the case but people try to make it into the case so we're not doing that but what I just wanted to leave this message for was um I was asked to explain what's going on in the town I I am not a uh what you would call a rabble Rouser although they tried to make me into that for the past 10 years they tried to every time somebody gets upset or somebody tries to speak up they automatically say oh must be must be Herschel earthquakes trying to get them all excited and trying to upset them and it's almost never the case um but I'm going to leave this message basically just to tell the people of Lakewood that I personally and I'm sure some of you if you knew what's going on would be upset knowing that the town is going in the direction that it's going in uh 13 years ago I don't know if I'm sure many of you have seen the video where I got up to speak about the future of Lakewood and I spoke about you know what's going to end up happening and my predictions which were not anything of you don't have to be a genius to figure it out um all came true and we're left with the town where our attacks are just gonna be going through the roof they've been keeping it low for now because they've been borrowing so much money but uh it's going to happen your taxes are going to be an insane amount of money higher than any higher than they are already which right now there are people suffering to the point where they can't even keep their homes uh it's just going to keep getting worse um quality of life is just going to keep getting worse businesses are suffering because people can't simply drive around the town at this point um so people have to open up multiple businesses in different parts of town just to keep their customers which obviously hurts the bottom line um you know the school situation is terrible and of course the main pet peeve is the traffic which is not just an annoyance but it's actually dangerous I'm going to try to wrap this up as fast as possible the main point that I want to make right now and I know it's Eric pesach and I'm leaving this message but Africa air pay sucks because before Passover and before the high holidays that is when our Township committee and the people who pull the strings of the township committee that's when they try to push through all the things that normally um would not go through because people would protest because we the people of Lakewood have a life to lead and our main business isn't the township it's not taking the money from the township so we have to work and you know raise our families and we're very busy and we don't have time to sit here babysitting and checking to make sure that the people on the township committee aren't aren't doing stick with people that are not on the potential committee for with developers and with us condoms supposedly and um so that's why I'm leaving this message now before it pesach to tell everybody that this is the time that they push in their things and we know um you know years ago they tried making a mall and Cedar Bridge and uh uh a famous a woman became famous Mrs applegraad became famous for getting up and screaming and saying this is not what Lakewood needs and she was right on many levels I don't know if she knew how right she was and it was and they said okay we're not going to do it and everybody just rested easy and said oh they're not going to do it and now a week ago they went in one day and they just pushed it through a project that most towns would talk about and have public input about for years and they literally pushed it through in one day and in the same day they push through a development of 600 Condominiums now I don't want to get into details of who what where whatever whether it's a good thing to have or not a good thing to have but it's something that needs to be discussed something that needed to be discussed as far as where the road is going to go where the opening is going to go to such a project where is this project going to be how is it going to affect the people in the neighborhood I want people to understand that there's a neighborhood that's been around for 50 years that there are people there there are people already selling their homes on Forest Avenue because they know that their backyard is now going to be the backyard for 600 Condominiums so these are things that need to be discussed and unfortunately we live in a Township and this is my main point we're living in a Township where our Township committee men especially our mayor has taken advantage of the fact that we had coveted for the past three years and still doesn't have a Township meeting we still don't get notices nobody gets notices sent to their homes to tell them that there's going to be 600 Condominiums within one block of their home forget about a mile in normal cities when there's something that's going to affect your house that's a mile away you will get a notice and you will be asked to come to a public meeting to put in your input so people say like I didn't even know that there was such a thing so I just want you to know that in like a week or two ago that our planning board passed two projects that in any normal town in any normal City would have been a topic of discussion for years and years and would have been it would they would have asked many many people for their input from miles and miles away from these projects and here in our town nobody was notified nobody was told and there is no way to even put in your input to come to a Township committee meeting because our Township is the only Township that is still practicing social distancing uh for Township meetings they have zoom meetings and I personally have never attended a zoom meeting with the township um the only person I ever had a zoo meeting was was with my doctor that was it so and I don't feel like going on a zoom meeting where at any moment Menasha Miller could just push a button and tell me to shut up so I'm asking that the people of the Town um make their voices known and I hope this video goes around and I am wishing everybody and hopefully after pesach we will be having some very Frank discussions about the direction our town is taking and I'm going to