JACKSON – Comments made in a December 2020 publication by a resident who is currently an alternate member of the Jackson Planning Board, were referenced during a recent Township Council meeting suggesting that they might show a conflict of interest.
Resident Jennifer Cusanelli said that in a December 10, 2020 article of Forward, a media outlet whose readership is largely aimed at a Jewish audience, featured an interview with Tzvi Herman an Orthodox Jewish resident of Jackson.
“The zoning laws are draconian. We’re simply asking for our First Amendment right to pray,” Herman was quoted as saying. He was also quoted as saying, “the Jews here don’t want the overdevelopment as much as the non-Jews don’t.”
The article states that according to Herman, 15 synagogues were hidden within unassuming houses on wooded lots and were invisible to those passing by and were the result of the growth of the Orthodox population in the township.
Those of the Orthodox Jewish faith require synagogues that are within walking distance of their homes, because they are not allowed to drive on Shabbat (Saturday).
The article describes them as signs of defiance and that they were built without approval from Jackson’s planning board, in quiet protest of ordinances that they say were designed to prevent Orthodox Jews from expanding into the township.
Cusanelli noted that in 2019, Zoning Board of Adjustment Chairman Dr. Sheldon Hofstein, Zoning Board member Joseph Sullivan and Planning Board member Richard Egan had attended a meeting of Citizens United to Protect Our Neighborhoods (CUPON) and later resigned from their respective boards amid controversy that their presence there was a conflict of interest.
She said, “They were forced to resign, currently there is a gentleman (Herman) on the planning board and there was an article in the Orthodox Jewish paper, The Forward about Orthodox Jewish residents leaving Lakewood for a nearby suburb. In this article Mr. Herman said some pretty interesting things that I found a little concerning.”
Cusanelli pointed out the statements made by Herman in the article calling the zoning laws as being “draconian” and that the houses of worship were created in defiance and in “quiet protest to ordinances.”
“He also acknowledged that the synagogues were built without proper zoning approval,” Cusanelli said.
“I have a problem with this. He’s on a board. He’s making decisions on how things are built in this town and how things are going and he’s going public in a newspaper saying that the home he lives in was illegally converted into a synagogue and that he doesn’t agree with our laws that they are draconian. I really think that this is something you guys should want to look into,” she told the Mayor and Council.
She said Hofstein, Egan and Sullivan “are very much devoted to this town and I do have respect for all of them and I felt terrible that somehow, we (CUPON) contributed to this just for trying to help the town.” Cusanelli is also a member of CUPON.
Cusanelli said that she and other CUPON members “love this town and we are trying to help this town. We aren’t your adversaries. We want to help but I find it ironic that they were forced to resign and you have this man who is openly saying in this article that he feels these laws are draconian and he went against it.”
Council President Martin Flemming said, “thank you for bringing this to our attention.”
At the time the Forward article was written, Herman was seeking a seat on the Jackson Board of Education and was not a member of the Planning Board. He won the BOE seat that was for a one-year-unexpired term. This means he won a portion of a term that was left over when someone left. He ran for a full term but lost in November 2021. He resigned in December a few weeks shy of his term’s expiration and became an alternate member of the Planning Board earlier this year.
Planning Board appointments are made by Mayor Michael Reina while Zoning Board appointments are approved by the Jackson Council.
When asked about the two-year-old article he was quoted in and if he felt they constituted a conflict of interest, Herman told The Jackson Times, “as a sitting board member, I have been advised by Planning Board counsel not to respond.”
Mayor Michael Reina told The Jackson Times, he was not aware of that article as it was written two years prior to Herman’s appointment. He noted there was a vetting process. He also clarified that “I never asked anyone to resign. I appoint the planning board.”
“We do our best on a civil leadership form to ask the most pertinent and most respectable questions. Do you have a social media account? What do you have out there? Have you been in any kind of trouble with the law, bankruptcies and things like that,” the mayor said.
“We aren’t just putting anybody on these boards. We’ll vet all the social media accounts to see if any hurtful posts were made. We didn’t find any of that,” the mayor added.
He said, “once we put someone on a board if they try to make it a platform then we will request that they resign or just walk away.”
The mayor also noted that “some people’s opinions before they get on the board change over time. When people are upset, they will say things out of that moment.”
“I think the majority of the human race is guilty of that at one time or another. I’m not going to take action on something that happened before that person was there. After is a different story. I didn’t read it. I didn’t see it. We do our best to vet every single volunteer for the betterment of the town,” Mayor Reina added.
