Your Turn
Barbara Calvin
Guest Column
Eminent domain being used
to benefit ‘money folks’

Thank you so much for publishing Mr. Avery Grant’s letter in the Jan. 16 edition of the Atlanticville Extra.

This dignified gentleman, who ran for mayor in Long Branch, is a loyal and gentle person with a faith unshakable. He blesses his enemies in spite of an uphill battle he wages with them, for the injustices and concerns of his community.

Bless you, Mr. Grant. You belong to the truly human community, everywhere.

The confiscation of properties in Long Branch, under the guise of eminent domain, is using this label to facilitate the removal of homes and livelihoods by force and by wheeling and dealing — invading down-scale areas and private homes which are in the path of the developers. (Jimmy Liu’s boardwalk enclave and Mr. Rose’s beautiful home on Cooper Avenue are examples of these ruthless demotions.)

Spurious eminent domain is now stretching its greedy tentacles into any landscape which obstructs its plundering designs. Even the foliage around Lake Takanassee — the lower bushes — have been whacked, so to speak.

There is doubtful security in Long Branch. Your home/business could be the next target for upscale — like it or not. In actuality, you are being replaced by the money folks, who can afford high rents and million-dollar homes.

And, it is a cheap trick to photograph Long Branch’s most dilapidated and polluted areas as before and after comparison — no shades of in-between and people struggling to make the city better for years, and by their own bootstraps.

Long Branch seems like a very private club, run by certain cliques and "in" families who do not have to adhere to the city’s ordinances, as the rest of the taxpayers do … it seems.

With much respect for the good people of Long Branch.

Barbara Calvin is a resident of Long Branch