PARSIPPANY — The Parsippany Board of Education released the following information:

PILOT Agreements = More Students and Larger Class Sizes

Please attend the next Town Council Meeting on Tuesday, December 19 at 7:00 p.m. at Parsippany Municipal Building, 1001 Parsippany Boulevard, to hear about two additional Payment In Lieu of Taxes (“PILOT”) programs the Town Council is considering for approval and to keep abreast of what is happening in the Town in terms of developments. It is imperative that all those interested in the well-being of our school district also attend the Town Planning Board meetings as there are more PILOT agreements in development. Use your voice to speak up for our students.

PILOTS Mean Students Lose in Multiple Ways

When development occurs in the Township, taxes on the improvements on the property generate an additional tax base. The School District would receive a portion of those taxes. When developments involve residential properties, those taxes offset the resulting increase in the number of students attending our schools. When the Township grants a PILOT agreement, the developer does not need to pay taxes on the improvements. Rather, an Annual Service Charge (“ASC”) is paid to the Township which keeps 95% of the monies, with the remaining 5% going to the County. The School District does not receive any portion of the ASCs even if those developments result in a greater number of students attending our schools.

While several other municipalities have been willing to share a portion of the ASCs that they have received from PILOTs to date, neither the Town Council nor any of the developers have been willing to commit to sharing a portion of the ASCs with our School District. Without additional taxes from improvements, a share of the ASCs, or other types of direct or indirect financial contributions from the developer or Town Council, tough decisions will need to be made to address the expected increase in the number of students that our schools will be asked to accommodate including, but not limited to:

● Adjusting School District policy to increase class sizes

● Significant decreases in funding for music, sports, and other extracurricular activities

● Tighter instructional spaces with more students

● Redistricting the elementary schools to balance the enrollment numbers across the district

Student Estimates from PILOTS.

Historically, the impact of Residential Developments brings more students than the developer has estimated. Modera, Watersedge, and Mountain Way are 200-unit, 30-unit, and 105-unit developments, respectively, and together the District receives at least 56 students from these locations, alone, and these are still not at full capacity.

No Recourse for Recently Approved PILOTS

The School Board considered and sought legal advice regarding its options to pause or reverse the implementation of the recently approved PILOT programs. However, in consideration of the statutory authority allowing the Township to enter these agreements, it is highly improbable that such litigation would be successful concerning the current PILOT agreements. The public should be aware that the approvals for these PILOTs do not include all the information that we believe is necessary for the Township to make informed decisions regarding the impact the PILOT agreements and developments will have on the School District, and ultimately the taxpayer.

Path Forward to Secure Funding for Our Students

Rather than pursue what will ultimately be futile legal intervention, the Board has determined to preserve monies in an attempt to maintain the programs and education that our students have come to expect for as long as possible. The Board will continue to attempt to partner with Township officials to:

● Negotiate for the developer and/or Township to provide/share financial payment(s) or in-kind donations to/with the School District for previous and recent residential PILOT agreements that have already been approved.

● Request that the Town Council consider passing an ordinance whereby the School District’s input as to the impact of any PILOT agreement is assessed and reserves a percentage of ASCs for the District’s use.

Attend the Parsippany-Troy Hills Township Council and Planning Board meetings to keep informed and speak up!

PARSIPPANY — We faced a persistent malware issue on our site, a matter that has caused significant delays in its resolution. Zoomus Marketing, our parent company, manages approximately 75 websites and has been deeply involved in hosting services for many years. Our hosting infrastructure includes two separate servers, one of which is AWS (Amazon Web Server), housing 53 sites in total. Surprisingly, only parsippanyfocus.com was affected by the malware, despite sharing similar mechanisms with other sites such as morrisfocus.com.

In recent weeks, we have made several attempts to restore parsippanyfocus.com, only to see the malware return. Our dedicated IT professionals have been tirelessly working to resolve this issue.

In the interim, we decided to create a page on www.morrisfocus.com where we’ve been sharing Parsippany news while we work to rectify the problem. Our primary goal is to ensure that the residents of Parsippany stay informed. We’ve been asked why we didn’t simply delete the files from the server and start anew. The reason is that doing so would have meant losing approximately 15 years of valuable historical data. We’ve made it clear to our IT team that we are committed to restoring the original site.

Parsippanyfocus.com was being redirected to morrisfocus.com, which may have gone unnoticed by many.

Earlier today, we successfully resurrected ParsippanyFocus.com using an older backup, as we regularly back up all of our websites. During this period, we published 60 stories on www.morrisfocus.com/category/parsippany, in addition to numerous Morris County stories.

We will proceed to repost these 60 stories on www.parsippanyfocus.com once we are confident that the site will remain free of malware. Thank you for your patience and understanding during this challenging period.”

PARSIPPANY – The Parsippany-Troy Hills Township Council’s meeting will be at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, December 19, 2023, at the Parsippany Municipal Building, 1001 Parsippany Boulevard.

 Adequate notice of this meeting has been provided in accordance with the requirements of the Open Public Meetings Law by filing the notice in the Office of the Township Clerk and by posting the meeting notice on the bulletin board at the Municipal Building on December 21, 2022, where it has remained posted since that date. A legal notice appeared in the Daily Record and the Newark Star-Ledger on December 28, 2022

Click here to download the agenda.

Mayor James Barberio
Council President Loretta Gragnani
Council Vice President Michael dePierro
Councilman Paul Carifi, Jr.,
Councilman Frank Neglia
Councilman Justin Musella

Dear Editor:

It is amazing to me that our Mayor Barberio,  just this week informed the world that Parsippany’s Real Estate market is booming beyond all expectations, and yet he and the Town Council majority (except Town Councilman Justin Musella) have insisted that Parsippany must vote for the 6 Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) programs because many parts of our town are blighted…(which it is not)! 

The outrage from the citizens seems not to have been heard.  In all the TC meetings that I have attended dealing with PILOTs, I have heard not ONE Parsippany taxpayer speak out in favor of this program, all brought to us by Attorney John Inglesino, who is representing all of the various developers, I believe.  Mr. Inglesino’s firm also represents The Township of Parsippany in other business issues.  While this may be entirely legal, it does seem that the various developers looking to obtain the PILOT’s financial benefits for their projects have recognized that having an attorney with a deep relationship with our town’s administration is in their best interests. 

It is surprising to me that our township political leaders may have misread the very recent vote for both the Town Council and Board of Education elections.  In my many years of living in Parsippany, I do not ever remember the vote for both the TC and BOE being so razor thin with one long-time incumbent being voted out on the BOE and one Republican TC candidate losing out to a Democrat.  Is our current leadership so arrogant and disrespectful of the clear demands of the Parsippany Taxpayer/Voters that they feel it is better…”safer” for them to follow the dictates of Mr. Inglesino’s clients’ wishes? 

I do not know how this will all shake out, but I believe very strongly that the current administration is standing on the edge of a cliff…and it is a peril of all their own making.  I hope they do not, of their own volition, jump into the abyss.  They should step back from that edge, I believe.  The voters of Parsippany have forgiven political disrespect before, but it seems that time is now long past.  I doubt the passage of Pilots on the heels of the PLA fiasco that was pushed down our throats will go unpunished at the next election.  

Hank Heller
Parsippany