Mulberry Street Association has struggled with this concept "voluntary acquisition" where it pertains in this mitigation process. What is voluntary about choosing to stay when no meaningful flood prevention shall be provided? What is voluntary about choosing to participate in a program where owner/occupants lose under the guise of recouping loss? All of this after years of false hope that meaningful flood prevention was in the works.
Mulberry Street Association has asked these questions and still awaits an answer. Now new developments have taken center stage. There are unconfirmed rumors that the City of Trenton is positioning itself to abandon its original intentions of this mitigation process all together. Let me try to put into perspective the web of confusion this City administration has fostered. Just before the last major flood event of 1999, a program called "Project Impact" was unveiled.
At which time the Mayor himself along with officials from FEMA stood upon the banks of the Assunpink Creek with the proclamation that no resident would be displaced by this project! Owner/occupants sigh of relief was short lived for not more than a few weeks later in our newspaper we read that the homes between 49 to 69 Mulberry Street were to be bought out and demolished.
Shortly after this without the knowledge of the public certain business concerns managed to get this mitigation expanded to include now 49 to 99 Mulberry Streets. Citing that these homes were affected just as bad as the original targeted area. September 1999 entered hurricane Floyd. Our most significant flooding event of that decade.
As flood waters receded the City began its clean up. This was when owner/occupants of Mulberry Street first learned of the "Voluntary Acquisition Program". Residents also learned that now the mitigation was changed again. Now not only 49 to 99 Mulberry Street but the entire Mulberry Street area that borders the Assunpink Creek was involved in this mitigation process. And that now the process was broken down into 3 phases.
Phase 1 participants were shocked and heart sicken as they read their initial buy-out offer that contained what was later clarified as an error that told owner/occupants the City reserved the right to acquire there home by involuntary condemnation. Phase 2 consisted of owner/occupants of 21 to 45 Mulberry Street and phase 3 consisted of retrofitting homes along N. Clinton Ave. with flood prevention measures.
Owner/occupants outraged and insulted by the low offers to compensate them for their loss formed Mulberry Street Association. MSA organized and put the brakes upon City efforts to steam roll owner/occupants into homelessness. MSA is still advocating for owner/occupants in this process that has gone awry.
MSA seeks a confirmation on the rumor that phase 2 is about to be abandoned. If this indeed is the City position here again is yet another change to this horribly handled mitigation process. Government has failed to see the flaws MSA has made clear in this whole process. Government has failed to see how the rigidity of their own policy has created this quagmire whereby the owner/occupant is placed in an impossible, unjust negotiation position.
