With today’s press conference in my hometown, marking the first anniversary of the infamous (still inadequately explained) George Washington Bridge lane closures, I thought I’d share my own video of a candid address delivered last May to borough residents by our mayor, a Fort Lee native, who was improbably thrust onto the national stage last September.
Although he had indicated, early in this unfolding saga, that he had no idea whether or why he was being targeted, Mayor Mark Sokolich, a Democrat who had declined to endorse Republican Gov. Chris Christie‘s reelection bid, revealed to us that, in fact, he “knew from the beginning” that he was the focus of a deliberate attempt to paralyze traffic flow in Fort Lee, already impeded, even in the best of times, by chronic bridge-related backups (that are likely to get even worse, thanks to the billion-dollar redevelopment project, adjacent to the bridge, which Sokolich refers to in my video, below).
Criminal investigations of the so-called Bridgegate scandal continue.
Here’s our savvy, self-deprecating Mayor, who professes to have no further political ambitions:
And in other local news of national interest: The borough council of our next-door community, Englewoods Cliffs, voted last month to ban future construction taller than 35 feet (as I predicted might happen in this April 11 tweet). But that won’t affect the previously approved, highly controversial, 143-foot-high headquarters for LG Electronics USA, about to rise atop New Jersey’s Palisades, to the dismay of preservationists.
The councils of several nearby Bergen County communities have gone on record, for what it’s worth, opposing LG’s plan. Court challenges to that project continue.
UPDATE: By coincidence, the Metropolitan Museum’s curator in charge of the Cloisters, C. Griffith Mann, today added a post to the museum’s website exhorting Met-lovers to “convince LG to alter their plans”:
Please get involved. We recommend starting with Protect the Palisades, one of the many advocacy groups that have organized around this important issue.
Does he know about the latest news? If he knew about Englewood Cliffs’ new height restrctions, he wouldn’t have written: “When one company opens the door, others are sure to follow.” I think that the Met’s crossing the line into political advocacy to protect its views is a step too far.