Thursday, April 24, 2025
Outraged Jewish families flood N.J. council meeting again as town passes zoning changes
Linden's mayor and council passed a revised zoning ordinance on Friday over the objections of Jewish residents who say the new rules discriminate against large families moving into the Union County community.
Local officials said the revised ordinance was designed to address serious concerns from the local Jewish community after hundreds of Jewish residents crammed into city hall during a council meeting earlier this month to stop final passage of an earlier version of the ordinance.
A revised ordinance was unanimously passed on first reading Friday. The council is expected to take a final vote on the ordinance on May 20.
The new version of the ordinance pulled back on counting basements and cellars as part of the gross floor area of dwellings. But it left much of the original ordinance unchanged over the objections of Jewish residents.
"Until recently, our synagogue had a respectful and constructive relationship with the town," Rabbi Yosef Katz of Anshe Chesed of Linden said last week.
"But over the past few years, that relationship has shifted. Zoning laws that went unchanged for over 25 years have now been amended multiple times — changes that began shortly after Orthodox Jewish families started moving into the neighborhood. The timing and pattern raise serious questions."
The local Jewish community strongly objected to the zoning revisions, calling them veiled antisemitism. Jewish residents also called out Linden's mayor Derek Armstead, who was accused last year of making antisemitic remarks in discussions with local school officials.
Armstead later apologized for his remarks after a whistleblower filed a lawsuit against him. The lawsuit remains ongoing, court records show.
Some of the proposed zoning changes include minimum ceiling height and square footage for bedrooms, according to the ordinance. Bedrooms and dwellings containing kitchens and bathrooms cannot be located in basements, the ordinance states.
Other revisions include reduced lot coverage in specific zoning districts, according to the ordinance.
Applications for variances must also include a landscape plan that considers tree management standards under the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's municipal tree management law.
The initial ordinance introduced in March would have set new restrictions on how square footages of homes are calculated and placed additional restrictions on impervious lot coverage and where bedrooms could be located inside homes.
The initial ordinance passed a first reading at a March 18 council meeting and was on the April 15 council meeting agenda for final passage. But hundreds of members of the Jewish community showed up in buses to object to the ordinance before the vote.
The April 15 meeting had to be rescheduled to Friday and moved to the Linden High School auditorium in anticipation of a large community turnout, officials said.
City officials said the revisions to the zoning ordinance are necessary to manage stormwater runoff and the use of small plots of land in the city as homes have expanded and green spaces have been reduced.
Due to new federal rules, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection implemented a Municipal Stormwater Management Program in 2004 to reduce stormwater runoff, Linden city engineer Nicholas Pantina said last week.
"There have been numerous changes to these requirements over the years, and the latest changes in 2023 have caused the City to re-evaluate its Zoning requirements," Pantina said in a statement.
Several people objected to the new zoning ordinance during public comment section of Friday's meeting, saying the Jewish community was not adequately included in shaping the ordinance.
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