-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10/26/05 - Posted from the Daily Record newsroom Parsippany candidate hopes to make history
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Why such a stink over temple in Parsippany? It took a while to get past the caustic exchanges. It took a while for people to calm down after police had been called. Some people attending a Parsippany Board of Adjustment meeting last week were all upset about ... what?
The smell of Indian food?
You have to scratch your head when you hear about people living a couple of hundred feet away from the proposed Hindu temple on Entin Road going on and on about the smell of food even after temple officials decided to purchase a $10,000 odor filtration system to alleviate those concerns. The representative of the company that makes the system, called a Smog Hog, portrayed its use in this case as overkill.
So what was the real problem?
It's impossible to say what is in people's hearts, but it's safe to say few people are really all that worried about the smell of curry.
Listen to tapes of Wednesday's meeting and you hear some people go on about odors because that was the topic during part of the meeting. They seem to be grasping onto anything they believe will help their cause. Their real fears are about what happens next should the temple get a variance. They are worried about what other kinds of businesses might apply to move in along Entin Road. They've also opposed a proposed fitness center.
So the opposition does not seem to be about religion, no matter how misguided it seemed at times last week.
"I want to be clear," Bob Pfeiffer, one of the leaders of the opposition, said this week. "I am not against their freedom of religion. My concern is the rezoning and the close proximity to a residential neighborhood. ... We have traffic all during the week. On Sunday afternoons, it's relatively quiet and I want to sit on my deck and swim in the pool."
The board of adjustment almost certainly won't make its decision based on an application by a Hindu temple group called BAPS Northeast based on the odor of food. The decision probably won't turn on the relatively small amount of traffic the temple is expected to generate most Sundays. Listen closely to a tape of Wednesday's hearing and you hear Robert Iracane, the board of adjustment chairman, saying something that hints at where these hearings may be going. The focus eventually will be on a request to allow a high priest, who may or may not have a family, to live at the temple.
"One of my major concerns is there are going to be people living there constantly," Iracane said on the tape.
Iracane made his statement after a woman stood up to ask where a school bus might pick up children along Entin Road. It had little to do with the evening's testimony but Iracane said it was a good question. An attorney for the temple later said something could be worked out so a school bus won't have to pick up any children along Entin. And it's hard to say why a family living in an industrial park would pose a problem for people who live nearby.
Yet there are some real concerns here about setting a precedent. It may or may not be a big deal. That will be up to the board of adjustment to determine.
Iracane had been short with people earlier in the meeting, obviously frustrated by some of the questions being asked of a witness. He seemed irritated after one man suggested that a representative of a company that makes the Smog Hog was motivated in his testimony by the prospect of making money.
Then Pfeiffer got up and suggested the representative's testimony was "irrelevant" because the company does not yet have a contract to sell a filtration unit to the temple. Pfeiffer later called himself "just a Joe citizen" who doesn't understand all the rules of official hearings. He had been told he could ask questions, but not give testimony. He acknowledges that he has a hard time leaving his opinions out of his questions.
Robert Garofalo, an attorney for the temple, later said the temple would agree to purchase a filtration unit as a condition of receiving variances. Had he said that a few seconds earlier, perhaps things would have calmed down. Perhaps Pfeiffer would have gone back to his seat, satisfied with the answer. Perhaps Iracane would have moved on to the next questioner.
Instead, this is what happened:
"Please sit down because you're upsetting me at this point," Iracane said to Pfeiffer.
Iracane asked for police to be called when Pfeiffer did not sit down. Then Iracane said something about the way Pfeiffer was looking at him. Pfeiffer said that's just the way he looks. He is big but says he's really gentle. You just have to get to know him.
Iracane has to take some of the responsibility for the way things went Wednesday night. He had a right to be frustrated by the tone of some of the questions. But he lost his cool and asked for police to be called when that did not seem necessary. He later said something that indicates maybe he got it, that maybe he recognized the questioners weren't the only ones out of line.
"I've calmed down and I expect everybody here to calm down," he said on the tape.
A traffic expert for BAPS later testified that on most Sundays, the temple would generate an additional 70 cars along Entin Road, about one-tenth the traffic on a typical weekday rush hour. He said his tests determined the additional traffic would create no more noise for neighboring houses than noise already coming from Route 287. The rest of the hearing went along without any more angry exchanges. People asked questions. When they went beyond the scope of the rules, and began to state opinions, they were politely asked to stop. One woman laughed and apologized.
Too bad the meeting will be remembered for the way it began, and not the way it ended.
