Response to Mr. Bartlett's Video

In Response to Committeeman Matt Bartlett's misleading video

Committeeman Matt Bartlett recently put out a video attempting to discredit, invalidate, and deconstruct this website and its findings. Delanco411 was created by residents of Delanco to try and get the facts out to the public that the township was failing to answer or present. We would first like to say that we are glad to see the Committee finally starting to become more transparent. It is a shame that it took all of this time for them to start publicly answering questions. After thoroughly listening to what he had to say, we decided that a response would be necessary. While Committeeman Matt Bartlett did have a lot to say in his 28 minute and 54 second video, there was a lot more that he decided to leave out. And despite his best efforts, we believe that this website is still highly accurate, as we will address below.

To begin, let's acknowledge the few facts that we needed to adjust. While we do our best to ensure all the information is accurate, we unfortunately are limited in what we can gather. Not by lack of effort, but rather by a continued effort by the committee to stall on giving us information, and hide key points that the taxpayers should know. We have corrected the two errors that Matt Bartlett cited and are listed below:

First, the municipal roof quote was not $1 million dollars, but instead ~$250,000. While this is a different quote by far, it does not change that we, the tax payers, will STILL be paying for it soon, and is yet another tax increase coming to the public.

Second, the amount of information certain members had about this purchase from the beginning, may be different by ONLY a few days from what we stated. Mr. Bartlett still did NOT acknowledge the failure of the committee to reasonably inform the public. Instead, he states that we should have "watched the meetings." We would ask Committeeman Bartlett, why he wouldn't post something like this on the Facebook page, or send out an informative mailer himself? These would have been far more REASONABLE uses of taxpayer dollars, instead of the biased brochure and signs they sent out AFTER the petition went through and the referendum was made.

We would like to start by pointing out how much was NOT proven to be "false." In his entire video, we found only two things that needed to be corrected. That leaves the rest of this website as being "TRUE." Mr. Bartlett also failed to mention several CRUCIAL facts that would only prove our argument. We invite you to read below as we go point by point presenting you with what Mr. Bartlett conveniently left out in his over 28 minute video.

The petition was started and distributed by Committeeman Fern Oullette. While many members of the public helped circulate and spread the word, had it not been for Mr. Oullette, this petition, and therefore the referendum, never would have come to fruition. Mr. Oullette decided to let a member of the public, Todd Berk, be the one to submit the petition as he felt this was not just "his petition" anymore. It is curious how the specifics of who "submitted" this petition were the focus of this section, and not the fact that over 300 people rallied to stop this bond as soon as they heard about it. Perhaps if the township had been more forthcoming, we would have seen how many people were truly "for" and "against" this purchase.

Mr. Bartlett decided to begin mentioning the 700 trees that will be removed, and would be replaced with younger trees as per the plans approved and now required by the Joint Land Use Board (JLUB). The former mayor did fail to mention that, should this property be "resold" to a developer of any kind, those trees will STILL be removed with no assurances of them being replaced.

Mr. Bartlett's next line of attack was conducted by disputing our claim of Criterion's main business being trailer storage. He disputed this claim by attempting to "assume" how fast the repair facility will operate. Truck and Trailer repairs can take days, and the assumption that this lot will have more than 10 trucks a day exiting its property, assumes that this facility can fix more than 10 trucks in a single day AND have them picked up and back out on the road. The need for the 120 parking spaces, which Mr. Bartlett brings up a little later in his video, which is clearly used to hold the trucks and trailers that will be awaiting repair. If Criterion could repair trucks as quickly as Mr. Bartlett is implying, then there would be no need for a holding area of that size.

Next, Committeeman Bartlett suggests that the plans could be "modified" to allow vehicles to make right turns into the facility from town. However, if they wanted to allow right turns, why wasn’t this included in the original blueprints? Additionally, the statement he references clearly says "only right turns out," which means that all trucks leaving the facility can only turn toward Route 130, and no other exit options are permitted with no changes allowed to be made to this layout without approvalby the JLUB.

The former Mayor attempts to discredit our claim of limited operating hours of 7 A.M. to 7 P.M. not by pointing out we are wrong, (as a matter of fact, he confirms that we are correct) but by quoting the "emergency drop off time." This ignores the approved plans and under oath statement that truck-trailer drop offs will be emergencies only.

The Committeeman proceeds to not deny their "rapid" movements in this vote, but instead attempts to justify it by saying the residents WANTED them to do so. Once again this committee is blaming the PUBLIC for their lack of transparency. We know at least 307 people that would have preferred a slower approach. Perhaps they could have held the same town hall meetings they were forced to host once the petition stopped their agenda in order to inform residents about the purchase.

Mr. Bartlett continues his tirade against Mr. Oullette by attempting to discredit his efforts of going door to door to ensure the taxpayers were aware of what was going on. Judging by the sudden outrage after Fern Oullette did so, it is clear that he did the right thing. You should also consider, why didn't the township use its resources to get the word out on its own? The current Mayor is an admin on a Residents of Delanco Facebook group, which has over 5,000 members, and could have EASILY made a post. Why didn't she? Mayor Suess is very quick to post information about “what’s going on in Delanco,” “Parade updates,” and even houses going on sale! If the committee were acting under “what the residents wanted,” why did most people not find out until Mr. Oullette went door to door? Instead, the Committeeman and Mayor continue to blame the public for not listening to every meeting they host.

He also mentions the calculation error Mr. Oullette made in his packet that was notifying the residents. Despite that error being made known to the public BEFORE the petition went around (with Mr. Oullette apologizing in a meeting for the miscalculation), members of the town STILL signed. The number provided may have been wrong, however the fact is, taxes would still be going up for all residents.

Matt Bartlett confirms all of our statements about the lack of other interested buyers and clarifies that there are NO interested buyers. If there were, why wouldn't they approach Criterion and buy the property BEFORE it got rezoned by the township? If the township is so confident in the "re-sale" of the land, shouldn't there be other interested parties? There is also no statement on if the committee asked Criterion if they could wait until the November election! Instead, based on what Mr. Bartlett says, they assumed they wouldn't wait, and cost the taxpayers an additional $70,000.

The Committeeman then goes on to state that the appraisal of $5.3 million is not known to Criterion. It is a bold assumption that a company directly involved in real-estate buying and selling, and is promoted as a "full-service real estate firm," doesn't know the value of their OWN property. Plus, the township also made several presentations very early on stating the appraised value to the public. We invite you to take a look at some of the other properties Criterion owns and draw your own conclusion on whether or not Criterion knows more about real-estate than the township committee. https://www.criteriongroup.com/sites

He goes on to once again prove us correct in our statements regarding the flood zones impacting what can be built on the property. This is a distinct change from their previous stance of "It won't pass." We would like to thank the members of the public who expressed their concerns about the flood zones and have pushed the Committee to acknowledge that there WILL be an impact on the property.

Next is the tax increase, and what is NOT stated is far more important than what is. We already amended the first point of the roof repair. Mr. Bartlett verifies the remaining statements in the tax section and ignores the final bullet point. He fails to mention that the committee can't guarantee that taxes won't be affected in 2026 due to the school roof repair on TOP of the tax hike hitting this Summer and the tax increase should this purchase go through. The committee continues to assume that these tax increases are not impactful to the residents.

Mr. Bartlett then uses a google search to attempt to discredit our claim of the weight of a truck. He does not mention his source for this and we certainly hope he did not rely on artificial intelligence to draw his conclusion. Following this, the committeeman tries to assume the routes of tractor trailers. The former Mayor does not mention that Rt. 130 to Creek Rd. is FAR more convenient than the underpass in Edgewater Park where many trucks struggle to get through. The fact that the Delanco bridge is still used is a lack of enforcement by the bridge commission, and something the township should’ve been looking into a long time ago.

The former Mayor also attempts to call into question the qualifications of the Joint Land Use Board Engineer with no follow up statements disproving his statement. He opts to ignore yet another professional telling him this purchase carries inherent risk.

Mr. Bartlett next opts to double down on his statement about Criterion, a self described "full-service real estate firm" that does NOT know the value of their properties.

We would like to take this opportunity to point out that in the following statement, as well as each town hall presentation, Mr. Bartlett and Carolyn Seuss have used the fact that the township only gets a third of the tax revenue as a reason to claim it as "no loss." They continue to fail to mention that a LARGE chunk goes to supporting our school district, which is clearly having several issues, including financial problems. Their disregard for the well-being of the school district and the kids that attend is very concerning.

The remaining time in the video fails to disprove any statements we have made or reiterates previous points we've already covered. It does, however, SKIP over the section mentioning how taxpayer money was used to fund the “VOTE YES” signs and “VOTE YES” brochures.

If you made it this far, we thank you for your time. We are very happy to see the Township Committee finally start answering questions in public forums, instead of simply telling people to "watch the over one hour meetings" or contact the township administrator, who has only been in the job since June 30th, 2025. We invite you to check out our updates section, where we will continue to post new information as it comes to light. Let’s stay informed, stay connected, and move forward together as one Delanco.