It’s a sad day for our Montgomery township and its residents. I attended the recent town planning board public hearing on some of the commercial projects sited in our community, one of which is the proposed Amazon mega warehouse also known as ‘Project Sailfish.’ By unanimous vote the planning board approved the site plan and special exception use permit for this project. It is now one step closer to reality.

It just rubs me the wrong way when the Montgomery town IDA (Industrial Development Agency) board approved Amazon’s 15 year Pilot agreement giving it a tax break of $21.5 million dollars (the developer Bluewater did offer to amend the Pilot with 10% of the taxes being paid for the first 5 years since originally those years were tax-free); it’s still a handsome handout to Amazon, a very profitable enterprise that is a $790 billion dollar company whose CEO Jeff Bezos, according to Forbes magazine, is worth around $100 billion dollars making him the richest man in America, possibly the world. Remember, the annual pay of a warehouse worker for this project is $33,000 dollars, a substandard wage in our local area.

My curiosity aroused, I did a little research on Amazon as an employer. Not a good review. In some distribution centers employees are subject to terrible working conditions. The chief complaint is their being treated like robots. Amazon exercises algorithm technology to monitor all warehouse work that institutes strict time constraints leading to constant pressure in meeting target goals (getting products processed and ready for shipment). Each worker’s target quota appears to be unrealistic. Rising productivity demands cause undue worker injury. Injury claims are denied. When Amazon adopted the $15 dollar per hour minimum wage, employee bonuses and stock options were eliminated. As per Newsweek magazine many warehouse workers are getting public assistance such as food stamps since they are not paid a living wage.

This situation is a double whammy for taxpayers. Not only does Amazon get IDA-approved tax breaks in the millions of dollars that fail to ease, in any meaningful way, the homeowners’ tax burden but those warehouse workers on public assistance are subsidized by the taxpaying public. This is corporate welfare to the nth degree !

If the Amazon mega warehouse project is approved, could we Montgomery town taxpayers be looking at this double whammy ?