Phil Rizzo (source: City Baptist Church website)

Ever since the news broke that Republican gubernatorial candidate Phil Rizzo lives tax free in a mansion worth $1.84 million and once listed for $2.65 million people have been talking – and writing – about it.

Most recently Fred Snowflack over at InsiderNJ wrote a piece about Rizzo, and the issue of the mansion came up. Snowflack wrote, in part:

Ciattarelli took notice of Rizzo last week with a campaign mailer that essentially called him a tax cheat.

The house in question is in the New Vernon section of upscale Harding Township in Morris County.

“The church didn’t buy me a house,” said Rizzo, who is married with four children. “Like any job, there’s compensation.”

He said he bought the house originally and improved it. Then the church, the City Baptist Church of North Bergen and Hoboken, took it over. He said it’s standard practice for a church to own the pastor’s home.

He said that’s because pastoring a church is a 24-hour a day vocation and that congregants often need assistance at all hours.

“Jack and Hirsh hitting me on that is just political mudslinging,” he said.

A church providing a pastor, priest or any clergy for that matter is indeed a common practice, it’s called a parsonage.

Because providing a member of the clergy is common practice, I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide if City Baptist Church buying Rizzo’s house is a tax dodge.

Now I will say a parsonage is almost always close to the church. Because Rizzo’s church is a Baptist church, I searched for parsonage standards for Baptist churches. I could find none.

Fortunately, the West Ohio Conference of the United Methodist Church has “parsonage family housing standards” which include:

1. comfortable and conducive to a happy family life;

2. safe for those in residence and those visiting the parsonage;

3. conserves energy and is economical to operate; and

4. located in the church’s neighborhood or next closest neighborhood to the church which is suitable for safe family living and far enough from the church to insure the privacy of the parsonage family..

Harding Township in Morris County isn’t even close to Rizzo’s church’s neighborhood and I highly doubt it is the “next closest neighborhood to the church which is suitable for safe family living.” Weehawken is nice and right next to Hoboken.

Additionally, the Clergy Housing Handbook Parsonages, published by The General Commission on the Status and Role of Women of the United Methodist Church, clearly states that a historically perceived advantage of a parsonage is, “Close proximity to the workplace, allowing for family time and an economical lunch at home as well as a short, efficient walk to work rather than a time-consuming commute…”

Once again, Harding Township in Morris County isn’t even close to Rizzo’s church. I’m fairly certain that Harding Township to Hoboken would be a less than efficient walk to work.

Rizzo told Snowflack that the church didn’t buy him a house.

Then who bought it?

Looking at the City Baptist Church website there are only two people listed under “our staff,” Rizzo and the church’s treasurer.

This is just a guess, but it would make sense that if there are only two people making the decisions of the church, and Rizzo is one of those two people, he probably had something to do with the church’s decision to buy the house he lives in.

In a Politico article Rizzo is quoted:

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Rizzo said that when he “decided to walk away” from his business of building and renovating homes, his church was not able to provide a salary.

“Instead, the church decided to purchase my home as an asset and allow my family and I to continue living there,” he said. “In addition, the home provided peaceful and beautiful acreage in Harding, out of the city, where we could bring our church and community for family dinners, picnics, games, Bible studies, and kids events. You can fault me for many things — just ask my kids! But I don’t believe this is one of them.”

The Politico story went on to explain, “Rizzo’s campaign declined to answer follow-up questions about how the church was able to raise the money to purchase his home, why it paid him more for the house than he paid for it, whether he or the church paid for the renovations and examples of recent church events he held at the home.”

All good questions! But what jumped out at me was the fact that Rizzo said he “decided to walk away” from his business and his church was unable to provide a salary.

So, off to the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) website I went to take a look at Rizzo’s Personal Financial Disclosure Statement.

Well, I guess Rizzo’s church is doing a little better now because he now says he earns income from the church and from Edgewater Associates:

I found it a little odd that the church has a New Vernon mailing address when according to City Baptist Church’s website the mailing address is a Hoboken PO box. But I really didn’t care enough to figure out why because I was wondering who or what Edgewater Associates is. I learned Edgewater Associates “also operates under the name Rizzo Associates.”

“This organization primarily operates in the Sub-lessors of Real Estate business / industry within the Real Estate sector.” So, basically Edgewater Associates/Rizzo Associates rents out apartments.

Wouldn’t it have been cheaper for Rizzo’s church to rent him an apartment as a parsonage?

My guess is it would be a hell of a lot cheaper that $1.65 million to rent from Edgewater Associates/Rizzo Associates.

So why not have the church rent a parsonage and save a ton of cash?

It could be because renting an apartment managed by Edgewater Associates/Rizzo Associates is less than a pleasant experience. Rizzo probably didn’t want to move into a crappy Edgewater Associates/Rizzo Associates apartment.

The best Edgewater Associates/Rizzo Associates apartment I could find were the Carlton Village Apartments in Hamburg, NJ. The reviews on Apartments.com included things like, “moving into a handyman special” and “hole in roof and ceiling for almost for almost a year.” And. I sorted the reviews from high-to-low, I didn’t even bother trying low-to-high.

Like I said, those are the best Edgewater Associates/Rizzo Associates I could find! Perhaps the real reason Rizzo wouldn’t have his church save a bunch of cash and rent a parsonage from folks he knows is that he is afraid of bedbugs.

That’s right. Bedbugs! According to the Trentonian:

Caroline Harmon had a freakish routine. Every night, when her neighbors were sound asleep, she’d rise, retrieve a broom from her cockroach-infested kitchen and sweep the bedbugs out of her bedroom mattress inside her apartment.

Harmon, a 90-year-old woman who has arthritis in her hands and knees and a curved spine, needs a walker to get along. She can’t work, requires government assistance to pay her rent and couldn’t deal with the problem on her own. She relied on others to help her.

But for the last decade, she has been forced to live in a bed bug-infested apartment while state officials and her landlord turned a blind eye to the problem, her attorney said.

Apparently, nobody wanted to talk about living in an Edgewater Associates/Rizzo Associates apartment. The article went on:

Hunter Hills Apartment owner Nicholas Rizzo didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.

Despite the horrendous conditions, Harmon paid her rent on time for the last 10 years.

The owner at the Hunter Hills Apartments, in the past a rich target for torrential crime complaints, has known about an infestation since at least 2010, according to court records. Rather than immediately getting it professionally treated, Rizzo had apartment management spray Raid in a cost-cutting effort.

Brilliant! They sprayed Raid.

It appears crime was a problem too. According to the Trentonian article:

In Flemington, New Jersey, a borough in Hunterdon County with roughly 4,600 residents, Rizzo has faced stiff opposition from leaders over concerns of mismanagement at the Hunter Hills Apartments. He’s been pelted over the years by complains of excessive crime and overcrowding. At one point, the complex accounted for more than half the borough’s reported property offenses.

Fed up with the problems, borough officials contemplated forced redevelopment of the 180-unit complex, according to news reports. That was halted when Rizzo agreed to work with the borough to address the issues. Officials told The Trentonian that while they’ve seen a reduction in the number of calls to police from residents, crime remains a problem at the complex.

Remember according to Rizzo’s own Personal Financial Disclosure Statement, he earns income from Edgewater Associates/Rizzo Associates – heartless people who collected rent from a 90-year-old woman infested with roaches and bedbugs in a crime-ridden apartment complex, did nothing to fix the problem and then tried to evict her.

At least now I know why Rizzo’s City Baptist Church didn’t save money by renting a parsonage from Edgewater Associates/Rizzo Associates.