I’ve been reading with great interest how the town officials and Planning Board are requiring environmental and traffic studies for the Towne Centre development. It makes me wonder why this same information isn’t being required of the group of developers who plan to build 600 houses on Grawtown and Bowman roads.

As I write, Whitesville Road and eventually Grawtown Road are being dug up to install a high pressure water/sewage system at the developer’s expense.

When I contacted the mayor’s office I was told that they haven’t even submitted approval for the developments.

If that is so, then the developers seem pretty confident that they will get what they want without even having to address the issue of building homes in the Pinelands and along the Toms River.

Why have they been allowed to dig up the roads and install a system for a development that hasn’t even been approved?

Where are the environmental studies to prove that such a large development won’t harm the sensitive Pinelands?

This development can circumvent the Pinelands’ 3-acre building restriction because they are bringing in water-sewage.

What about the effect that fertilizers and other chemicals will have on the groundwater for the people living downstream?

One doesn’t have to be an expert to know that the traffic will be horrendous. Six hundred houses equals another 1,200 cars trying to exit onto a tricky part of the highway. Are they going to recommend putting a traffic light on a curve so we can have daily accidents?

If each home sends two children to the Jackson school system that will cost the taxpayers $8.4 million (1,200 children x $7,000 per year to educate).

Taxes on each home would have to start at $14,000 per year just to break even on the education expense part of taxes, and that wouldn’t include fire, police, library and all the other systems that taxes support. Who has to pay for the difference? You know it isn’t the developers. They have made their money and moved onto their next project.

It’s time for the township to enact a building moratorium to stop (not slow down) the developing until all the support systems are in place.

The solution to overcrowded schools is not to build another elementary and middle school. The solution is to stop building houses until some of the kids in the school system have graduated and then resume building in a more controlled, rational manner.

We have an election coming up and petitions are being circulated to change the system of government. I’m not a political person, but even I can see that changes need to be made.

Maybe a more regional representative (ward system) would be more responsive to the needs of that area.

Perhaps the township is too large an area to be overseen by one group of people and needs to be broken up so that focus on one side of town (i.e. Towne Centre) doesn’t allow developers to sneak in projects on the other side of town. All I know is that changes need to be made. Building three houses per acre in the Pinelands is wrong.

Garth Michels

Jackson