Development plans put cart before the horse
Friday, May 24, 2013
The Ridgewood News
Development plans put cart before the horse
To the editor:
After last week’s Planning Board meeting on the four proposed multi-family units, I realized there is truly no master town plan happening here. The municipal planner, Blaise Brancheau, suggested as much to the board.
Mr. Brancheau recommended the Planning Board step back and look at the facts, revisit the checklist, decide what was important. But almost every Planning Board member said they are fine with the facts and ready to proceed. They are all so sure of the facts, in fact, that when Gail Price, the Planning Board attorney, tried to quiet the crowd with what she knew to be the actual number of students attending our schools from the current multi-family dwellings, none of the members corrected her. Gail said the number was 88. The crowd quieted down, as the paper stated, because that was not the number we knew to be correct. According to news reports, 88 is the number of students that live in the Oak Street Apartments alone. The number that is closer to actual is 219 school-aged children living in all the town apartments. That’s very different.