Land-use questions divide Lacey
Published in the Asbury Park Press 04/20/05
By KIRK MOORE
STAFF WRITER
LACEY — Viewed from the air, this central Ocean County township is cleanly bisected by the Garden State Parkway, with a bustling bayshore suburb to the east and thousands of acres of remote forest and cedar swamps on the inland side of the highway.
That boundary is an artifact of the great wave of environmental legislation in the 1970s, which concluded with the state Pinelands Protection Act of 1979 that essentially banned most major construction in western Lacey and dozens of other towns. A generation later, another political divide remains here and in other Shore towns: how communities should use the land that's left.
"For the most part, people in Lacey Township are looking for the kind of commercial growth we're permitting," said Mayor Gary Quinn, who notes 73 percent of the township's area is regulated under Pinelands rules. "It's a difficult thing to balance. The community is looking for tax relief."
Plans for Home Depot and Wal-Mart stores on two-lane Route 9, and a proposal to convert an old railroad right-of-way into a new road parallel to the highway, are supported by township officials. In a town that grew from 22,000 to 26,000 from 1990 to 2003, most Township Committee members contend growth can bring in property tax revenue to help hold down homeowners' tax bills, while keeping traffic problems manageable.
Meanwhile, Quinn acknowledges, "we have people who moved down here from Staten Island and other places up north. They moved down here to get away from that . . . but it's slowly creeping down to all the municipalities in Ocean County."
One of those ex-Staten Islanders, Regina C. Discenza, said: "There's nothing wrong with a little growth, but it has to be the right kind of growth. These big-box stores aren't the right kind."
Now a seven-year Lacey resident, Discenza is active with the Lacey Rail-Trail Environmental Committee, a group that advocates keeping the railroad bed as open space, and seeking office-space business development instead of big retail stores.
Thirty-five years after the first Earth Day, rail-trail committee Chairwoman Helen Henderson said she worries neighbors don't think about cumulative effects of growth.
"The worst is yet to come. I don't think people have made the connection in Lacey as to what all the lasting impacts will be," Henderson said. "They're not sending a message (to township officials) that they're not OK with that. . . . So the 35th Earth Day is pretty depressing for me."
Changing priorities
Public opinion polls show New Jerseyans and Americans generally have had their environmental concerns pushed down the priority list by worries about war and the economy, said Michael Greenberg, professor and associate dean of faculty at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.
"Essentially, the high point for public concern on the environment was probably around 2000," Greenberg said. "When the economy is very strong, when there's lots of jobs, no war and terrorism, people feel very strongly about the environment."
However, polling data since the 1990s also show "growing public frustration, particularly with traffic congestion, and some other problems associated with sprawl," Greenberg added. "People still worry about their drinking water, but there's also this secondary concern with traffic, not being able to take a walk or find open space."
In some Shore communities, popular feeling about land use and development swung 180 degrees in the last years of the 20th century. Places where summer tourism, home construction and real estate were the sole industries 30 years ago morphed into bedroom communities, and municipal planners and elected officials are searching for ways to limit new home construction and attract other forms of commercial development that will add to property tax revenues.
"It's almost alarming, because municipal officials are realizing that . . . middle class housing doesn't pay for itself because of the costs associated with schoolchildren," said Sandy Batty, executive director at the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions. "We need housing . . . but it has to be more than just senior or high-end housing."
Since the 1980s, community and political leaders in Atlantic County went from worrying about too little economic development in the state Pinelands plan to desperately trying to slow down growth, said state Sen. William L. Gormley, R-Atlantic.
"They created a system to save land, but instead of paying people for their land, they took development rights from 40 percent of the land and applied it to 3 percent," said Gormley, who has sponsored legislation to allow "timed growth" ordinances to delay housing developments.
"They have to slow the growth here," he said. "Children are in (classroom) trailers because of environmental policy. Egg Harbor Township is going to have to build a new school every year. Nobody anticipated that."
"I think we're going to see that in all the towns in the Pines that were designated for regional growth," said Janet Larson, a longtime conservationist from Dover Township. "They once agreed to all this growth, but now it's not attractive, because they've learned the economics of growth don't work for residential."
Open space advocate
"One tool that towns need to use aggressively is open-space acquisition," said Larson, who is a member of the advisory committee for the Ocean County Natural Lands Trust.
Municipal governments can make judicious use of open space funding not only to purchase land for recreation and conservation, but can head off development that might drive up taxes, she said.
The 1970s era of the first Earth Day helped set the stage not just for changing attitudes toward the environment, but for the professional and educational expertise that towns now use in their environmental decision making, said Batty of the environmental commissions association.
"The formation of environmental commissions started right around Earth Day — actually the law was passed in 1969, one year before," Batty said.
About 200 towns created commissions in the 1970s and the number is up to 340 now, with environmental commissions often serving as training grounds for volunteers who go on to local elected office, she said.
A number of those commissions have worked for years in Monmouth and Ocean counties. A new Long Beach Island commission is forming to help towns there meet new stormwater rules, while the Holmdel Environmental Commission pioneered strong stream-protection measures and buffer requirements, Batty said.
"It's not just regulating developers when they come in" with a particular project in mind, Batty said. "If you have the ordinances in place, you can regulate the kind of development that comes in."
In Lacey, critics say the community will pay a price in traffic congestion and other consequences for shortsighted planning.
"When you look at how the development has been placed, it's over our drinking water supply," said Alison Lemke of the rail-trail committee, referring to municipal wells near the proposed Home Depot site.
Published in the Asbury Park Press 04/20/05
By KIRK MOORE
STAFF WRITER
LACEY — Viewed from the air, this central Ocean County township is cleanly bisected by the Garden State Parkway, with a bustling bayshore suburb to the east and thousands of acres of remote forest and cedar swamps on the inland side of the highway.
That boundary is an artifact of the great wave of environmental legislation in the 1970s, which concluded with the state Pinelands Protection Act of 1979 that essentially banned most major construction in western Lacey and dozens of other towns. A generation later, another political divide remains here and in other Shore towns: how communities should use the land that's left.
"For the most part, people in Lacey Township are looking for the kind of commercial growth we're permitting," said Mayor Gary Quinn, who notes 73 percent of the township's area is regulated under Pinelands rules. "It's a difficult thing to balance. The community is looking for tax relief."
Plans for Home Depot and Wal-Mart stores on two-lane Route 9, and a proposal to convert an old railroad right-of-way into a new road parallel to the highway, are supported by township officials. In a town that grew from 22,000 to 26,000 from 1990 to 2003, most Township Committee members contend growth can bring in property tax revenue to help hold down homeowners' tax bills, while keeping traffic problems manageable.
Meanwhile, Quinn acknowledges, "we have people who moved down here from Staten Island and other places up north. They moved down here to get away from that . . . but it's slowly creeping down to all the municipalities in Ocean County."
One of those ex-Staten Islanders, Regina C. Discenza, said: "There's nothing wrong with a little growth, but it has to be the right kind of growth. These big-box stores aren't the right kind."
Now a seven-year Lacey resident, Discenza is active with the Lacey Rail-Trail Environmental Committee, a group that advocates keeping the railroad bed as open space, and seeking office-space business development instead of big retail stores.
Thirty-five years after the first Earth Day, rail-trail committee Chairwoman Helen Henderson said she worries neighbors don't think about cumulative effects of growth.
"The worst is yet to come. I don't think people have made the connection in Lacey as to what all the lasting impacts will be," Henderson said. "They're not sending a message (to township officials) that they're not OK with that. . . . So the 35th Earth Day is pretty depressing for me."
Changing priorities
Public opinion polls show New Jerseyans and Americans generally have had their environmental concerns pushed down the priority list by worries about war and the economy, said Michael Greenberg, professor and associate dean of faculty at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.
"Essentially, the high point for public concern on the environment was probably around 2000," Greenberg said. "When the economy is very strong, when there's lots of jobs, no war and terrorism, people feel very strongly about the environment."
However, polling data since the 1990s also show "growing public frustration, particularly with traffic congestion, and some other problems associated with sprawl," Greenberg added. "People still worry about their drinking water, but there's also this secondary concern with traffic, not being able to take a walk or find open space."
In some Shore communities, popular feeling about land use and development swung 180 degrees in the last years of the 20th century. Places where summer tourism, home construction and real estate were the sole industries 30 years ago morphed into bedroom communities, and municipal planners and elected officials are searching for ways to limit new home construction and attract other forms of commercial development that will add to property tax revenues.
"It's almost alarming, because municipal officials are realizing that . . . middle class housing doesn't pay for itself because of the costs associated with schoolchildren," said Sandy Batty, executive director at the Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions. "We need housing . . . but it has to be more than just senior or high-end housing."
Since the 1980s, community and political leaders in Atlantic County went from worrying about too little economic development in the state Pinelands plan to desperately trying to slow down growth, said state Sen. William L. Gormley, R-Atlantic.
"They created a system to save land, but instead of paying people for their land, they took development rights from 40 percent of the land and applied it to 3 percent," said Gormley, who has sponsored legislation to allow "timed growth" ordinances to delay housing developments.
"They have to slow the growth here," he said. "Children are in (classroom) trailers because of environmental policy. Egg Harbor Township is going to have to build a new school every year. Nobody anticipated that."
"I think we're going to see that in all the towns in the Pines that were designated for regional growth," said Janet Larson, a longtime conservationist from Dover Township. "They once agreed to all this growth, but now it's not attractive, because they've learned the economics of growth don't work for residential."
Open space advocate
"One tool that towns need to use aggressively is open-space acquisition," said Larson, who is a member of the advisory committee for the Ocean County Natural Lands Trust.
Municipal governments can make judicious use of open space funding not only to purchase land for recreation and conservation, but can head off development that might drive up taxes, she said.
The 1970s era of the first Earth Day helped set the stage not just for changing attitudes toward the environment, but for the professional and educational expertise that towns now use in their environmental decision making, said Batty of the environmental commissions association.
"The formation of environmental commissions started right around Earth Day — actually the law was passed in 1969, one year before," Batty said.
About 200 towns created commissions in the 1970s and the number is up to 340 now, with environmental commissions often serving as training grounds for volunteers who go on to local elected office, she said.
A number of those commissions have worked for years in Monmouth and Ocean counties. A new Long Beach Island commission is forming to help towns there meet new stormwater rules, while the Holmdel Environmental Commission pioneered strong stream-protection measures and buffer requirements, Batty said.
"It's not just regulating developers when they come in" with a particular project in mind, Batty said. "If you have the ordinances in place, you can regulate the kind of development that comes in."
In Lacey, critics say the community will pay a price in traffic congestion and other consequences for shortsighted planning.
"When you look at how the development has been placed, it's over our drinking water supply," said Alison Lemke of the rail-trail committee, referring to municipal wells near the proposed Home Depot site.
