Letters
Proposal contradicts spirit of Hazlet's master plan

Are you aware of the special Zoning Board meeting March 9 - 44 townhomes proposed on Poole Avenue, Hazlet? The purpose of this letter is in no way meant to undermine the importance of the Office of Emergency Management and the need to provide them with a proper facility. The township has an obligation to locate new space for emergency services.

However, what is being proposed directly contradicts the spirit of Hazlet Township's master plan. That is the document that sets the guidelines for zoning and planning development in town. The recent revisions to the master plan recognized the fact that Hazlet is overbuilt, overcrowded and has an overwhelmed infrastructure struggling to deal with these conditions. That is why many regions around town have recently been upzoned to try and lessen the impact of overdevelopment.

The object of this meeting is to convince the board to take an R-70 zone (pre-existing condition out of our control) that will maybe accommodate 10-12 single family homes and downgrade it to allow 44 townhomes (downzone consideration in our control). In exchange for this rezoning, the developer will donate property and construct an OEM building worth about half a million dollars.

Even though it sounds like a generous offer, when you account for the legitimate concerns about overbuilding and density and you look at this deal financially, it does not make sense. According to the New Jersey Department of Education 2004-05 school report cards, the total one-year cost per pupil is $10,005 in Hazlet. If you do the math and consider there could be anywhere from 25-65 new children introduced to our school system with this project (maybe less, maybe more) it could take a couple of years to offset the one-time gift of $500,000 even with tax revenue generated. It could take a couple of years to offset the onetime gift of $500,000 even with tax revenue generated. That financial burden will be passed through to the taxpayer forever.

The municipality should shoulder the one-time cost and supply OEM with their building or an alternative that is adequate to facilitate their needs. It should not be used as a bargaining chip to make a bad deal.

This is not good business for Hazlet Township. We are trading a $500,000 facility for an unknown charge to the taxpayer that will go on indefinitely. We are relying on the board to examine all the facts and do the right thing.

Richard Dorsi

Hazlet

Invite Trump to Keyport school board meeting

My good conscience has coaxed me into throwing my 2 cents into the Modoni controversy ("Parents plead for board to reinstate librarian," Feb. 22) - for the simple reason that I have a pair of vested interests in how and what is taught in our schools, namely Gabrielle and Jonathan.

Anyone who has had the opportunity to witness firsthand the procedural travesty of the last few school board meetings should be compelled to do one of two things at this point in their lives: either reluctantly begin looking for another community in which to relocate, one with a decent school system supported by a fair and honest board of education; or to begin exercising their First Amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution for the purpose of protesting the outrageous conduct of Dr. Ed McNamara and the school board, with the notable and honorable exceptions of Joanne Staeger, Nancy Ventura Wilcox, and Evelyn King-Cote.

Residents of Keyport deserve answers to their questions, and a lucid exchange of facts and ideas, and not shameless stonewalling and endless mouthfuls of legal jargon designed to confuse and obfuscate the issue at hand, which is: Why was Jennifer Modoni fired two days before receiving tenure? It has been decades since Keyport served as a thriving depot for the seafood industry, but one has to admit this entire affair smells fishier than the old Fulton Street market.

It has been my experience - having held several positions in academia as well as in the corporate world over the last 30 years - that an employee be fired for either: gross negligence, extreme incompetence, theft, lewd and lascivious behavior, physical and/or verbal abuse toward coworkers and/or students/clients, and the willful misuse of corporate/academic funds. Nothing I have read or heard about Ms. Modoni to date has convinced me that her termination was justified.

Ironically, it is Dr. McNamara who has clearly demonstrated to the good people of Keyport that he is without question the quintessential example of someone in dire need of firing. Perhaps we can invite Donald Trump to the next school board meeting?

William Butler Yeats once said, "Education should not be the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire." It infuriates me to think Dr. McNamara and his ilk will end up dousing all those little flames we cherish and want to succeed in this world, instead of fanning them. Fans of Modoni, ignite!

John Ruben

Keyport

Show's acceptance of Darwinism as fact upsets reader

On Feb. 21 at 7 p.m., WABC TV in New York broadcast my favorite daily weekday game show as usual. How increasingly sad this avid fan grew as the five clues in a category called "Ancient Man" were successively chosen by the day's "Jeopardy!" contestants.

Why? Because every single clue in that category assumed the veracity of the Darwinistic interpretation of human history and of fossil artifacts. I decided to express the reason for my great disappointment about this with the folks at Jeopardy, and now I briefly share it with you, and hopefully your readership.

As more and more researchers, educators, and others with diverse credos are realizing, unobserved and unobservable evolution is patently absurd as a theory for the origin and history of life on earth. It continues to hold sway in the mainstream scientific community primarily because of that sector's vocational and economic fears of going against systematically entrenched philosophical biases. Meanwhile Darwinistic luminaries and their followers have been duped again and again by frauds such as Britain's famous "Piltdown Man."

Real science reveals the irreducible complexity of organic systems, that the "australopithecines" were merely apes, and the unreliable nature of certain fossil-dating methods relied on so heavily by evolutionists. Evolutionists typically ignore the reasonable, numerous, and weighty objections we skeptics have concerning their beliefs. Instead of allowing objective observation and experimentation to lead the way, they passionately seek to patch up and salvage evolution with convoluted theoretical constructs. This is not the way science works.

"Jeopardy!" is an American icon of intellectual prowess. Let's hope we devoted watchers of this excellent educating-while-entertaining program will never again have to endure a clue category which naively assumes the Darwinistic interpretation of observable paleontological and other data is unassailable truth. It is a very far cry from that.

Keith Graham

pastor

Aberdeen Township

Anchor Glass site is unfit for a town center

I read with interest the article about possibly redeveloping the Anchor Glass Container Corp. site as a mixed use town center ("Anchors away," March 1). While it's an intriguing concept, I wonder who the retail anchors might be that the developers have in mind. I don't think Cliffwood Avenue has anywhere near enough traffic to support any of the so-called "big box" retailers. Besides, most of Cliffwood Avenue is only one lane in each direction. There is a good reason why most of the major retailers in the immediate area are located on Route 35 - it's a high-traffic artery. Many customers of these stores first become aware of specific locations when passing by on their way to somewhere else.

If a full parkway interchange - entrance and exit both northbound and southbound - could be built at the Anchor Glass site, it would become an excellent potential location for the following, in my mind: office space similar to what already exists at exit 109 in Red Bank, perhaps a small hotel, and maybe a restaurant or two including one that might also do significant private events business like the Buttonwood Manor does. With respect to apartments, I'm not sure how many families - especially if they have children - would like to live on a brownfields redevelopment site.

In addition, since the NJ Transit train tracks already run through the site, it could be a good place to build another train station and decent size parking garage. If commuters from towns other than Matawan and Aberdeen could reach the train station right from the parkway, it could significantly reduce the traffic through town making its way to the existing Aberdeen-Matawan station. The current 14-year wait for a parking permit at the train station could also be drastically reduced or even eliminated.

It seems it would make more sense to develop the current train station area as a town center given its location close to the existing historic downtown Matawan. If a new transit facility at the Anchor Glass site siphoned off a significant number of commuters from the existing station, a redeveloped train station area as a town center might ultimately result in somewhat less traffic than there is now. Such a development might include a combination of retail, restaurants and entertainment venues, apartments and town homes. A scaled-down version of Federal Realty Trust's Pentagon Row development in Arlington, Va. - and their similar development in Bethesda, Md. - could be quite attractive.

Obviously for any of this to work, the developer needs to earn a satisfactory risk-adjusted return on its investment and the town wants to increase its tax base well beyond the incremental cost of educating new students moving into the development while ensuring the infrastructure can support the associated traffic. I would be interested to hear what people with professional expertise in real estate development infrastructure requirements, traffic flows and the like think about all this.

Barry Carol

Aberdeen

Replacing Blumenthal won't make Holmdel better

I am very disappointed with the new Holmdel Township Committee majority, Serena DiMaso, Rocco Pascucci and Alan Bateman. On Feb. 2, all three voted against a resolution to correct the filing error which prevents Planning Board Chairman Ralph Blumenthal from serving three more years in this position, as clearly intended by the previous administration in 2005.

Dr. Blumenthal has been a knowledgeable and diligent chairman, probably the best Holmdel has ever had. He unfortunately is one of approximately 40 casualties. Experienced people have been removed from various township volunteer committees or chairmanships by the recently appointed mayor.

This lack of respect for the previous administration is compounded by the fact that the person chosen to replace Dr. Blumenthal has never served on the Holmdel Planning Board, let alone being chairman. His lack of experience can only serve to hurt Holmdel.

Mayor DiMaso had stated she wants to make Holmdel better. How can replacing capable, hardworking people with those having little or no experience be an improvement?

Anne F. Morrison

Holmdel