Manalapan rezoning plan called ‘political opportunism’

The Manalapan Planning Board’s proposed rezoning plan strips 50 percent of the land value from our farms. It cheats farmers of the equity they sweated and worked to create. It punishes them for not having sold to developers by stealing their children’s future. Worse, it deceives all of Manalapan because:

• instead of stopping development, it will panic farmers into filing for subdivision approval; check the Planning Board office, it has already occurred; and

• it could also jeopardize Manalapan’s eligibility for millions of dollars of state grant money designed to preserve farms and open space. Eligibility depends on conformity to the New Jersey State Plan for farmland preservation. This plan rewards municipalities with grants for encouraging agriculture as an industry. Down zoning, as proposed by our Planning Board, is contrary to this state plan because it undermines agriculture as an industry. Result: Manalapan would find itself ineligible for those grants, thus jeopardizing farmland preservation.

Would you expect anyone to continue in farm activities if Manalapan’s government arbitrarily reduced the return on the investment by 50 percent? Would you? This proposed rezoning is fatal to the farming industry because it arbitrarily reduces the value of the land, undermining its asset value for purposes of operational credit.

Result: The cost of farm loan interest rates would rise exponentially. Farming would no longer be sustainable in Manalapan. This Planning Board rezoning proposal would, in the end, compel Manalapan’s farmers to quit and sell off to developers, escalating the building of even more housing.

Discrimination is wrong. It is discriminatory to single out and punish Manalapan’s farm community because of the past mistakes made by our Planning Board (which has already approved 3,000 new homes this year). During the last 20 years our Planning Board has failed to manage growth and plan proper infrastructure. This abysmal record does not excuse punitive expropriation of farmland.

To solve the problems of overdevelopment our Planning Board should involve all segments of Manalapan. It should look for ways to buy property or easements at prices which justify sale by the farmer, not act to expropriate land through regulations, destroying the hopes and dreams of people in our community.

The Planning Board’s effort to pit farmers against the rest of our community is the crudest form of political exploitation. It is slap-dash political opportunism. Worse, it also is poor planning and that harms all of Manalapan.

Bruce K. Brickman

Manalapan