Our View
Millstone officials need to sit down with residents

Millstone’s municipal officials need to follow the school board’s lead and sit down with residents who live immediately around the site where the school district has plans to build its new middle school.

The plan is extremely unpopular in the neighborhood because it would place not only a new middle school but also a transportation center that will house the district’s fleet of school buses on the current site of the Waters Nursery.

Residents feel that the school board’s plans — taken on their own — are too intense and that one neighborhood should not be forced to bear the entire burden of the school expansion. The uncertainty over whether the township is thinking about locating municipal facilities on that property has further upset those who live near the Waters site.

Of the 165 acres in question, the school board says it needs 100 acres for the school. That leaves 65 acres of land wide open.

While municipal officials have pointed out that they cannot be sure exactly what is coming in the future, officials do know that the township is growing — rapidly.

While the surge in population is currently hitting the school district the hardest, down the road municipal services may need to undergo an expansion as well. Just how big can Millstone get before the community needs another firehouse? What if the township is forced to create a police department?

While the committee may not be able to give the neighbors around the Waters property definite answers, they should at least have the courtesy to sit down and listen to what the residents have to say and attempt to provide them with as much information as possible, even if what they have to say isn’t going to be popular.

With the school board set to go out to referendum and ask voters for $39.9 million to fund the plan on Sept. 30, the committee needs to do what it can to clear up the ambiguities concerning municipal use of the remainder of the property before the vote.

The school district — and taxpayers — have a lot riding on it.