Warehouses will cost U.F. and Allentown

Thank you for covering the industrial warehouse proposal that threatens to destroy the quality of life in Upper Freehold and Allentown. The disgraceful idea of jamming 2 million square feet of industrial warehouses into a rural area with narrow, two-lane country roads is completely out of all common sense or proportion.

Every Monmouth County taxpayer should be concerned about the destruction of county roads that will be caused by the constant flow of 325 tractor trailers for which parking spaces are planned. No one - least of all the project developer - has volunteered to pay for these increased costs.

Every county taxpayer also should be warned that with no local police force, Upper Freehold is banking on the sheriff's department to provide the necessary policing of the industrial warehouse complex. Other area complexes have seen criminal activity that generates 2,000 police calls annually, and yet again, no one has addressed these costs.

It is simply unconscionable that one of the largest real estate holding corporations in the world - Japan's Mitsubishi Estate - is cynically dangling rosy promises of property tax revenue in front of taxpayers hungry for relief, knowing full well that it will be far outweighed by the true costs of providing municipal and public safety services to this industrial warehouse complex.

It is equally shocking that Bob Abrams, a former township official, can say with a straight face that "there should be virtually no impact on services," even though we have seen other area towns like South Brunswick literally go into debt paying the costs of hosting these facilities.

Thankfully, it isn't too late. Despite claims by Mr. Abrams that approval of this project is a foregone conclusion, the developer has requested a variance to reduce the scope and size of one of the measures it previously touted as a way to protect the community. There's literally no reason in the world to put the interests of the developer ahead of the interests of neighbors by granting the request.

Micah Rasmussen

Allentown