Public put out by quick
end to planning meeting

Someone, it seems to us, was asleep at the wheel of the Manalapan Planning Board prior to the evening of Sept. 20. On that night the board was scheduled to hold a public hearing on what has become a major issue in the community — the proposed rezoning of certain tracts of farmland.

Without discussing the merits of the plan here, it is obvious a lot of people have something to say about the proposal. Many of those people believed they would have a chance to be heard by municipal officials on the evening of Sept. 20.

Given the catastrophic terrorist attack that befell America on Sept. 11, representatives of the citizens group Farmers Against Rezoning Manalapan (FARM) said they made a formal request to the Planning Board on Sept. 14 asking that the Sept. 20 meeting be postponed based on the tragedy itself, the period of mourning the nation was in and due to memorial services scheduled that evening.

Coral Silsbe, a representative of FARM, said she was told the board members were polled and had decided not to cancel the meeting.

Frankly, we don’t have a problem with that decision. Life, as our state and national leaders have said, must go on, even in the wake of the monstrous attack that was launched upon the nation.

Subsequent to the board’s decision not to cancel the meeting came the announcement that the president would address the nation at 9 p.m. Sept. 20. At that point a decision was apparently made to begin the meeting at 8 p.m., then take a break at 9 p.m. to watch the president and then resume the meeting.

Given the fact that Americans did not know exactly what the president was going to say in a speech that surely ranks as one of the most important in the last hundred years, people should not have had to choose between watching the speech at home or in the middle of a municipal meeting.

The start-stop-start idea almost guaranteed that after watching the president’s speech no one’s mind would be on the business still at hand.

And that’s how it turned out.

At any rate, the meeting began at 8 p.m. with the township’s planner discussing the rezoning proposal.

At 9 p.m., the meeting was adjourned and those present watched the president speak for 45 minutes. Following the president’s address, the board took a short break. Sometime around 10 p.m. the board members returned to the meeting room and announced to all present that the meeting would be adjourned until Oct. 3.

Residents who had taken the time to come to the meeting with the intention of addressing the issue of farmland rezoning were inconvenienced; no doubt, some had paid for attorneys and other professionals to be on hand.

Although the idea of stopping the meeting to watch the speech may have been well intentioned, it turned out to be a lesson for the Planning Board in how not to plan something.