Letter: Resident Concerned Over What Impact Trinity Hall School Will Have On Chapel Hill Neighborhood

Dear Mike,

I am a concerned citizen who will be directly affected by the proposed development in my neighborhood of the Trinity Hall School.

I am concerned about the affect this will have on my taxes, on the traffic through my street, and the traffic on Chapel Hill Road, which I must travel every day in order to get my Autistic daughter to her special needs program at Navesink School.

If you have ever had the opportunity to see what the traffic is in the older, historic, established neighborhood surrounding Navesink School, as I have, you will surely get a taste of what the development of a full-blown high school will have on Chapel Hill Road. It’s not safe by any stretch on Monmouth Avenue when the parents, buses, and walkers are trying to access the school. You can see it on the faces of the exasperated crossing guards as they desperately try and stop traffic to allow people to cross safely. You can see it on the faces of the parents with their kids who have to cross the school’s driveway in front of cars with drivers who seem oblivious to everything but quickly exiting and getting out of there.

The neighbors in the houses down the side streets have actually put large rocks on their lawns to keep parents from parking there to do drop off and pick up. Doesn’t work. They park there anyway. The traffic moves very fast, and drivers rarely slow down in the vicinity of the school.

I am sure that everyone who lives steps from that school are more than grateful when pick up and drop off are over for the day. Until the next day, when it happens all over again.

Another issue with this proposed development is we don’t even have city sewer lines run in parts of that neighborhood. In order to run the massive lines for the school, Chapel Hill Road will have to be torn open and lines installed. What will that do to the almost capacity pumping station on Sleepy Hollow, which will also be taxed by the building that will very soon commence on the Town Center site.

There is also a planned access road that will be squeezed in between two existing homes on Stavola Road. The construction of it alone will turn this once-quiet neighborhood into a construction vehicle circus. And will it truly be used for only “emergency vehicles” as Trinity claims? Or could it eventually become a cut-through for parents, students, delivery trucks, and garbage haulers? Do we really want to find out?

And how about the adjoining farmland, that belongs to the relative of the person where Trinity is now proposed. It is no secret that Trinity would like to grow to become a boarding school. What’s to stop them from acquiring that farmland and building dorms?

If this were a country, or a culture, where girls were denied a good education, then I could see a need for a single-sex school, but this not true. Our daughters do not risk their lives every day to attend class. I don’t know of one of these girls who has to worry about getting shot on their school bus for speaking out for the rights of the girls of their community to get educated.

Recently, my neighborhood received the Trinity group’s mass mailing propaganda. What I like best about the 'love us, love our school' packet is the cover letter. Paragraph three mentions their "intention" to leave over half the property undeveloped. Well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Then, there's, "We have offered a widening of the Chapel Hill roadway, a turning lane, and perhaps, most importantly, enough roadways, parking, and holding zones on the site to adequately accommodate the busiest anticipated traffic periods each weekday morning and afternoon." Followed by, "We hope that we have your support now...(or will) decrease your concerns to some degree...."

How can you “decrease concerns” about plans to completely decimate our neighborhood, our land, our country road, our sanity, and the serene peace and quiet that have been our lives for many years, never mind infiltrating our lives for months as this goes on, and for years to come?

By contrast, the 19 houses, which the land owner already has permission to build, and which that land is also zoned for, would each require a few feet of driveway, and a single two-way street. There was no need for a traffic or feasibility study, no need to change the complexion of the neighborhood, or add a turning lane or widen Chapel Hill Road. Further, the proposal did not receive opposition from the surrounding neighbors; in fact, he could have broken ground and started to build years ago.

We are by far one of the most affluent of towns, with a better quality public education system, and a higher calibre of teacher than most of the surrounding townships. And didn’t we all just pass a referendum to repair our public schools?

We are sorely lacking in nothing here, except the diminishing, precious open spaces that made Middletown the beautiful place that is was when we moved here and started families. We are all getting older as well. Has anyone consider the impact of at least 200 additional driving teens and what that will do to the locals just trying to get out of their driveways?

In closing, we don’t want this school, and do not plan to send our children to this school.

Perhaps the founders, to be the good neighbors they claim to want to be, can work with the local, established, truly Catholic schools to meet the needs of their students. These same schools have seen a decrease in their enrollments as have all the public schools, Our latest census figures for our town show we have had zero population growth.. Perhaps they can revisit any of their 30 initial search locations again.

And for all they speak of empowering women, their Head Board Chair is a man.

Go figure.

Margie R.
Member of the Chapel Hill Neighborhood Group