To the Editor:

Our town’s leaders appear to have agreed with the University that growth is good. Both parties seem indifferent to the harm their policies are inflicting upon our town and our residents.

No longer content with serving only our nation, the University proposes to expand its campus to encompass the land between Carnegie Lake and Route 1. Its leaders promote the plan as “sustainable” and offer as proof a contemplated pedestrian bridge over the lake. What they omit to say is that their expansion plans will make a distant memory of the walkable campus that, as recently as a few decades ago, made our University so distinctively intimate. Not insignificantly, their plan will also increase the stress on our town’s housing prices and limited infrastructure.

Our Council, meanwhile, manages our town like a charity for non-residents and public sector employees. Unlike most charities, however, theirs is funded with compulsory levies on our residents. We have long paid the inflated salaries and pensions of our public sector employees. We will shortly be required to add the costs of a school expansion necessitated by our town’s “welcoming” policy. Adding to those costs are the increased taxes that result when land values are driven up by the apartment blocks our leaders approve as sources of low rent apartments. If present trends continue, we residents will soon be required to substitute a paid fire department for the volunteers whose generosity and civic mindedness has thus far spared us that expense. We will also be required to pay for, and to accommodate, the widening of our streets and the expansion of our water and sewer facilities.

Rising taxes and higher densities are threatening our core residential neighborhoods, many of which are still predominately single-family. Our leaders decry the diminished affordability of our housing, but ignore the harm their policies are inflicting upon our formerly affordable neighborhoods. Their attitude seems to be that residents who have trouble paying their ever rising property taxes should either move to less expensive communities or move from single-family houses into apartments. Worse, there seems to be sympathy for the notion that single-family residences are to be disparaged as evidence of selfishness and greed.

Higher density, of course, creates modestly increased tax revenues — but at what cost and to what purpose? Any fair reading of the evidence proves that population growth is not good for current residents. Population growth is expensive. It is destructive of long-established neighborhoods. It creates intractable problems and limits the interaction of residents with our governing bodies. It is environmentally unfriendly and ultimately unsustainable. Which begs the question, why do our ever-so-correct leaders continue to advocate and enable the transformation of our formerly little town into a mid-sized city? One might also ask why our residents petition to reduce assessments instead of fighting to change the policies which cause assessed values to rise.

Peter Marks

Moore Street