##M:[more]##I’ve lived in West Windsor for almost 17 years. I moved here because of the great schools, the relative proximity to New York so that I could spend more time with my kids, and the general kid friendly environment.
During that time, I’ve been a soccer coach for eight years, soccer league manager for six years, baseball coach for six years, basketball coach for three years, Grover Middle School Site Based Council Co-chair for two years and much more. I do this because I love working with our kids and doing all I can to enable them to have a great time growing up. I hope this gives me some “street cred” to be an advocate on their behalf.
What’s important to our kids?
Great schools
Friends
Safe streets
Low crime
Recreation options
Let’s look at the impact to each with the proposed Transit Hub.
Great schools: We have them now. How would they be impacted by the addition of 760 more kids? Yes, I’m aware the developer has put forth numbers between 30 and 300 more kids. In reality 760 is a conservative estimate. Here’s the math: 200 low to moderate housing units at 2 to 3 bedrooms each – + 400 kids, 600 unrestricted condos and apartments at .6 kids each – + 360 kids.
And this doesn’t include the projected kid growth from other developments such as Toll Brothers. If you look at West Windsor’s average household size of 3.36 people/family, this development will add over 1,”000 kids. Some may say the kid rates are too high, but think realistically about it — if you are a single young person working in NY would you live in Hoboken or West Windsor? What this development will attract is families with children or planning to have children soon.
This kid influx is roughly the size of Town Center Elementary School. So, now what do we do with another entire school worth of kids? We could overcrowd our schools — bad idea. We could build another school — costs a lot of money, but OK we do it. Now what do we do — it is sort of like having a sports league with an odd number of teams. We would need to do a massive realignment of how we configure our schools. Many kids would get moved from their current school progression. What a mess to figure out. What a bad impact to our kids.
The school shuffles will wreak havoc on our children’s school friend system. From my time on the Site Based Council, I learned that one of the most important determinants of a child’s success in school is the friendships they have — or do not have. This realignment and elimination of the natural school progression will mangle the friendship bonds our kids create in school as some will be separated from their friends. And, yes, I’m aware they can make new friends, but this is a ton of anxiety and risk for our kids.
Safe Streets: Let’s do the math – an additional 2,”000 cars of parking space, and additional 2,”000 people racing to the trains on our streets at the time our kids are waiting for the bus. A seven story office complex filled with 1,”700 people — another 1,”700 cars on our streets. A six station bus depot — you make the call on how safely they drive. 1,”500 more cars with the new high density residents. This puts our children at much higher risk of injury or death.
Low Crime: Look at Metro Park’s statistics versus what we have now in West Windsor. Enough said.
Recreation Options: Those involved in management of our sports programs are well aware that we are starved for more sports related facilities and fields. Our basketball leagues start at 8 in the morning and run until 4. Soccer fields are jammed. Baseball fields are at a premium — especially if there are any spring showers.
Getting practice time is very difficult, with some teams practicing until 9:30 on a school night because there are not enough practice areas. And, even with that, many times we just have a slice of a facility as opposed to something large enough to run a decent practice. Now add a bunch more kids and teams into the mix. The quality of our kid’s recreation activities will be diminished.
If we are to re-think the train station area, what can we do for our children?
— Create a large parking facility off Route 1 with a Dinky train stop. This could feed commuters to the train without them driving into the middle of our town. The commuters will also have a quicker trip because they will be on a main traffic artery. This would actually reduce the amount of traffic into our town.
— Sidewalks along both sides of 571. Very needed and should have been done a long time ago.
— Buy some of the land around the train station that we are concerned developers will buy and turn it into open space for recreation activities. Build a three-court sports facility in the area to meet our sports-related needs.
Mike Baxter
6 Landing Lane, Princeton Junction
