Consider the worst case

With land-swap setbacks, Monroe should consider plan B for new high school

By: Hank Kalet
   It may be time for Monroe to start considering a plan B for a much-needed high school.
   That’s because a land-swap plan expected to provide the district with a 35-acre parcel in Thompson Park, keeping Monroe from having to spend scarce economic resources on land, is turning into a boondoggle of epic proportions, a four-year effort that has so far failed to yield fruit and that now appears in jeopardy.
   The latest setback comes via the state Department of Environmental Protection, which ordered additional archeological testing to determine whether the site was home to a 18th-century Indian mission known as Bethel Indian Town. If it is, the DEP could deny final approval for the land swap.
   The district has been awaiting approval for Monroe Township to give Middlesex County several parcels totaling 175 acres in exchange for the Green Acres-protected park tract, which is located across School House Road from the current high school on Perrineville Road. The township would then turn over the park property to the school board.
   The swap has conditional approval from the Statehouse Commission, an approval contingent on determining the location of Bethel.
   The swap has been controversial since being proposed in 2003, several months after the defeat of a $112 million referendum that would have moved the high school to Applegarth Road across from Applegarth Middle School. Residents of Perrineville Road objected, as did several of the state’s largest environmental groups, but Mayor Richard Pucci, the Township Council and the school board viewed the swap plan as the best chance to get a high school built.
   I agreed at the time and still believe the park parcel offers the best and most cost-effective way to provide classroom space while making use of existing facilities, such as the Richard P. Marasco Performing Arts Center and the football fields.
   Voters agreed, as well, approving an $82.9 referendum in December 2003 that was based on the plan.
   The township began the application process, winning approval from the county freeholder board and the Statehouse Commission and now awaiting final approval from the DEP.
   The problem, however, is that there is a dispute over the location of the Bethel mission, which historians consider to be an important part of the region’s history. The township’s historian, John Katerba, said he believes the mission is northwest of the park parcel, while others believe it at least partially overlaps the high school site.
   The issue seemed to be settled when Richard Grubb and Associates, the archeological firm hired by the township to study the property, issued a report last month. It said the mission, a small village at which Presbyterian Minister David Brainerd converted a number of Leni Lenape Indians to Christianity — was likely not on the proposed high school site.
   Enter the DEP. It issued a letter earlier this month to the township saying that the Grubb report "presents extensive, but not entirely convincing evidence to support" its conclusions. The DEP agreed that "the heart of the Bethel settlement was most likely located some distance to the north of the project area," but that "it may not have been as far away as the Grubb report suggests, and that it may have been close enough that outlying parts of the settlement may have been within the project area." The DEP has ordered the township and Grubb to do more extensive studies.
   If the DEP’s reading of the current evidence is correct and Grubb and the township cannot provide more extensive and "convincing evidence" to prove their contention, then the swap could be rejected. That would leave the school board to start over nearly from scratch.
   That would force the board to begin a site search and increase the cost of building a high school that already was underfunded by more than $36 million — and this does not take into account the need to expand the original plans. That would be a disaster for the district, especially because getting the township’s majority senior population to back a new referendum will not be easy. And it only gets worse the longer we wait.
   Of course, this could have been avoided had voters, seniors in particular, backed the original referendum. But that didn’t happen.
   A less rosy sales job by the mayor and council might also have given the school board pause, though that is hindsight — and a lesson, I think, for other towns and school districts that might consider swapping properties with Green Acres.
   The point is that the district needs a new high school and it needs one quickly — the high school population is estimated to hit 2,250 by 2011, far exceeding the current building’s capacity.
   I am still hopeful that Richard Grubb and Associates can move quickly with its study and that the DEP will just as quickly, and favorably.
   But I’m not optimistic.
   That’s why I’ve come around to the idea of developing a legitimate plan B that can be acted on quickly. It just doesn’t make sense to wait any longer.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected] and his blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com