By Christopher Leusner
For the past decade, Middle Township has worked tirelessly to maintain the character of our community while embracing responsible development and supporting coastal resiliency projects along our shorelines. Following the process laid out by the New Jersey State Planning Commission, we have implemented careful zoning and planning laws while developing our master plan to achieve Town Centers designation.
By concentrating growth in our main corridors and embracing smart growth principles, we aim to create a more sustainable and livable Middle Township.
In May 2023, Middle Township’s Town Centers designation was approved by the State Planning Commission with an 11-1 vote — a huge win for our community. The one dissenting vote, from the Department of Environmental Protection, objected to certain sites we included.
Ironically, we had agreed to more density on some of these same sites to settle a lawsuit from another state agency regarding affordable housing. This contradiction highlights a broader problem of state agencies working against each other — classic big government dysfunction with no coordination toward common goals. And as a result, our residents suffer.
After the May 2023 State Planning Commission vote to adopt our plan, the DEP by its own rules was required to accept, reject or propose alternate center boundaries within 90 days. Today is day 496, and still no action by the DEP. I guess the regulations only apply when the DEP decides they should be applied.
DEP’s NJ PACT-REAL rules will undo much of the hard work Middle Township and others put into our master plan and Town Center designation. The proposed rules use controversial sea level rise projections to regulate our land use, which could place more than half of Middle Township in an “inundation risk zone” and close the three-quarters into climate-adjusted flood zones, all based on dubious predictions 75 years into the future.
These 1,000 pages of proposed regulations would impose costly burdens on property owners, diminish land values and threaten our township’s ratables base.
The consequences of these regulations will be especially devastating for our most vulnerable citizens. The increased costs of complying with these burdensome regulations will drive up the price of home ownership, putting affordable housing further out of reach for those who need it most.
First-time homebuyers and working families already struggling to buy or renovate a home will be hit hardest. These citizens are the backbone of our coastal economy, which fuels the state treasury with hundreds of millions of dollars in tourism and commercial fisheries tax revenues.
Additionally, municipalities will be burdened with the significantly higher costs of building and maintaining infrastructure in these newly created inundation risk zones and expanded climate-adjusted flood hazard areas. This will increase the tax burden on our residents, many of whom are already stretched thin.
We understand the need for actions related to coastal resiliency, but these proposed regulations are extreme. We demand that these regulations be reconsidered through the legislative process — with input from the people who live here, not bureaucrats in Trenton.
Middle Township remains committed to protecting both our environment and our economic future, and we’ll fight for the interests of our residents every step of the way.
Christopher Leusner is the mayor of Middle Township.
