I agree--As I'm sure you've seen in the past, my position has been that the majority of people on the other side of town don't see the $40-60 increase in their taxes as "worth" their time to attend these meetings. People are busy, understandably. It seems minor to them.

This is why I have always said:

"You don't even commit a $40-60 annual donation to the ambulance corps that might save your life; why would you sit back and commit to a mandatory $40-60 annual donation to a church full of people who don't even live here?"

I think most people understand what I'm getting at when I put it that way.

They also don't see this as affecting them traffic-wise, which I can understand (although certainly to some degree traffic would have to be felt all over town with that many cars.)

I feel those folks also don't understand why we're so upset about such issues because they live in an overdeveloped area and we "never had a problem" with their overdevelopment when it happened. This, to me, is an irrational thought, but common among many who speak out--not so much "for the church" but "against" our opposition of the church.

Many who write in the newspaper discounting our concerns, list their town as "Rockaway" and, if you look them up in the phone book, they're either in the boro or over by fleetwood. So while they stand to lose the $40-60 per year in taxes, they don't understand what the fuss is all about.

We in the Green Pond Road area have a unique situation, for which we have paid dearly; most others can't understand why we value it so much. Nor can they understand why we're so adamantly against the beginning-of-the-end of our lifestlye.

It may not be a large percentage of the entire township but I'd bet good money it's the vast majority of this end of the township who are strongly against the church.

We must continue to attend--

Potentially a lack of attendance could be seen as a lack of concern; we need to be there to support our officials and also to draw further attention to this case--for the sake not only of our Township, but for the other townships, now and in the future, that count on Rockaway's success to be a landmark case in RLUIPA defeat!

If VORT had never called our attention to this and no one had ever looked into the magnitude of this project, we'd all be shaking our heads as we sit in traffic and wonder where all these cars came from.

"How did this happen?? What's happening to our nice quiet town?"

THIS time we have a chance to keep it from happening.

As someone else mentioned, we MUST put pressure on our officials to revamp the master plan to see future problems like this before they happen!

To do these things we must stay involved.

Please come to the meetings and urge your neighbors to.

Please email me and I'll get you flyers to put in mailboxes in your neighborhood (you can do it under cover of the night, I promise it's fun--you'll feel like a teenager!)(OK maybe it's just me who was a really really BAD teenager lol).

Very Cool, Telly! Thanks--I have the file at home and will send it to you. I also have many many many copies I've already made, if it's easier I can drop them by--

Anybody else?