Editor, Gazette-Journal:

My wife and I moved to Gloucester in part to escape a city government that was mostly deaf to the wishes of its citizens. Big developers and big government took precedence over citizens and, sometimes, common sense. The continuing discussions concerning the replacement for Page Middle School have convinced me that these tendencies are alive and well in the county.

Ever since that terrible day when the tornado cut through the school, the argument has been over the location and the cost for a replacement. County citizens overwhelmingly requested that the new school be built on the old location. Instead, the school board, blinded by their delusions of grandeur, chose to destroy a pristine forest/wetlands area directly across the road. Myriad reasons have been given for this choice, none of which justifies the change in location or the added expense.

One reason was the supposed contamination of the old school site, which would be too expensive to mitigate. Yet last week, one school board member, in justifying the new location, said that the old location was a prime business site. Well, if it’s too expensive to use for a school site, who will pay to make it usable for business?

My personal objection to the new location is the unnecessary destruction of forest/wetlands. Wetlands are always important to the government, until they find a better use for them. Then they can be destroyed and replaced with a man-made pond, which the government claims is equal to the wetlands. In this case, the school board says the wetlands will be preserved and used as an educational area for the students. What are their plans—give everyone boots and bug spray and tell them to take a hike?

In all the talk about the new school, nothing has been said about improving the educational experience. The emphasis is on how great the new facilities will be. I wonder if it would have been better to rebuild on the old site and use the money saved to provide a pay increase for the teachers.

When this is all said and done, and the school board has ignored the wishes of the citizens, destroyed a pristine wooded area, and built themselves a complex that they can brag about at their next convention, what will we have? Higher property taxes for the citizens, underpaid teachers, a destroyed forest, and a wetlands area trampled by the boots of the students getting their “educational experience.”

Bill Wallace

Gloucester, Va.