All in All its Just Another Brick in the Wall

Hello,
Last night the zoning board approved the Millville School Board request to build an 8 foot tall wall that will be over 300 feet long to separate the Lakeside Middle school from the mall nearby. This ends a long and contentious battle between the mall's develper Goodman Properties and the Millville Board of Education . As the lawyer representing the school board stated, there was to be more space between the mall and the school. In other words, there was to be a larger natrial buffer between Lakeside Middle School and the mall developer Goodman Properties. Now I do believe this. I do remember while the mall was being developed, the developer cleared more trees since they had "an outdated map" They said it was an accident but we can see that it certainly was no such thing.
Well, I have been pretty skeptical that an 8 foot wall was REALLY necessary. The only reason that this wall come up for zoning board consideration is that 6 feet is the limit and the Board of Education wanted an 8 foot wall. At the zoning hearing, the school board's lawyer and the head of facilities management gave 3 reasons why the wall was needed. They were ranked in this order
1. Noise reduction
2. Blocking view of trucks driving in. (distracts students)
3. SAFETY

Now I admit I was not expecting 2 items to rank above safety. I called it the "racetrack argument" the fact that noise was the #1 reason for building this wall. I think this argument was very clever and it seemed to win over one of the skeptics on the zoning board. Argument #2 convinced others since they school board pointed out there are classrooms facing the mall lot. Safety was not discussed at length but I believe a 6 foot wall would have sufficed. It was conpaired to the walls they build near interstate highways and we all know they look ugly. The Board of Educatoin states they will plant trees to beautify this area. I really don't buy that but time will tell. This $700,000 wall is being paid by Goodman Properties not by the Millville taxpayer. I think the Board of Ed "punished" Goodman for reneiging on their promise to build it years ago. This result will be the Great Wall of Education.
This blog will feature photos of before during and after this project is complete. By the way the vote was 6-1 in favor of this wall