How To Make A Downtown Without Apartments

builds apartments over –or near – these commercial areas so that the businesses will have built-in customers. This smart money is really stupid. This isn’t how the world works anymore. You can order something from Amazon or a big box store and have it delivered that day.

Convenience is king, and you can’t get more convenient than never leaving your home. That’s why apartments over commercial establishments aren’t a slam dunk anymore.

What a downtown really needs is businesses next to more businesses.

Our leaders need to zone to create jobs. It’s no secret that the Parkway is packed in the morning as everyone goes to work – because everyone is working somewhere else.

Instead of having apartment buildings, build office space. Entice corporations to move their headquarters in. If you want to build up your town, you have to give your people jobs.

If you have 100 people working downtown, they will be spending more money than 100 people living downtown.

I’ve worked in enough offices to know that workers are dying to find an excuse to take a break. A coffee shop on the first floor of an office complex will do way more business than an apartment complex. Why? Because workers will be stepping out to get coffee all day long. “Hey, boss, I’m going downstairs. You want something?”

If you’re home, you might not go to the elevator, go to the bottom floor, then go to

What Is Real Bullying?

Editor’s note: This letter is a response to the article “Let’s Drive Away Bullying,” published June 17 in The Berkeley Times.

Bullying is very subjective, which makes it hard to pinpoint unless it’s obvious. Calling someone a name? Eh. Saying unpleasant things to someone? Eh. Both of those things require the “victims” to grow a thicker skin that will enable them to get through life much easier, otherwise you will go through life as a “victim” and never really reach your full potential.

So, what is real bullying?

I would say when someone

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People don’t usually go out to lunch, or order lunch, when they’re home. But they do very often when they’re at work.

If you live over a restaurant, you’re going to have bugs and mice getting into your home. That won’t happen as much in an office complex because there aren’t pantries for vermin to infiltrate.

Entertainment is usually part of the “downtown” feel. Theaters, small concert venues and other things to do create jobs and a nightlife. When the office crowd leaves, the night shift comes in. They’re not competing for parking with the people who live there all

Letters To The Editor

is constantly harassed by someone or a group of people using harsh words. Hitting or pushing someone? No. That is battery. Making threats of bodily harm? No. Harassment? No. Stalking? No. Mounting an online campaign of harassment? No. All of those things are prohibited by law and the perpetrators of such crimes should be charged as such.

The problem with our schools, as we recently saw at (Central Regional High School), is that they do nothing about it and allow small situations to grow into bigger situations, and let’s be honest here, school administrations are the biggest bullies of all. Ask any parent who has complained what happens to them or their children, or simply wants proper services put in place to better educate them.

That people believe that they can “drive away bul- the time.

Additionally, if you’re living in an apartment, you’re spending more than $1,600 a month on rent. You’re not going to be a consumer. You don’t have the money to support your local businesses.

Small businesses create wealth. Apartments only create wealth for one person – the owner of the building.

Due to a lawsuit many years ago, every town has to set aside a certain number of affordable housing units every time there’s a development. Towns are assessed using some convoluted formula and told how many units to set aside. Commercial development works into the equation, too. So, if there’s a huge office building, the town’s affordable housing number would go up and those units would have to be placed somewhere.

That’s why towns need to have truly affordable units. The state’s definition of affordable is laughable, way more expensive than the poor can really afford. Therefore, towns should create one-bedroom homes.

Instead of filling a downtown area with a few businesses and tons of 3-bedroom apartments, consider this instead: Rows of small, accessible, locally-owned small businesses. Throw on a layer or two of offices. Then top it all off with a floor of one-bedroom apartments. That’s how you make a downtown.

Chris Lundy News Editor

lying” is ludicrous. That is never going to happen because it’s built into the human condition. Can we reduce it? Sure. Eradicate it? No.

The best defense is to raise your children to be good people, to be leaders, to do the right thing, to grow a thick skin, and learn to ignore the (expletive deleted) of the world. That’s how you get around bullying, not by playing the victim. Will even good kids do stupid things? Absolutely, but try another course in raising them instead of coddling and helicopter parenting, don’t accept trophies and awards that they didn’t earn, and stop living your life vicariously through your children. Let them live their own lives because they aren’t you and they will never be you and both they and the world will be a better place when they grow into their own selves without constantly having to live up to the ridiculous expectations of parents who are bitter about not being who they wanted to be because their parents did to them what they are doing to their own kids.

Stanley C. Bayville

The Supreme Court Has A Legitimacy Crisis

Supreme Court decisions impact every facet of American life. Unfortunately, those decisions don’t reflect the will of the people.

Mitch McConnell’s rightwing majority Court gutted voting rights, opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate money in our elections, struck down gun safety laws, and limited the government’s ability to protect our air and water. Since they overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion has been effectively banned (with extremely limited exceptions) in fourteen states. Nearly 1 in 3 Americans have lost access to abortion care.

This can’t go on. We need to move away from these types of extremely partisan rulings and restore the legitimacy of the Court by passing the Judiciary Act to expand and rebalance the bench.

Congress has changed the size of the Supreme Court seven times already in our nation’s history - and they must do it again to ensure that the justices protect our freedoms, not advance their own radical political agendas. It’s time for Congress to pass the Judiciary Act.

Pamela Talbot Toms River