586 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



In the past ten years, our township has lost its rural shape and is, at 

 this moment, passing from a suburban to an urban complex. Build- 

 ing pressures have consequently had their impact on zoning and 

 planning board decisions. 



Raritan Township is currently acquiring some 170 acres of open 

 space. We have the concurrence of county and State planning 

 agencies and have received grants-in-aid (20 percent) under title 

 VII, section 701, Open Space Provision, in addition to New Jersey's 

 50-50 matching fund under the 1961 Green Acres Act. 



My point is this: evolution in our program was slow; our board 

 saw the need only when it existed and was pressing. Our plans are 

 not designed to get ahead, but only to catch up. Catching up is now 

 costly. Many areas of natural beauty and virgin woodland are 

 gone forever. 



I urge that special emphasis be given to educating and informing 

 the policymaking nonprofessional planning, zoning, and recreation 

 boards in the more than 1 00,000 towns and hamlets in this country. 

 The interested citizens who comprise these policymaking boards need 

 information and education to make them effective to give them the 

 necessary foresight. 



Towns and hamlets make up our counties and the counties form 

 our States. These small municipalities are the battleground on 

 which the open space and natural beauty issues will be won or lost. 



E. G. SHERBURNE, Jr. I feel that the recommendations made by 

 the panel on Citizen Action were most worthwhile and commendable. 

 However, the scope of their considerations was too limited to permit 

 significant impact on many of the problems which the natural beauty 

 program will face. 



The Citizen Action panel dealt with certain well-defined prob- 

 lems where the difficulty lies almost entirely in obtaining action 

 control of billboards, hiding auto junkyards, or beautifi cation of city 

 slums. As a result, the main theme of the panel seemed to focus on 

 the means of getting the public and Federal, State, and local govern- 

 ments to act. 



The major problems in citizen action for the natural beauty pro- 

 gram lie, however, in areas which were not discussed by the Citizen 

 Action panel and which were only touched upon by the Education 

 panel. These problems require action which involve decisions to 

 act, evaluation of complicated alternatives, and the possible costs 

 and benefits of each as well as technical skills to carry out or super- 



