To the Editor:

Hunters Ridge is a large urban development planned to encroach on a quiet and very small rural area where, in Walnut Tree Village, there are 212 Condo units with 350 (plus) elderly residents.

Everyone knows that there is no room for this development, but the most serious and deadly problem of all is the building of this "city" which should take at least two years to accomplish and which will dramatically reduce the speed of traffic.

Among other things, it will inhibit the flow of emergency vehicles so desperately needed to save the lives of the elderly residents.

The slowdown of an emergency vehicle can, indeed, cause a death.

Once the "city" is built, and the movement of traffic permanently slowed, Newtown should experience an increase in deaths and could become a national example of the danger of dumping a "city" on top of a tiny rural area.

Of course, there are also hundreds of nonelderly residents living in the Church Hill Road/Walnut Tree Hill Road area whose lives will also be immeasurably and negatively altered.

Considering all of Newtown's business space still empty and unrented, it makes no sense at all to change the zoning of this area to accommodate such a highly undesirable development.

Betsy Jacobson

Julia Court, Sandy Hook     February 27, 2018