Two former Rockland fire officials are speaking out tonight about their concerns with alleged overdevelopment in the Town of Ramapo and the high number of children being struck in the community by vehicles.

“It’s a bad combination. A deadly combination,” says former Rockland County Fire Coordinator Gordon Wren.

As News 12 has reported, five children have died in Rockland County this year after they were hit by vehicles - and in Ramapo, at least two dozen kids have been hit and injured.

Wren says, in Ramapo, overdevelopment is partially to blame.

“More innocent children are going to die and it’s the town’s responsibility,” says Wren. “You can’t create an urban environment on infrastructure designed for rural-suburban. It's just a disaster.”

Drivers involved in several of the pedestrian incidents were ticketed or charged as a result, and in other cases, authorities said they were accidents. News 12 has also reported on videos of speeding buses and cars in the community and has been in neighborhoods where children were seen playing along narrow, busy streets.

Wren says he's pushed back against projects that he alleges were given variances when there’s not enough parking.

“If the zoning board says you should have 100 parking spaces, they’ll give them a variance to provide 15 and now you have people parking on the roads,” says Wren. “The ZBA is giving these variances out like candy on Halloween.”

Former Spring Valley Fire Police Capt. Rabbi Justin Schwartz echoes concerns and says there’s nowhere for kids living in many of the new multifamily housing units to safely play.

“There’s no playgrounds,” says Schwartz. “Why isn’t the zoning allowing play areas, safe areas? It’s nuts. Totally nuts.”

Ramapo Town Supervisor Michael Specht denies any overdevelopment and says if anything, the community is dealing with a housing crisis.

“The claims of ‘overdevelopment’ are misguided and do not reflect the reality that we are dealing with. Rockland County recently commissioned a study that shows that we have a housing crisis due to a lack of available housing units,” says Specht. “The number of permits issued for new housing units in the Town in recent years has not kept pace with the demand, and the challenge we have undertaken is to increase available housing stock to meet this need. At the same time, we have embarked on an unprecedented program of improving our infrastructure, adding 79,300-square-feet of sidewalks just within the past year alone, and working as quickly as possible on installing new streetlights, traffic signals and street improvements to problem locations on town roads.”

Schwartz and Wren, however, say it’s not enough.

“These buildings are gigantic. They don’t have backyards; some don’t have sidewalks,” says Wren. “If they really want to address this problem and all the other problems, they should stop this kind of development.”

Specht says the remarks are inaccurate and from people with hostile agendas, and that the town remains committed to the safety and well-being of residents.

According to data compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety, there were 177 pedestrian children killed nationwide in vehicle accidents in 2020. Safekids.org reports that number increased to 385 children in 2021, with an estimated 9,257 children who were not fatally injured nationwide that same year.