We the residents of New Haven are expressing our opinion about an issue of great concern to the Beaver Hills neighborhood in New Haven. Our neighborhood borders Southern Connecticut State University. We have been good neighbors with SCSU for many years. Many of us have lived here for well over 30 years. Some of us grew up here and are now raising families of our own. The SCSU Campus Plan includes construction of a parking garage immediately adjacent to our neighborhood, and to the nature preserve, Beaver Pond Park, which gives our area its name. We have devoted a lot of time and energy over the past few years to improve the quality of Beaver Pond Park. We have received assistance in this effort from groups at SCSU and Yale University. The Park has become a lovely place for folks in the neighborhood to spend time and reflect. Our neighborhood is a peaceful place to live in the midst of a vibrant city. It is not without the problems that the city at large faces, but has a strong sense of community. We work together to keep Beaver Hills a safe and pleasant place to live. From its birth, Beaver Hills has been an economically and culturally integrated community, with all the benefits and challenges that ensue from such diversity. We have families from all walks of life. The construction by SCSU of a parking garage in our community, regardless of size, is an affront to Beaver Hills and would do much to destroy what we have worked so hard to build. The Environmental Impact Statement documents the threats to the Beaver Pond. The threats are real, in the form of pollutants, runoff, and destruction of natural habitat. They are also aesthetic, injecting a garage and hundreds of cars into a nature preserve setting. A garage in this location would inevitably draw more traffic through our neighborhood. We already have too many cars driving too quickly through our residential streets. This would only serve to worsen that situation, as drivers would fan out to side streets to reduce their travel time. This increases the risk to our residents and in particular to our children. We urgently ask you to withdraw any plan to construct a parking garage in this location. Our neighborhood stands together in opposition to this.