Hopewell Township mayor offers to set up dialogue with the key players
By:John Tredrea
By the time the Hopewell Township Committee got the petition, there were 24 more signatures on it, bringing the total to 499.
"Remember, 499 people is 499 votes," Timberlane Middle School area resident Fred Babinowich told the governing body when he gave the committee a copy of the petition during its March 1 meeting.
The petition, signed by residents of the central township opposed to a proposed 10-field, 225-space athletic complex on the western end of the grounds of Timberlane, also was given to the Hopewell Valley Regional Board of Education during its Feb. 20 meeting. There were 475 signatures on the petition at that time.
The fields on the proposed complex would be used by nonschool groups, such as the Hopewell Valley Soccer Association and Lacrosse League, as well as by school teams. The $2 million project, which requires approval of the township Planning Board before it can be built, would be paid for by the Hopewell Valley Recreation Roundtable, a nonprofit organization formed several years ago to help local recreational efforts.
The proposal has not been put on the Planning Board’s agenda docket as yet, as the proposal is still tied up in the board’s Application Review Committee (ARC). Until township law, ARC must declare a development application complete before it may advance to the full Planning Board.
"We want an open and honest dialogue … we feel we haven’t been listened to," Dr. Babinowich said on behalf of the opponents of the proposed athletic complex during the March 1 township meeting. He said the signatures on the petition came from an area of the township roughly bordered by Dublin Road to the east, Bear Tavern Road to the west, Route 546 to the south and Woosamonsa Road to the north. He said the signatures on the petition represented "85 percent of the homes" in the area of the township encompassed by above-named borders.
Noting that he has coached soccer and baseball in local youth leagues himself, Dr. Babinowich said neither he nor other opponents of the complex, which would be built on 48 acres, have any quarrel with "well-intended" efforts to give youngsters recreational opportunities. Rather, he said, the concern of opponents stem from their belief that the complex would have and unacceptably detrimental impact on their quality of life, due to increased traffic, night lighting of some fields and other factors.
"We want the proposal withdrawn until we come up with a viable compromise … and we want a deed restriction against night lighting," Dr. Babinowich said at the March 1 meeting, during which no one spoke in favor of the proposed athletic complex.
Mayor Marylou Ferrara made a suggestion amenable to Dr. Babinowich, which was that she would try to convene a meeting of key players in the months-old and intense debate of the proposed athletic complex. The meeting would be held in the hope of reaching, or at least moving toward, some kind of consensus.
In addition to one or two members each of the Hopewell Township Committee and Recreation Roundtable, the meeting suggested by the mayor would include members of SAFE-T (Stop Athletic Fields at Timberlane, a grass roots group of which Dr. Babinowich is a member) and the school board, which several months ago unanimously approved the scheme under which the Roundtable would pay for construction of the complex on school-owned land.