Martin benefit a success
To the editor:
We would like to say thank you to everyone who came out on Saturday to support the "Jane Martin Children’s Benefit Picnic." It was a great success. Thank you to the following for their donations to help this event: all the neighbors in the Old Washington Crossing Estates development, Pennington Presbyterian Church, Nursery School and their families, Pennington Quality Market, ShopRite of Pennington, ShopRite Liquors, Hopewell Valley News, 92.5 WXTU Radio.
A special thank you to the following for everything they did. They helped make this benefit a great success: The PBA, Mike Cseremsak, Tim Fenton, Hopewell Township Police Department, Hopewell Township Public Works, Union Fire and Rescue, Uniformed Firefighters Association, John Marryott and The Band, The Marryott Family, The Williams Family, The Burrows Family, and Sue Lake.
Contributions can still be made payable to: The Jane Martin Children’s Trust Fund, c/o Salomon Smith Barney, attn: David De Dufour, 997 Lenox Drive, Building 3, 2nd Floor, Lawrenceville, 08648.
Dane and Lisa Wood, Titusville
For safety’s sake alone!
The following was written to Hopewell Valley school officials Robert Sopko, John Bach and Kevin Murphy and submitted to the HVN for publication:
As one of the school physicians, I am writing to you about what I consider a serious safety issue.
Since we have been busing student athletes to various fields throughout the district, there have been at least three separate incidents where the athletic trainer has had to leave the high school junior-high school area to evaluate an injury and transfer the person back to the school in his own car.
These injuries did not need the services of our volunteer ambulance crew. This evaluation, also, is not the purview of the coaches nor do they want the added responsibility. However the neck injury and fractured clavicle needed immediate evaluation and triage by our athletic trainer.
It is obvious to me that these events present a serious safety issue to our student-athletes. Also, patently obvious is the liability issue for our trainer and the school system.
I strongly suggest that the Back Timberlane fields be built for these issues alone. If this cannot be done, then an athletic trainer is needed at all our distant practice sites to prevent a serious and unpleasant occurrence.
Ronald D. Grossman, MD, HJG Medical Associates
Not just emotional appeals
To the editor:
The Hopewell Valley school board is continuing to use statistics the way a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination. And not very good support, either.
In his letter of June 6, William Hills calls football "admittedly the most popular sport in America." Yet soccer is by far the biggest youth participation sport in America, basketball has more high school teams, and twice as many people go to baseball games as to football.
What does Mr. Hills mean by "most popular"? At the June 24 board meeting he explained that people say it’s their favorite spectator sport. But I, for one, believe we should have a sports program that’s not about being a spectator, but a doer, an active participant in lifetime fitness.
Meanwhile, on June 20, David Goldschmidt and Steven Wood stated that in the next five years the high school population will go from 1000 students to 1200, and that football would fill the needs of the additional kids. They haven’t done the math: if 25 percent of those extra students participate in sports (a level higher than average), that’s 40 athletes, of whom half would be girls. A 75-boy football team is clearly out of balance with that need: it’s too much, and it’s all for boys.
I encourage my fellow citizens to keep putting pressure on the board to respect the will of the people. If they go against it, they need to back up their decision with checkable, objective facts, not just emotional appeals.
Mary Ellen Curtin, Hopewell Township
Look beyond ourselves
The following was written to several U.S., state and county officials and submitted to the HVN for publication:
Once again we implore you to oppose the ambitious expansion of our Mercer County Airport. The reasons have been delineated and shouted over and over again by so many of your constituents and supporters; so I won’t regale you with them again.
Can one more appeal be made for reasonable levels of tranquility, better health, and a gesture to a world that is increasingly becoming a teeming, polluted, commercial cesspool.
Forget our local comforts; our concern for values, both real and spiritual; our needs and those of our children for clean air, a green environment, the sounds of nature.
Think for once on a cosmic scale, with less selfishness, in behalf of a shrinking earth that cries out for a higher measure of respect, care and protection. Can’t we look beyond ourselves, beyond our political ambitions, to preserve our beautiful Earth and all of its creatures?
Frank J. Cosentino, Titusville
Ten observations about Hopewell
To the editor:
1. I don’t remember voting to have the library moved.
2. I don’t remember voting to have Borough Hall moved.
3. I do recall voting on the football issue. A lot of good it’s done!
4. My suggestion for any tower is to put it up in the already-existing, grandfathered-in church tower. Maybe they could start a nursery school with the money. We need one.
5. What became of the Kooltronics building? It’s a really huge building and I can see municipalizing a small portion for Borough Hall.
6. What is happening at 5 Railroad Place? A lamp studio or a French restaurant?
7. What’s happening opposite the drug store?
8. What became of the very large apothecary chest at the drug store?
9. Will we indeed have two railroad stations, without voting?
10. Hopewell High School held more students in the late 1970s and early 1980s than it does today and everybody had a homeroom and a locker. How come the push for ever-expanding schools? Wish to do away with old people?
Jean Harrington, Hopewell Borough
Voted against estate tax
To the editor:
Farmers and small business owners in central New Jersey have worked hard to build profitable enterprises that they hope one day to pass on to their children. I have heard from many central New Jerseyans who worry that the federal government may take away what they have worked their whole lives to establish.
That is why I recently crossed party lines to vote to permanently repeal the Estate Tax. Under current law, the first $1,000,000 of an heir’s estate is exempt from estate taxes. After that, the value of the estate is taxed at a marginal rate ranging from 18 to 55 percent. These may sound like very high values, but the estate tax places a disproportionate burden on family-owned businesses and farms in central New Jersey where property values and business valuations are far higher than in other parts of the nation.
Without the burden of the estate tax looming over their heads, central New Jersey’s small business owners and farmers can rest assured that their children will not be deprived of the benefit of their family’s lifelong work. As I have done in the past, I will continue to vote for responsible tax cuts that give relief to central New Jersey’s families and small businesses.
Rep. Rush Holt, New Jersey, 12th District
