LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, May 6
By:
Arts Council must pay heed to neighbors
To the editor:
A small group of well-intentioned investors in the proposed Arts Council expansion needs to reconsider whether and how to better direct their funds. They need to understand and heed the origins of the open letter to the Princeton community from Witherspoon-Jackson Association, as well as Princeton Future’s call for reconciliation of interests of Arts Council neighbors, our community and governments.
The Arts Council is attempting to enlarge by more than doubling its original size its incursion into the historic John-Witherspoon neighborhood, which already has the highest density in our town of people, auto traffic, air pollution and many related problems.
The arts program is worthy and may merit enhancement, but the proposed expansion would add to longstanding neighborhood problems that are not now being solved fast enough. Also, the center has yet to serve a significant share of its neighborhood residents, or to become a welcomed facility.
Those who investigate carefully know that many John-Witherspoon residents have specific, deeply held concerns about the previous and latest proposals advanced.
These would degrade their residential environment, even the limited green and trees. Henricks Smith of John Street recently eloquently voiced the same resident objections I’ve heard from friends in five different areas of the J-W neighborhood. "There is great, great disgust about the scale, size (doubling), traffic and other negative impacts of the building The Arts Council is proposing to expand," he said.
Not and never again do J-W residents want the downtown business district to expand into their residential neighborhood any more than The Arts Council board members would welcome such a facility invading their residential neighborhoods.
Zoning and planning rules developed and administered by local boards now prohibit the proposed structure. Any waivers of rules that protect property owners and neighborhoods must be decided fairly to all, especially when they have major and likely unintended consequences. The Arts Council’s means to achieve their ends, despite the rules, are questionable at best.
In the case of community Arts Council vs. a historic Princeton neighborhood, where the council board wants to more than double their facility, more understanding among major participants will be required not just listening before any acceptable accommodation can be achieved. The architects’ design is not the issue.
Len Newton
Dempsey Avenue
Princeton
Opera Festival is grateful for support
To the editor:
As we approach our 20th season, Opera Festival of New Jersey would like to thank several local institutions for their generosity in supporting our work. Without their help, it would be impossible to provide the greater Princeton community with some of the best opera available anywhere each June and July. Specifically, we are deeply grateful to:
Princeton University for generously providing us with facilities for housing, picnicking and entertaining at cost. Through Pam Hersh, the university has helped us make Princeton a cultural center for opera lovers throughout the Northeast.
Palmer Square Management for providing a "Shop for the Arts" where we can sell tickets directly to the public at 5 Hulfish St. Hosting a wide variety of community-centered events at no charge to the public, David Newton and his team make Palmer Square a true town center.
Princeton University Art Museum, where we will be jointly conducting a "Wozzeck" symposium July 8 with the help of Caroline Cassells, curator of education and academic programming, who is concurrently exhibiting fin-de-siècle Austrian and German artists.
NJ Transit, which will be advertising our 20th anniversary season throughout its stations, and Princeton Borough Mayor Marvin Reed for providing us with the appropriate contacts.
Princeton Theological Seminary for hosting our pre-performance "Opera Talks" by Dr. Laurence Taylor at Scheide Hall and our July 16 "in the shadow of Mahler" concert at the Miller Chapel. David Poinsett, director of facilities, has been extremely helpful.
ArtPride/NJ for making us aware of the broad cultural and economic value that arts bring throughout the state. Jeff Woodward, president, and Ann Marie Miller, executive director, have reminded us how important this 0.17 percent of the state budget is to all of us.
Opera is the most collaborative of all performing arts. In a macrocosm of the productions themselves, we depend on volunteers, donors and our community leaders to allow us to present the quality of opera that the greater Princeton community loves and deserves. We thank them all.
Douglas Rubin
Executive Director
Opera Festival of New Jersey
Emmons Drive
West Windsor
Out-of-touch politician belongs out of office
To the editor:
Was anybody else shocked to read the news that Assemblyman Gary Guear’s wife is on staff as his $55,000 assistant in his legislative office? That’s $55,000 of our hard-earned tax dollars being handed out to an immediate family member. Sounds fishy to me.
What’s worse was Guear’s reaction. He actually said that "there will be some who will say maybe this is not right, and they’ll be Republicans who don’t like me to begin with. I guess they can’t find anything else to talk about, and that’s fine with me."
Well, I have news for you, Gary. This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue, and this isn’t a matter of liking or disliking you. This is a matter of doing the right thing, something you seem to be unable or unwilling to see.
I hope that it will be "fine with you" when I find another candidate to support in November. It seems like voting politicians like Gary Guear out of office is the only way we can ever get through to these out-of-touch people.
Richard Visovsky
Oakwood Way
West Windsor
Where are weapons of mass destruction?
To the editor:
We, the public, sure bought the spin our president, the administration and the media launched on us gullible Americans as to why we must launch a pre-emptive war on Iraq.
Saddam was about to attack the United States with weapons of mass destruction. He was so dangerous we trained our troops and put our national budget generations into debt outfitting them with gas masks, chemical suits and antidotes but, lo and behold, he poured them down the drain, buried them or shipped them off to Syria just to embarrass the president. But "just because we haven’t found anything doesn’t mean it wasn’t there," one Pentagon source told the Los Angeles Times. Right.
It was just announced that nearly 2 million Americans are out of work, a 20-year high, all without health-care coverage for their families but our president got what he wanted. The United States is in charge of the oil fields, and he created plenty of jobs (rebuilding the mess we caused) for some favored American companies. And shipping humanitarian needs for the poor Iraqis, too because, after all, we bombed the heck out of them, didn’t we? The Iraqis are now trying to build a new government. I hope we don’t make them "do it our way" now.
Of the shifting rationales advanced for this war, sure, Saddam was an SOB, but human rights was way, way down there on our list and WMD was way, way up there. The president was elected to care for the American people. Sometimes we forget that and maybe we can be brainwashed into forgetting why we supposedly went to war but the rest of the world is not going to forget that weapons of mass destruction were our primary reason for an unprovoked, pre-emptive war.
Claire Edelman
James Monroe Drive
Monroe Township

