LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, May 20
By:
Library will seek recovery of funds
To the editor:
A recent letter from Mr. Paul Kapp noted the lack of public outcry over a $100,000 "mistake" on the new library construction project and the apparent "nonchalant allocation of this mistake to the contingency fund."
Let me clarify what has occurred:
Public Service Electric & Gas was responsible for delivering the site at a finish ground elevation that was exactly the elevation requested by the library and at no cost to the library. Upon inspection, it was determined that PSE&G had left 6 inches too much dirt on the site. To avoid delays in redesign, our contractor quickly removed this excess dirt.
Subsequently, it was discovered that the dirt was not excess after all but was in accordance with the library’s initial request. This discovery was made only after the foundations and footings had been poured and the steel beams fabricated. Thus, the building would be 6 inches lower than our plans.
Our contractor, architect and engineer together devised a simple solution put 6-inch lifts under each steel beam and put the dirt back in place. Cost: $100,000.
The solution required a change order to our construction contract. As a public body, the library could not authorize any contract changes unless it had identified the source of funding for the change. Despite our belief that the "mistake" was the fault of someone other than the library and should not be the library’s obligation to pay, we could not wait for the matter to be resolved before proceeding with the solution.
Therefore, the library allocated funds from its contingency account and the work has proceeded. We fully intend to pursue recovery of these funds from the party or parties that were responsible. Once responsibility is determined and funds are restored, the contingency account will be replenished.
Taxpayers will not be burdened with the cost of this situation.
I appreciate and share Mr. Kapp’s concern. Hopefully, this more detailed explanation helps him and others understand what has transpired.
Harry Levine
President
Board of Trustees
Princeton Public Library
Princeton
Parking problems finally hit home
To the editor:
Hallelujah! After the Borough Council parking meeting, it appears that the folks of Morven Place, Library Place and Hodge Road are finally beginning to understand what the residents of Green, Quarry and John streets already endure. Congestion, blocked driveways, outsider vehicles and commuters, unnecessary noise and pollution, cruising for your own parking spot these are daily facts of life in this residential neighborhood.
How The Arts Council can double the Paul Robeson building in size without making this problem worse escapes us.
Willie Mae Tadlock
Green Street
Helen Bess
Eugene Imhoff
John Street
Princeton
Garage opponents need a candidate
To the editor:
I received two separate mailings from the two candidates in the Democratic mayoralty campaign. Borough Councilman Joseph O’Neill sent me a report he wrote in 2001 on the future development of Princeton. And Assemblyman Reed Gusciora informed me that, as an unaffiliated voter, I could register my choice in the Democratic primary election.
I became involved in local affairs in Princeton in the fall of 2001 after I attended a Princeton Future meeting and became disturbed about the power this unelected group was wielding over the future of my town. I let these concerns be heard at a council meeting, suggesting that a referendum was in order on such an ambitious undertaking. My words were received with a benevolent smile and a paternal, "Keep it up, Miriam."
I thereafter wrote many letters to the editor and attended numerous council meetings, starting soon after the under-advertised and unconscionable Borough Council meeting in February 2002, in which the decision was made to go for an urban renewal designation. It was thereby freed from the obligation of holding a referendum on the bond issue and was allowed the choice of a developer without bidding as well as a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes dispensation.
I held a deep conviction that:
1) this project would drive the middle class out of our borough because of increased land values and taxes;
2) it would ruin the historic and aesthetic character of Princeton;
3) decisions of great importance were being made by the council in secret without the consent of the electorate; and
4) a shadow government, subject to a group of lobbyists such as Princeton Future and the university, held the reins of power over the citizenry.
Now, aware that the opposition to the downtown project commands the active support of a majority of the electorate, the candidates for mayor are suddenly eager to ingratiate themselves with this voting block. Yet Mr. O’Neill did not, at any of the council meetings I attended, express himself in opposition to the project and dutifully always registered his vote for the project to proceed. As to Mr. Gusciora, in a personal letter he declared himself, as a borough resident, to be lock, stock and barrel in support of the Borough Council’s decision.
Well, we don’t have to vote for either of these candidates who have supported this ill-advised project (which so far has given us a disbursement of over $1 million for a soon-to-be mosquito-infested lake). This is a moment of opportunity. We can put up our own slate without any backroom deals, but in the same democratic way in which this grassroots movement has crystallized. We can take advantage of our right as unaffiliated or as true democrats to bring politics back to the people. Among those who collected signatures, who spoke up at meetings, who wrote letters, let some go further in their civic duty and step forward and offer themselves as potential candidates. A public meeting called by the Concerned Citizens could then finalize the choices.
Miriam Yevick
Pelham Street
Princeton
Many reasons for scarcity of birds
To the editor:
Lately, we find people, knowing of our interest in birds, asking us why they aren’t seeing as many birds as they once did. They are right. Local birds are scarcer. And migrating passerines (perching birds) passing through the state have declined to a trickle.
Here are some reasons why:
Loss of habitat: New Jersey is losing about 50 acres of land per day, our nation is losing two farms per minute, and the world is losing some 2.4 acres of tropical rainforest per second.
Worldwide fragmentation of forests: Once forests or woodlands become fragmented or encroached by development, a sense of wildness is lost. Here, migrating breeding birds must compete unfavorably with local suburban birds.
Migration obstacles: TV and cell phone towers now over 90,000 and growing account for an annual loss of 4 to 5 million birds that slam into them and their guy wires. The gray-cheeked thrush is one of six birds passing through our state reported to be in the top quarter of birds killed by towers.
Cats: U.S. outdoor cats kill a staggering 4.4 million birds a day, according to an April 2000 study.
Pesticides: Even with the ban on DDT, pesticides are still a problem and there are records of birds dying en masse from diazinon, a chemical still in use on home lawns.
Grassland loss: In the Great Plains states, according to The New York Times, "There were once 25 million acres of uninterrupted acres of tall grass prairie." Today, in those states, there is barely 300,000 acres. And in New Jersey, more grassland bird species are endangered or threatened than those of any other habitat; these include upland sandpiper, loggerhead shrike, eastern meadowlark, bobolink, dickcissel and Henslow’s, grasshopper and vesper sparrows. A drive in our surrounding area will show what has happened to the grasses and fields.
Finally, many hardcore New Jersey birders tell us that they no longer come to the Charles H. Rogers Wildlife Refuge /Institute Woods because there are so few birds compared to previous years. Too bad, because at one time a visit to the areas was a spring rite of passage for birders.
Deer are part of the problem. In the Institute Woods, deer have consumed most of the understory, leaving primarily garlic mustard and leaf litter. Deer will not eat the plant nor will birds nest in the area. As a consequence, there is a remarkable decrease in ground or near-ground nesting species such as thrushes, some warblers and eastern towhee, species that a few years back were common. For a comparison, a visit to Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve near New Hope, Pa., will show that they have a thriving understory because a deer fence surrounds the area. Fortunately, because of the deer culling, this spring is the first time there appears to be a renewal of the understory in the Institute Woods.
Tom Southerland
Margot Southerland
Western Way
Princeton
Rationale for war exposed as fiction
To the editor:
It’s been a lovely campaign the White House’s publicity war swallowed hook line and sinker by a fear-numbed American public willingly convinced that invading Iraq urgently served their safety. So anxious were we to get the pre-emptive war for democracy’s defense started, regardless of contravening facts, that it was irrelevant for us to know that U.S. special forces arrived in Iraq before the war, investigated suspected weapons of mass destruction sites and came up with nothing, not one dusty Scud. All the special forces could do was confirm what U.S. and British intelligence services had reported for months. But finding no weapons of mass destruction would delay the start of Operation Who’s Your Daddy and the president’s imminent warriordom.
At least on our gutsy president’s behalf one must say he had the courage of his convictions, played the mother of all Texas stud poker selling the world a pig in a poke and betting his presidency on its squeal. So mesmerized are we with our warrior president that if, after he landed on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, he claimed to have been briefly abducted in flight by aliens and seen Elvis, 78 percent of American’s polled would have probably wondered what color jumpsuit The King wore.
After throwing everything at the gullibility wall and seeing what stuck, the bull-throwing architects of the war settled on weapons of mass destruction as justification for invasion and called it Iraqi Freedom for good sell. The propaganda war having been won in the United States (although lost in the remainder of the civilized world), WMD was as good a pretext as any.
The packaging is a recognizable one of not-so-new imperialist wine in very old conquistador bottles; but old wine drinkers recognize it as the doctrine of power and control, and identify it as having nothing to do with conservatism, but compatible instead with the apparatus of mega-state polity necessary to ensure domination. Iraq was too fetchingly attractive and opportune a tactical pivot ripe for the plucking to ignore.
For now, as U.S. weapons inspectors continue in vain taking apart an Iraqi mobile home in the middle of our temporal 51st state, it appears that my previously stated volition to eat every ounce of active weapons-grade anthrax discovered in Iraq is still unlikely to bring me indigestion. For the sake of the faith and trust our country places in our highest elected leaders, I almost hope our inspectors find something for me to eat.
If nothing in the way of weapons of mass destruction or their active manufacture, which the administration claimed existed in Iraq, turn up, and they then walk away unchallenged from their unbridled deception, then corruption trumps truth and the sublime allure of its convenience corrupts absolutely everything thought or discussed and absolves everyone engaged in the machinery of giving and carrying out orders in the name of the American people. This can’t be for what United States Marines fought, died and won a war.
Luis de Agustin
Gates Court
West Windsor

