‘Groundless allegations’
To the editor:
Jim Wulf and his wife, Rhona Wulf, have submitted letters to the editor for several weeks now attacking the school district. Initially, their letters focused on their anger with the school district for removing two of the three bus stops on their 1-mile-long cul-de-sac. Now, Mr. Wulf is directing his attentions to slinging mud at the district on a wider variety of topics. I do not take issue with Mr. Wulf for disagreeing with district decisions. However, I do object when his opinions are not based on facts and accurate information. This misinformation must be publicly corrected.
FACT: While the school board did not "have to cut busing to conform to S-1701," it chose to cut busing rather than cut other nonmandated programs in our schools such as music or art, all of which are competing for the same dollars and are subject to the same budget cap.
FACT: While Mr. Wulf believes that fields are frivolous, there are 1,100 middle and high school students who participate in sports who need fields to play on. Right now, the school district must pay to bus our own teams to playing fields around the district, and, indeed, around the county, for games and for practices.
FACT: Our technology department services meet not only all of our students’ academic needs but also the administrative needs of our school district. We are in the process of restructuring this critical area of our schools using an outside consulting firm that has led us to a streamlined, more efficient system. Under this newly designed department, two positions have been eliminated including that of the director.
The most unfortunate aspect to Mr. Wulf’s groundless allegations is that he tries to distract the public from the many accomplishments of the school district over the past few years. His cutting attacks may cause a person reading his letters to question the quality of our school system. Allow me to highlight just a few of the district’s recent accomplishments.
FACT: All of our six schools reached federal targets under the No Child Left Behind Act for student achievement in 2006. Only one other Mercer County district made AYP this year.
FACT: After six years of collaborative efforts with a variety of community groups, the Athletic Fields at Timberlane project is coming closer to completion. It will serve not only our school athletic teams but also the recreation needs of all the children in the Valley.
FACT: Our SAT scores this year made their biggest jump in 10 years, contrary to trends elsewhere in New Jersey and around the country, where average scores actually declined.
FACT: Our HSPA scores continue to climb at rates that keep them well above the averages statewide and among other districts in our same socioeconomic group.
FACT: Of the 160 students who took AP exams this year, 91 percent scored 3 or better on the exam, sufficient to qualify for college credit. One third of them scored a perfect score of 5.
FACT: The school district’s music program has been named among the top 100 in the country for two consecutive years by the American Music Conference, the nation’s leading group of music educators.
FACT: The construction project at Timberlane Middle School will be completed on time bringing to the middle school desperately needed classroom space, science labs, gym, band room, and refurbished locker rooms.
FACT: A newly revised research based, professional development system has been launched to maintain the quality and consistency of instruction. Our staff continues to win regional and state honors and our reputation for excellence continues to help us draw funding and valuable in-kind technical services from our Fortune 500 corporate partners, including Bristol-Myers Squibb, Toyota, Janssen L.P. and Merrill Lynch.
Instead of cutting busing, the school board could have given all students the kinds of bus stops that Independence Way enjoyed over the past years. However, to do so costs money that would have to come from somewhere in a school budget that was voted down and then slashed by $2 million. The school board chose not to deliver the most generous bus services because we believe that to do so would place the convenience of transportation at a higher priority than that which happens once they arrive at school.
Judy Karp, member
Valley school board
Hopewell Township
Tell the truth
To the editor:
I would like to clarify and correct a statement made by HVRSD board President Kim Newport in her guest opinion printed Sept. 21. She states that in before determining the district’s decision to cut "courtesy" busing a committee was formed to help determine the actual need. The following were included in this committee: members of the school board, Hopewell Township Police Department, a public safety director from Pennington, Stony Brook Elementary Schools principal (now employed as the director of instruction for the district), and a Stony Brook parent and a Toll Gate parent.
Ms. Newport states that this entire committee was privy to and supported its recommendations to dismiss "courtesy" busing, which was ultimately approved by the school board. The truth is the entire committee was not included in the final meetings and their recommendations were not included in the final report. The final meetings were canceled and never rescheduled.
Before we can come together to resolve this sensitive and potentially dangerous decision, all parties involved need to start doing just one simple thing: Tell the truth, please!
Roberta Sferra
Stony Brook parent
Hopewell Township
Short memories?
To the editor:
Some citizens of the Hopewell Valley community either are not paying attention or have very short memories. Contrary to what one may hear from a legislator or a municipal official, actions by the state have imposed severe limitations on where and how tax monies can be spent for public schools.
The state has reduced its share of aid our school district receives for five years in a row, and had added to the unfunded mandates that must be absorbed within such constrained school budgets. Also, 10 percent of eligible voters managed to defeat the last school budget, giving it to our three municipal governing authorities to review. They, in turn, had seen fit to reduce our operating budget by almost $2 million, perhaps the highest cutback of any defeated school budget in the entire state. The accumulation of such events has consequences.
Recent dissatisfaction expressed over school busing cutbacks are not the result of an uncaring school board or administration, or of misplaced priorities. The property tax system in New Jersey is broken and for too many years legislators and past governors have let the problem go with quick fixes, putting off to the future the time when the people feel the pain.
Two old clichés apply to the current situation: "The chickens are coming home to roost" or "things will probably get worse before they get better."
Carl Swanson
Hopewell Township
Tax forum
clarification
To the editor:
John Tredrea of your paper gave an excellent report on the Hopewell Valley League of Women Voters property tax forum held on Sept. 19. However, there is a technical point in the presentation I made that evening that needs clarification.
The uniformity clause of our state constitution requires all property (residential, commercial, industrial, vacant land) to be assessed at the same full market value. In the current debate on property tax reform, many business interests are saying that the uniformity clauses should remain untouched for fear that their taxes would increase.
On the other side of the issue are those who say that property tax reductions should be targeted at owner occupied residences because that’s where the pain is. This second group, which includes me, favors a review of the uniformity clause with the possibility of a lower tax rate on residential property.
The story in the HVN indicated that a reduction in residential taxes would necessarily be offset by an increase in taxes on commercial property. This is not so. I have always emphasized that a lowering of tax rates on homes does not mean an increase on commercial or industrial classifications. This would be bad public policy when New Jersey is trying so desperately to grow its economy.
In other words, the reduction in property taxes produced by the Legislature or by a convention should be directed to residential taxpayers and the rates for commercial facilities should stay the same.
The League of Women Voters and the Hopewell Valley News are to be commended for their efforts at informing the public on this critical issue.
Bill Schluter
Pennington
Fire safety month
To the editor and residents of Hopewell Valley:
Do you know if your Smoke Detectors are working? Do you know that people die each year from not knowing? Every year there are countless deaths from not knowing or practicing fire safety. The month of October is dedicated to fire safety education. Families should take a timeout of their busy days and focus on fire safety. You can do this by changing your batteries and testing your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, knowing and planning Exit Drills In The Home (E.D.I.T.H.), and talking about fire safety. Here are some fire safety tips from the United States Fire Safety Administration:
Make sure everyone in your family knows and practices escape routes from every room in your home.
Remember to escape first, know how to notify the fire department, and when to call for help.
Never open doors that are hot to the touch.
Teach your family to stop, drop to the ground and roll if their clothes catch fire.
Designate a meeting place outside. Try to make it a location away from your home, but not necessarily across the street.
Teach your family to never re-enter a burning building.
Please take the time to make sure your smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors are working appropriately, and focus on fire safety with your children. If you have specific questions or would like to talk someone about fire safety, please call the Hopewell Valley Bureau of Fire Safety at 730-8156.
Some helpful fire safety Web pages to share with your children are: www.sparky.org and www.usfa.dhs.gov/kids/flash.shtm.
Joshua J. Wilson, president
HVPFF IAFF Local 3897
Pennington’s
historic character
To the editor:
Will Dickey’s Guest Opinion (HVN, Sept. 21) eloquently stated the importance of Pennington’s historic character. It struck home for me because like so many other borough residents, Pennington’s "character" was important to my moving here and an important reason why I’ve stayed for 30 years.
Naturally Pennington has changed over the course of those 30 years in some ways for the better, but in some ways perhaps not. Positively, the in-fill development, where "Bread and Breakfast" and other new businesses have located, as well as new residences, is contributing to the downtown. The recent approval for expansion of the Pennington Professional Center (65 N. Main St), although without any residential component, has also solidified the use of their lawn as a community "town green."
However, as Mr. Dickey points out, the slow but steady disappearance of many of Pennington’s historic structures affects our community. I believe, for example, that many of the structures that have been demolished contained residences more affordable than normally found in Pennington. In a small but cumulative way, the diversity of households living here has been reduced.
But Mr. Dickey also points out that there are specific management tools that can be implemented by the borough to protect its historic character. I agree that without these tools, it is likely that our community will continue to lose historical structures and weaken the "character" that makes our town so special.
The borough should protect its historic assets and its diversity. The end result, I am sure, will be positive for Pennington.
Dan Pace
Pennington
Rockwell redux
To the editor:
I have been under the impression that toxic waters, and now gases, were cleaned up years ago, when I first wrote a letter to editor.
How could so many new homes have been built on a Rockwell Dump? All the homes deserve total compensation, both those that were extant and those that were built after the fact. Bill Wolfe is right. The Rockwell cleanup needs oversight.
Oversight by whom? Not DEP, not the municipalities.
Jean Harrington
Hopewell Borough
Challenge
to school board
To the editor:
The school board needs to come clean with the taxpayers in Hopewell Township, Hopewell Borough and Pennington Borough about the real cost savings due to the elimination of nonmandated busing. Numbers seem to float about from $500,000 savings to $100,000 in this fiscal year to $707,500 to $405,500 ($500 per student) for next fiscal year.
The elimination of the elementary school bus routes is not going to save as much money as they think. Since they will still have to send a bus through the same neighborhoods to bring children to the middle and high schools, they will not be eliminating a bus but a tier of their two-tier busing system now in place. If this is the case there will no cost savings on the buses, but only fuel and labor savings.
Their method of transporting students now in place does not work very well. Some children are on buses for over an hour, sent on dangerous routes, multiple buses dropping children off on the same street and there is more. With a staff of three and a director earning $77,000 plus benefits you would think they could do a better job.
Oh, by the way the Back Timberlane fields will cost approximately $100,000 a year to maintain . . . which just happens to be what they are saving on busing this year. It is time for a change in the school board. Please join us in making this change: www.hvcusp.org.
Jim Wulf
Titusville
What’s wrong
with service?
To the editor:
Recently there was a letter in the HVN stating that parents of Hopewell CHS students needed to know about the procedure for opting your child off of the military recruitment list (required by federal law to be provided by the school to recruiters). While purporting to be simply a reminder of what we parents received in our high school packets, it really read like a thinly veiled anti-military plea. On Sept. 22, the PTO excessively reiterated this once again in a Dawg Bite e-mail to us.
I find this offensive. Are our children in Hopewell Township too good to talk to the group that ensures our right to be free? Are our children too stupid to listen to a military recruiter and not choose their own path? Are these parents trying to protect their babies from serving their country in this manner?
I have two sons who are very happy with their choices to join the NJ National Guard. Their benefits are great. Their opportunities are great. Their training is great for their futures. They don’t smoke, drink, or do drugs. And they truly feel like they are doing something for their community, state and country. What parent wouldn’t be proud of that?
No, they aren’t dumb. One won the highest award in his Army training class, is earning straight "A"s in college and is going to be a helicopter pilot. The other graduated cum laude from his prep school after choosing to leave Hopewell CHS because it was too lax and he didn’t feel like he mattered there. He wants to fly, too.
Don’t "dis" the military, folks, especially you liberal types who purport to support the troops so much. What better way to support than to let your young adult learn about all the career options offered in this country military and nonmilitary.?
Oh, and many more of our children get hurt and killed drinking and driving than they do in the service.
Cragg B. Utman
Brandon Farms
‘How high?’
To the editor:
Re: "Township prevails in downzoning suit" (Sept. 28), I was pleased to read that the courts upheld Hopewell Township’s downzoning. As a longtime participant in these debates, I would like to make a few observations to put the decision in context.
According to the story, the township engaged in minor settlements with many plaintiffs that resulted in "small changes" to zoning.
I seem to recall that the Hopewell Township Committee caved in to legal threats of a land use lawsuit by Merrill Lynch and entered into a settlement. While the Merrill attack was not part of the lawsuit dismissed by the courts, the deal with Merrill was no small change it allowed an additional 1 million square feet to be developed on the west side of Scotch Road. This 1 million square feet is in addition to the 3.5 million already approved on the east side. To give residents some sense of the scale of what 4.5 million square feet means, note that only about 1.2 million square feet, or one third of the approved 3.5 MSF west side development is currently built. The court’s decision, which recognized the compelling case made by the township’s professionals, seriously calls into question the wisdom of that settlement and the committee’s failure to back the township’s professionals. .
According to the story, the residential zoning densities upheld by the courts range from minimum lot sizes of 6-12 acres. These densities were based on the "carrying capacity" of the land, primarily in terms of the amount of groundwater available to support development.
The same water constraint that was used to set the residential zoning density does not apply to the Bristol-Myers Squibb facility (B-MS). The township approved a General Development Plan that will allow almost another million-square-foot expansion at the 433 acre B-MS site. The NJ Department of Environmental Protection just increased the B-MS water permit to serve the new GDP growth. The DEP permit allows groundwater withdrawal of 13.5 million gallons per month (MG/M). Hopewell Township did not object to the water permit.
To compare B-MS’s 13.5 MG/M water use with the "carrying capacity" water limit used to set the 6-12 acre residential zoning density, let’s assume a typical house consumes about 400 gallons per day of water over a 30 day month. This daily use translates into 12,000 gallons per month. At a 6-12 acre lot size, the "carrying capacity" can be expressed is 1,000-2,000 gallons per month per acre.
In contrast, B-MS has been allowed to consume over 31,000 gallons per month per acre (i.e. 13.5 MG/M divided by 433 acres). B-MS is allowed to consume 15 to 30 TIMES the amount of water allowed for residential use.
Just goes to show that when powerful corporations say jump, the Hopewell Township Committee’s response is "how high?"
Bill Wolfe
Ringoes
Audubon Adventures
To the editor:
For the last dozen or so years, Washington Crossing Audubon Society (WCAS) has provided National Audubon Society’s Audubon Adventures, an award-winning environmental education program, free of charge for central New Jersey fourth-grade classrooms. Thanks in large part to corporate sponsors, WCAS is proud to perform this significant environmental curriculum enrichment program in three urban school districts in Mercer County Ewing Township, Hamilton Township, and the City of Trenton.
WCAS would like to acknowledge the Pennington Quality Market, Bristol-Myers Squibb, PSE&G, and Bloomberg Financial Markets (a Corporate Friend) as corporate sponsors, each having made generous contributions to make this program possible for the 2006-2007 school year for approximately 70 classrooms.
Audubon Adventures has been greeted enthusiastically by school administrators, teachers, and especially by the children, who can take home four issues of an environmental newspaper, and in their classroom see videos and interact with other schoolchildren across the country via the Internet.
The current Audubon Adventures resource kit includes a complete teaching resource for teachers and youth leaders working with school children 8-11, with 32 copies of four different newsletters, and spotlights various nature themes, including spiders, water birds, turtles, and dragonflies and damselflies.
Washington Crossing Audubon Society is the local chapter of the National Audubon Society in Central New Jersey, with approximately 1300 members, and is a nonprofit 501(c)3 volunteer environmental group funded by membership contributions and outside donations.
For further information about our programs, field trips or environmental education opportunities, visit our Web site at www.washingtoncrossingaudubon.org/ or contact us at: [email protected].
Herbert Lord
Washington Crossing
Audubon Society

