The forum will be held in the auditorium of Hopewell Valley Central High School at 7:30 p.m. June 20
By: John Tredrea
An open public forum has been scheduled on the controversial Back Timberlane proposal at the suggestion of school board member Arthur Gabinet of Pennington, who chairs the board’s Community Relations Committee.
The forum will be held in the auditorium of Hopewell Valley Central High School at 7:30 p.m. June 20.
The Back Timberlane proposal scheduled to undergo a capital project review at tonight’s Hopewell Township Planning Board meeting calls for 10 new athletic fields on 48 acres on the western end of the Timberlane Middle School site.
The job of the Planning Board ultimately will be to determine if the proposed use is consistent with the land use section of the existing Hopewell Township Master Plan. The board’s decision, when reached, will be communicated to the state Department of Education, which must OK the school district’s plan if it is to go forward. The Planning Board has until mid-July to make the decision on the school board’s application.
Schools Superintendent Robert Sopko said he and other school district administrators "will work out the details with the board’s Community Relations Committee" of how the forum will be run. It is probable, the superintendent said, that the early part of the forum will include a presentation by an engineering consultant who has been involved with the Back Timberlane project, along with presentations from school officials involved in athletics and representatives on nonschool athletic groups that would use the fields.
Questions will be taken from the public during the forum, and may be submitted to the school administration in written form prior to the forum, or at the forum itself.
As was the case at the June 8 Hopewell Township Committee meeting (see separate story), Monday night’s Hopewell Valley Regional Board of Education agenda session was marked by about an hour’s worth public comment on the Back Timberlane proposal, probably the hottest political potato in the Valley this year.
Many of Monday night’s speakers basically repeated comments they had made on June 8. Most of those who spoke Monday night who had not spoken June 8 supported the Back Timberlane plan.
John Butler of Pennington, who works for the national office of Pop Warner Football, said, "Nationally, by far, most youth sports groups use sports facilities. It’s an interesting perspective that our school board is busing students to other land when it already owns land these teams could use."
Andy Jackson, also of Pennington, who has been coaching youth and travel soccer teams in the Valley for over 10 years, said the new fields are urgently needed. "I’ve had to coach practices in Ewing, in Princeton, in Mercer County Park," he said. "I’ve seen five games in a row played on fields in Washington Crossing Park." Such heavy use "tears up a field" and as a result is a safety issue, Mr. Jackson said. He added that soccer games at Washington Crossing have had to be played in such close proximity to softball games that the action of the games became intertwined, with "soccer players chasing softballs and softball players chasing soccer balls."
Jim Rigel of the Hopewell Valley Soccer Association (HVSA), of which he was president for eight years, responded to statements that new fields should be spread out Valleywide instead of being concentrated at Back Timberlane. "We looked at lots of land" before deciding to support the Back Timberlane proposal, Mr. Rigel said. "In fact, we had aerial photographs taken, which we studied and followed up on, of all the available land in Hopewell Valley."
Marvin Berkowitz of Pennington-Harbourton Road said he wants a formal Planning Board review of Back Timberlane, rather than a courtesy review. He said he was "concerned about traffic. The impact of bringing all these cars into our neighborhood needs to be addressed."
Carrie Owen O’Boyle, who also lives near the proposed complex, expressed concern about possible adverse health effects resulting from use of pesticides on the new fields.
Other residents voiced concerns about the impact the new fields could have on drainage and existing residential wells. These topics have been debated extensively since the Back Timberlane proposal surfaced.