Worship Guide

(Continued from Page 8)

Doherty quipped. “How many fields do you have in Southampton?”

Raftery, on Sept. 9, had also raised the issue of the township having a number of fields, pointing out new fencing and dugouts had just been installed at the Southampton Sports Complex, or part of the same parcel as the municipal building, accessible from Retreat Road, all while the plan was to move all recreation facilities over to the Red Lion Recreation Complex. At the time, the mayor said the Southampton Sports Complex ballfields could be turned into “backup” fields.

Officials, on Sept. 20, initially struggled to provide a firm answer to Doherty’s question about the number of rec fields, with Doherty refining her question to, “How many soccer fields and ballfields have you put up in Southampton since the beginning of this (Red Lion) complex?”

The mayor replied, “three soccer fields” and “none” as to the number of new ballfields. But well aware of the new dugouts and ballfield setups that are outside the municipal building, Doherty asserted, “There are so many things out here, it is mindboggling!”

As the activist continued her grilling, Mikulski declared of the public hearing on the Open Space Funds ordinance, “This is not a question and answer … you have to let me answer.”

“Well you can’t answer them!” Doherty quipped. “You don’t know how many ballfields, and how many soccer fields!”

After the mayor declared, “I just told you,” the activist asked, “What did you say?!”

“Three soccer fields,” Mikulski replied. “These baseball fields (outside town hall) were here before. The only thing different is the dugouts. When we introduced the project, when we had a full house, we said we wanted to eventually have all the rec programs in one location, so moms and dads don’t have shuttle back and forth, between fields.”

Doherty ultimately said she “doesn’t have a problem with the fields,” but that “it seems that, somehow or other, you can bypass a field for a dog park.”

“We understand you want a dog park, the problem is …,” said Mikulski, before Doherty again cut him short, declaring, “It is not just me … it is others too.”

“What bothers me is that I got statistics on the number of dogs we have here, and it is over 700, and that is the ones we know of, and there is probably many more,” Doherty added. “And there are less than 600 kids in our schools.”

After Mikulski said he was not “going to have a back-and-forth,” Doherty quipped, “I’m just giving you facts.”

The activist, in pointing out Southampton received $991,656.18 through the American Rescue Plan (ARP), demanded to see a “breakdown” of the use of those funds, which the mayor said he would give at the October regular township committee meeting, followed by Doherty noting that the September bill’s list indicated that ERI was to receive a payment for some $48,000.

After making that latter observation, the mayor advised Doherty that the public hearing could only pertain to the Open Space Fund ordinance, to which the activist asked, “How much of this ($48,000) are you paying to ERI for this project (at the Red Lion complex)?”

“$48,000 seems like an awful lot of money,” Doherty added.

Mikulski maintained that the ERI bill before the township committee for September represents special project engineering work for both road and storm drainage improvements in various parts of the town, including on Retreat Road and Falcon Drive.

“That is lot of money in one month,” Doherty declared. “I am very disappointed, because every time I come here, it is ‘ballfields’ and ‘soccer fields.’ I have nothing against kids, but I would like to see a dog park and it gets nowhere with the township committee! I am beginning to think that maybe you just don’t like animals!”

Following passage of the Open Space Trust Fund ordinance, the township committee approved moving forward with construction of the convertible baseball/softball field on the new, agreed upon terms and conditions. Heston previously revealed the bid placed was for $465,150 with alternate bids also placed by the firm, including one for some $30,000. There previously had been a discussion about changes allotting for the trees requiring a “design change.”

Previously, on Sept. 9, Darji said the delay in approval would likely not allow for the seeding of the field to commence before a narrow planting window closes due to upcoming colder weather, with seeding likely having to now wait until spring 2023.

Mikulski, when later asked by this newspaper if the Sept. 20 approval changed the anticipated timeframe, responded that it is “yet to be determined” as “some minor changes were made to the field location to save some trees,” noting that now “the engineer and contractor will have to work through the changes to see if they can start this fall.”

“I hope you have all been to the Red Lion Recreation Complex, and if not, I encourage you to get there sooner, rather than later, to understand what we are doing,” said Mikulski at the start of the latest township committee meeting. “I am proud of that project, more than anything else we have done in my five or six years on the township committee.

“What we are doing is we told the residents when we started this project that our goal was to use as little or no municipal monies to build this park. We successfully built almost all of it with grant money.”

SAFETY

(Continued from Page 10)

“If a parent calls me with a concern, I take down their information, and actually physically go out to the bus stop and look at the road conditions,” Treadaway assured the concerned parties. “How many times did I send you a video, and say ‘Damn it, this horrible. We can’t have a bus going down here.’ I check it out every single time. I always say give me 72 hours. But for the whole month of September, I’ve been out almost every day looking at bus stops because parents have concerns. Sometimes they are legit, sometimes they are not.”

The bottom-line, Havers suggested, is that, “I don’t know what changes we can or cannot make yet,” and that “some of it may be contingent on getting to the point where we have an extra driver, and can add a route.” In the meantime, he will “go to the mayor” and have “Mr. Treadaway look at the stops.”

“The goal is to do the best we can,” the superintendent reiterated, with Smith noting that the district has tried to contract with additional private school busing contractors, but to no avail, revealing in response to a question that the district only has some 52 bus drivers currently.

Vadon, who previously penned a forceful letter to Treadaway, calling for a “review of these unsafe conditions,” and threatened to both hold officials financially responsible for the issues and ask the state to take away transportation funding from the district over the “unsafe conditions,” said she was satisfied with how the meeting went, believing it was productive.

FirstBaptist Church

COME VISIT! We wouldlove to meet you!

Rev. Vernl E. Mattson, Pastor 39 Main Street Vincentown, NJ 08088

Sunday School����������������������������������9:45 a�m� Sunday Worship Service ������������� follow us on ����������11 a�m� Cross Roads Youth facebook.com/MedfordUMC Group - Sundays �������5 p�m� Bible Study - Wednesdays �����������������6:30 p�m� Prayer Fellowship - Wednesdays ��������7:15 p�m� Adult Choir Practice - Wednesdays ����7:30 p�m� www.fbcvnj.org •609-859-8967 Please join us for Worship

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