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Mercer County Education
Association Thanked for Organizing Pride Project
JOANNE
RYAN
JO SZABAGA
SUZANNE THOMPSON PREA Co-presidents
Total Cost of Deer Cull Is Calculated To Exceed $1,000 Per Killed Animal
BILL LAZNOVSKY Mandon Court
Mercer County Education Association Thanked for Organizing Pride Project
To the Editor:
The Princeton Regional Education Association would like to thank the Mercer County Education Association for organizing the MCEA Pride Project held at MarketFair during the week of March first.
Michele Cooper, project coordinator, and her committee made up of Sandi Porter, Camille Maxwell, Judie Winogron, Heidi Furman and Karen Root, spent long hours in order to showcase the efforts of the students attending Mercer County Public Schools.
We are proud of and grateful to the many Princeton teachers and students willing to take the time and energy to share their incredible talents and projects with the public.
JOANNE
RYAN
JO SZABAGA
SUZANNE THOMPSON
PREA Co-presidents
Total Cost of Deer Cull Is Calculated To Exceed $1,000 Per Killed Animal
To the Editor:
Now that the Township's fourth, and hopefully last, year of deer carnage is over, Princeton taxpayers deserve to know the true cost to date of this ill-conceived campaign. I call on Mayor Marchand to publicly disclose the actual price of her wildlife eradication campaign.
Although we're all familiar with Tony DeNicola's $155,000 annual fee, after all associated costs are added up – room and board for White Buffalo's crew at the Residence Inn for months at a time, transportation and operating expenses, special liability insurance for the Township, police escort, surveillance, overtime costs, attorney fees, and litigation charges, etc. – the actual figure for killing 1,200 deer over four years easily exceeds $1,000 per animal. A detailed accounting of monies squandered by Mayor Marchand and Township Committee on this million-dollar boondoggle, which has yielded only mixed results, will reveal the magnitude of this blunder. By DeNicola's own recent admission, the deer population in the Township will soon rebound if he does not return annually for "maintenance" culling of up to 100 deer. This outrageous revelation was not a component of the Township's deer management plan as sold to the public. Just as Township Committee originally lied to residents about the fate of netted deer (we were told they would be relocated), we now learn that officials deceived us by misrepresenting the extent and duration of the massacre. This confirms what opponents have said all along, that in addition to being cruel, unnecessary, dangerous, and conducted surreptitiously, this program is a financial black hole, which will continue sucking up funds ad infinitum.
Sadly, Princetonians have been taken for a costly ride, while DeNicola laughs all the way to the bank. He has made fools of Township officials, who have been bamboozled by his pseudo-scientific methods and allowed him to turn the town into his private killing field.
As long as he can convince the gullible of his program's effectiveness he is assured a lucrative perpetual annuity in Princeton.
Mayor Marchand's scheme to eliminate the deer will fail in the end, and the obscene amount of taxpayer money that funded her delusion will be lost forever. Think about that the next time you drive down any of the Township's deplorable pothole-riddled roads. Is a "pothole hotline" all you get for your money? It's time for Princeton's elected officials to own up to their mistake, cut their losses, sever all ties to White Buffalo, and seriously pursue humane, effective, and affordable solutions to the human/deer conflict.
BILL
LAZNOVSKY
Mandon Court
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