Artificial turf only benefit a few                                      by Joseph A. Lypowy 3/1/05

    Last year when the Dover Twp. Council created a Recreation Commission which consists of 25 representatives from local organized youth sports organizations, my first thought was oh no, they’ve created a “build me a new stadium wish list machine”. My feelings are that a mix of non-sports organization members should have been regulated into the commission to represent the taxpayers and business community too. I had expected the newly created commission to soon come up with a wish list of sport arenas for each organization involved. Soon after the mayor came out supporting the possibility of having all of the township’s athletic fields covered with artificial turf which since has been reduced to the three high schools at a cost of over $ 2,000,000.              

   It was earlier this year that Dover Township was imposed the largest tax increase in it’s history and there seems to be a lot of public outrage about it. In light of this, you would think that the logical thing to do is keep a hold on spending, not to accelerate the spending spree. I am going to take an educated guess that if you divide the cost of this artificial turf coverage, it is going to cost each taxayer collectively about $100.         Personally, I would prefer to keep the hundred bucks in my own pocket and spend it on my own family’s recreation needs.

    In addition, critics of the artificial turf also point out that it would be spending taxpayers money on only a few special interest athletic groups and not the recreation of the community at large. There can be as many as a hundred different potential recreation activities and it is not fair to spend so much just on a few.