Editor’s Note: The following letter was E-mailed to Board of Education president Tony Fleres on January 13, 2014. Weale now submits it as an open letter to the WW-P community.
Congratulations on your election for WW-P Board of Education president by your colleagues!
Cleaning out my files, I wanted to share with you some brief history on the Bachner Field Memorial.
I have very extensive paper and electronic files documenting efforts — from online petitions and social media to committee meetings — to a sustained focus to get this on the agenda. But now Hemant (Marathe), Bob (Johnson), and Victoria (Kniewel) have ridden off into the sunset for greater fame and fortune and are gone as primary objectors.
While “official policies” are often a bureaucrat’s safe harbor, we have been dealing with this matter far too long. We would petition taxpayers and residents of West Windsor Plainsboro to seek the Board of Education’s ratification by default, due to extraordinary administrative delays.
It seems there were few delays in the board’s approving construction of new offices for itself without a voter/taxpayer referendum.
Could you place the following on the agenda so we can mount a district-wide awareness campaign to have the media/residents/friends/staff in both townships from High Schools North/South and beyond attend a board meeting to weigh in on the work done over the past several years and David’s legacy?
Or can we constructively work to put good time toward making this suggestion of naming High School North’s Baseball Field “David Bachner Field” a reality? We have never understood the arbitrary waiting period for something as mundane as an athletic field memorial: five years? But why not a 10-50 year waiting period?
If the next homegrown Mickey Mantle-calibre baseball player from High School North is enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, I am certain the Bachners will relent to surrendering claim to the field name.
By contrast, construction of the Empire State Building in New York City took 1.5 years.
Pete Weale
Fisher Place
