Insurance costs are the real problem in North Andover
To the editor:
I write to clarify some statements that appeared in the May 7 edition regarding the proposed preschool project.
It was alleged that the debt service associated with the police station and preschool projects would cause a $1.7 million deficit in 2010. The reality is that it is not debt service, which is actually projected to go down in 2010 that is driving this potential deficit. Other costs are creating the budget crunch, primarily employee health insurance. These costs have averaged a 9.76 percent increase over the past 8 years. Rather than cut funding for what everyone agrees are two necessary capital projects, our focus should be instead on controlling health insurance costs through collective bargaining and possibly joining the commonwealth's Group Insurance Commission.
North Andover for the last 7 years has operated under a comprehensive capital improvement plan. With that plan, we have been successful in addressing our infrastructure and equipment needs, while at the same time keeping debt service constant at a moderate level (generally 4-6 percent of net operating revenue) and thus avoiding the need to ask our residents to increase their taxes through an override for capital projects.
To depart from these sound fiscal practices and instead go down a path that ignores both our serious building needs and the real budget buster — employee health insurance costs — is problematic to say the least.
MARK REES
Town manager
North Andover
><p>
Consider becoming a foster parent
To the editor:
Thank you foster parents! May is your month: Foster Care Month!
It's a time for the citizens of our state to be reminded of the good work foster parents do 24/7 for children in need of temporary, or possibly permanent homes. These families come forward and put the needs of a child ahead of their desire to expand their family — permanently. They work with DCYF to try to re-unify the child with his or her parents, if at all possible. The foster-adoptive parent training helps them overcome any misgivings that might occur to them about working with the child's parents. They learn to focus on the needs of the child so that, if it is decided that the child is to return to the family, it can be a smooth transition. If the child cannot return home, the foster parents will provide a permanent home for him or her.
Become one of our hard working foster families. To find out how, call your local Salem DCYF foster care worker at 1-800-852-7492.
JAN FEUER
Intake specialist
NH Foster & Adoptive Parent Association
Concord, N.H.
Congressional policies drive energy prices higher
To the editor:
Impeaching the president will not change the cost of energy, which is a commodity set by the world market.
For four decades, our U.S. Congress has insured our dependence on hostile foreign nations for two-thirds of our energy needs by locking up natural resources on federal lands, preventing exploration and development of American sources and production. Foreign nations develop offshore reserves that we are forbidden to access, and yet are forced to buy.
We can influence our costs by increasing our available supply. Yet our representatives waste our taxes subsidizing dead-end projects such as turning our food supplies into wasteful projects such as ethanol, which takes more energy to produce and transport than it will provide.
Too bad Congress can't be impeached before it ruins us.
MARY ANDERSON
Plaistow, N.H.
Ancestor was accused in witch hysteria
To the editor:
There were several contributing factors to the witchcraft hysteria in Salem in 1692. First and foremost was the religious climate, because witchcraft was not unique to Salem or to 1692. Such people as Cotton Mather (whom I like to refer to as the Sen. McCarthy of his day) used scare tactics and propaganda to create the environment for the events of 1692.
Jim McAllister in his column of April 27 is correct in stating that a land feud fueled the witch hunt. Many people saw, and seized, the opportunity to use the hysteria to carry out their twisted agendas.
One of my ancestors, Mary (Perkins) Bradbury, was accused, tried and convicted, but not executed. She was the wife of Capt. Thomas Bradbury, who was a grandnephew of both Sir Ferdinando Gorges (explorer, adventurer and founder of the Province of Maine in 1622) and Sir John Whitgift (archbishop of Canterbury, who presided over the coronations of King James I and Queen Anne.)
Capt. Bradbury had served as an agent for Gorges in Kittery, Maine, from 1634 to 1640, when he and Mary settled Salisbury. He was one of the most prominent men in Salisbury and Essex (originally "Norfolk") County: town clerk, schoolmaster, justice of the peace, representative in General Court for 7 years, county recorder, associate judge, etc. Most of the "ancient records" of Salisbury, and many of the county, were written by him. So it's no wonder his wife was a target of the witch hunt.
Mary Bradbury was defended by Major Robert Pike, and due to the many intercessions of her several friends, her life was spared.
The memory of the horrific events of the Salem witchcraft hysteria should be foremost in our thoughts with regard to the current climate of religious intolerance.
STEPHEN E. BARBIN
Methuen
