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The Good of our Children

It seems that about 50 people want to turn the town’s people against one another. Turf fields were brought up, voted on, and approved three years ago. Our town has invested time, effort, money, and thousands of volunteer hours and concluded that synthetic turf fields are preferred to natural turf.

I’m speaking as a taxpayer, a citizen of North Haven, and a grandfather whose grandson plays on these fields. I also chaired the building committee for the recently completed fire stations.

Attorney Jeff Donofrio, who has 27 years of building and contract law experience and is one of the best in his field, brought the field project to a vote three different times to protect the children and our town. The town cannot vote, make a decision, and three years later have 50 or so people demand that we reverse course.

There’s no real proof that rubber-based synthetic fields cause cancer. Our children play on these fields in most surrounding towns. Children don’t play on the fields 24/7, 52 weeks a year. All of us allow our children to use cell phones, which have been linked to brain cancer and carpal tunnel syndrome, not to mention the car accidents that result from distracted driving. Do synthetic ball fields pose a greater danger than cell phones?

When I was building my home and my daughter’s home, our Inland Wetlands Commission was adamant that we couldn’t put natural grass in wetlands buffer zones, because the herbicides and pesticides could leach into the wetlands, harming or killing wildlife. This is the same grass we used for our ballfields for years.

I hope we will all come together put aside party politics, and work for the good of our children. No one in the town wants any harm to come to them.

Peter J. Criscuolo, Jr.

North Haven