Cumberland County, NJ - Don't forget the sacrifices of veterans

OFF THE WIRE
Source: thedailyjournal.com
We salute the 80 volunteers who braved last Saturday's bitingly cold winds to bring some holiday warmth to 528 military veterans by laying grave blankets on their markers in Cumberland County Veterans Cemetery in Hopewell.
Fittingly, the decorating began with the grave of William Howard Price, a Marine sergeant and Korean War veteran who was the first person to be buried in the cemetery when it opened in 2000.
The grave blankets, made of donated wood from a lumberyard and trees from a nursery, were made by Cumberland Regional High School students in the Future Farmers of America. The ceremony was organized by the New Jersey Department of the Auxiliary to the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. Without these groups, the event wouldn't have happened, so they deserve our praise.
A local veterans group served as an honor guard, while Civil War re-enactors fired three volleys into the air. Escorted by county sheriff officers and members of the Rolling Thunder motorcycle club, a donated tractor-trailer from Nardelli Bros. Produce transported the blankets from the high school to the cemetery.
"It's my way of praising our grandfather," said Bridgeton resident Chasmine Mosley, who came with family members to decorate the grave of her grandfather, a Vietnam veteran.
With young people such as this, the painful and eternal sacrifices made by veterans on our behalf will never be forgotten.

Saving minutes can save a life
The "golden hour" is defined by the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey as "the time period of one hour in which the lives of a majority of critically injured trauma patients can be saved if definitive surgical intervention is provided."
Having a medical evacuation helicopter stationed at Millville Airport will help provide those critical extra minutes needed to promptly treat life-threatening injuries (including burns, strokes and heart attacks) and offer the best chance of preventing death.
We credit Cooper University Hospital in Camden, in conjunction with Atlantic Health, for seeing the need here and for taking the chance to launch the aero-medical unit, which will operate a minimum of four teams for 24/7 coverage. Its primary coverage area will be 25 miles surrounding the airport. According to Chief John Redden of the Millville Rescue Squad, EMTs previously could wait as long as 26 minutes for a helicopter. Now the wait would be as little as 12 minutes in Vineland, which could mean the difference between life and death for severely injured patients.

What a difference a little vision and a few minutes can make..

Too many tax dollars lost,
State regulations concerning farmland assessments have to be tightened when millionaires and developers are using the law to do nothing else but slash their property tax bills by 98 percent.
As it stands now, anyone with 5 acres of land who "sells" $500 a year in crops can qualify for the tax breaks. It's so bad and so unregulated that one landowner tried to declare weeds as farm product, a Gannett New Jersey investigation found.
The investigation revealed lax oversight with few inspections for both farmland assessment and its sister program for woodlands. Record-keeping was poor and numerous applications lacked such basic information as an accounting of the goods sold and the signature of the property owner. Why not risk it; even if caught, the penalties would be minimal as compared to other states.
Some tax assessors and farmers fear any changes to the Farmland Assessment Act of 1964 could prompt the sell-off of farm-assessed land in the state, which is not what anyone wants. It's critical New Jersey keeps the garden in the "Garden State."
But it's also a must that the rules be tightened so that the rest of us taxpayers don't have to fill the tax void made by the estimated $82 million a year in lost property taxes through fake farmers.
Governments have to start requiring proof from property owners and verify that the information is correct. State oversight and inspections must be increased, along with penalties. It also would be smart to raise the $500 income threshold. Even considering inflation alone, that $500 set in 1964 would be $3,500 today, as state Secretary of Agriculture Douglas H. Fisher pointed out.
Farms and woodlands have to be preserved in the state. But when a property owner with 34 acres of wooded land in Middletown is paying only $122 in property taxes a year, clearly reforms are needed now.