Check out what other stories were the biggest in the Cherry Hill Sun during the month of May.
A resident posted on Facebook in the spring they received a letter from real estate company Keller Williams Cherry Hill saying an unidentified client was interested in purchasing their home. Their home was located near 1101 and 1103 North Kings Highway, two properties which were up for sale at the time.
Word quickly spread on social media and there was speculation Cherry Hill Township was looking to purchase the properties to eventually construct a new town hall. In May, Cherry Hill Township director of communications Bridget Palmer confirmed the township was currently conducting a needs assessment to see if the current town hall on Mercer Street needed to be renovated or replaced.
“Right now, it’s in such an early stage,” Palmer said. “We’re conducting a needs analysis for a new building.”
The township did not commit to any plan for a new town hall in 2016. In May, Palmer said the needs analysis was in such an early stage there was no telling what the future would be for the building.
“We’re looking at the way the town is growing and changing,” Palmer said. “We’re in the process of looking into how, as a township, we need to evolve.”
When asked about the properties at 1101 and 1103 North Kings Highway, Palmer described them as a “potentially good site” for a new town hall, but added no plans to move to the site were on the table at the moment.
Palmer added the town hall needs analysis was in such an early stage, any potential move would not take place for quite some time.
“Any move, if it were to happen, wouldn’t happen for awhile,” Palmer said.
The news surprised many members of the Kingston community and caused a large number of residents to come out to a Cherry Hill Township Council meeting in June, where Mayor Chuck Cahn eventually told the residents the township would not move town hall to Kingston if the residents didn’t want it there.
Other top stories from the month of May:
May 4 — Lechliter pours in the goals
In her first two seasons combined, Cherry Hill High School West girls’ lacrosse junior Ashley Lechliter had scored less than 50 goals combined. However, this didn’t stop her from setting a huge goal for herself in 2016.
“I set goals for myself that I want to achieve,” Lechliter said. “This year, it was try to hit 100. So I’ve been going really hard to get the goals.”
Lechliter had an outstanding first month of the season. In the season’s first three weeks, Lechliter scored 44 goals, the second-most in the Olympic Conference. The Cherry Hill Sun spoke to Lechliter a month into the season about her 2016 scoring surge.
Girls lacrosse head coach Melissa Venturi described Lechliter as a remarkable talent on the field.
“She’s a once-in-a-lifetime player,” Venturi said. “She worked really hard on her skills. She’s the type of kid where she goes home, shoots on her net for about an hour to practice. She does extra running. She does extra shooting. She’s worked for every benefit that’s come to her and every single achievement.”
Less than a week after the feature ran, Lechliter scored her 100th career goal. She went on to finish the 2016 season with 73 goals.
May 4 — School taxes increase
The Cherry Hill Board of Education gave its final approval of the 2016–17 school budget during its meeting at the end of April.
The budget included a tax increase for Cherry Hill residents. Residents with an average assessed home of $223,500 would pay $108 more in school taxes in 2016.
There were no major changes in between the time the preliminary budget was approved in April and the adoption of the final budget.
However, board member Steve Robbins did express concern about the large tax increase. He spoke of how using banked cap to increase the tax levy above the state-mandated 2 percent cap was a troubling sign. He asked his fellow board members to begin thinking about next year’s budget immediately so the district can be prepared for whatever may lie ahead.
The full story can be read at https://www.scribd.com/document/311232679/Cherry-Hill-0504.
May 18 — Two Cherry Hill schools named National Schools of Character
For the five years prior to 2016, Cherry Hill Public Schools had one school named as a National School of Character. Character.org gives the distinction to schools across the country that display a dedicated focus on character development.
In 2016, however, the district reached a new height in character education when both John A. Carusi Middle School and Clara Barton Elementary School were named a National School of Character. It was the first time two Cherry Hill schools received the distinction in the same year.
For Carusi, it was the second time the school received the distinction. After becoming a National School of Character in 2011, Carusi was eligible to re-apply again in 2016 and received the distinction once again.
“It’s not something that’s easy to recognize because this is something we do every day,” Carusi principal John Cafagna said of the designation. “I was excited to tell those staff members that put their heart and soul into the application.”
For Barton, it was the first year it had received the designation. Barton had applied for the designation once before and was a honorable mention at the state level.
“It was a great sense of pride throughout the school community,” principal Sean Sweeney said. “We do a lot here in our schools that goes unnoticed.”
The full story can be read at www.scribd.com/document/312524040/CherryHill-0518.
May 25 — Amanda Ketterer receives Sustainable Cherry Hill 2016 Green Leader Scholarship
Sustainability had been a passion for 2016 Cherry Hill High School East graduate Amanda Ketterer for many years. In 2016, her passion was recognized as Ketterer was awarded the Sustainable Cherry Hill 2016 Green Leader Scholarship.
The $500 scholarship is granted annually to a graduating high school senior from Burlington, Camden or Gloucester counties who is seeking to pursue post-secondary education in sustainability, a field supporting sustainable living or those seeking to be change agent sin the world around them. This was the second year the Green Leader Scholarship was awarded.
Ketterer began attending George Mason University in the fall and planned to pursue a major in environmental sustainability.
The full story can be read at www.scribd.com/document/313540690/CherryHill-0525.
