Hurry, Hurry, Hurry...Step Right Up... Haddonfield Has New Circus Regulations
…. and four other things you may have missed at this week’s borough commissioners meeting.
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It wasn’t all turf fields at this week’s Haddonfield borough commissioners meeting. True, it was mostly turf, but the commissioners got other business done as well.
If your mind was on the playing field, here’s what you missed:
1. Haddonfield put circus workers in their place. In an ordinance that drew some giggles, commissioners updated century-old regulations on circuses, hawkers, auctioneers, traveling shows and their kin. Among the changes: applicants need to be fingerprinted by the borough and the very reasonable 20th-century $3 fee has been changed to an equally reasonable 21st-century $10 fee.
2. New parking regulations passed unanimously. The ordinance changes overnight parking restrictions from 1 to 5 a.m. (as opposed to beginning at 2 a.m.) and requires people to call in by midnight if their cars will be on borough streets overnight. The ordinance also allows certain residents on the unit block of Centre Street to obtain street parking permits if they don’t have driveways.
3. Commissioners recognized Haddonfield Rotary Club’s 85th anniversary with a proclamation. Commissioners lauded the 116 club members who belong to South Jersey’s largest Rotary for their community service. The club's projects include the tulips on Tanner, funding Little League and First Night and providing $120,000 in scholarships to high school students over the past decade.
4. Commissioner appointed residents to serve on various boards and commissions, including the planning and zoning boards, the environmental commission, the recreation council and more. Get the full list of appointees by scrolling down to Resolution 2012-05-102 on the borough’s website.
5. Get ready for more roadwork. The borough put out sealed bids for its 2012 road program, plus the reconstruction of Cedar Avenue, Farwood Road and Longwood Drive, a project officials called 20 years in the making.
Cj Ellie
12:15 pm on Friday, May 25, 2012
These are some of the reasons my family will not attend any circus that uses exotic animal performers, these animals live a very cruel and inhumane life and if other families knew what I have found out they wouldn’t go either.
While looking through these old circus pictures I saw one of John Walker with Cole Bros Circus, this man has a reputation for abusing the elephants and tigers in his care. In 2005 the USDA fined John Herriott Walker aka John N. Caudill lll and his father $25,000 and revoked their USDA licenses for several years. http://www.dm.usda.gov/oaljdecisions/AWA_03_0023_032904.pdf
In 2011 USDA found Cole Bros in violation over the handling of a dangerous animal. An inspector observed Walker hooking the elephant in her ear canal with the sharp end of his bullhook, the elephant screams out in pain as he pulls her around the ring. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx4hC7OOuek&feature=relmfu
In another town a family videotaped him beating elephants across the face with his bullhook. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIn82TqSP2M
Walker won’t be appearing with Cole Bros this year but his fellow elephant trainer Tim Frisco will be. Watch him training elephants to perform circus tricks behind closed doors. "You can't do it on the road," Frisco says. "I'm not going to touch her in front of a thousand people." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iouGQD6lf6A
This kind of animal abuse is still being passed off as family entertainment.
Rick B. VanLandingham III
4:02 am on Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Cj Ellie: Thank you for your informative post! Last Saturday, June 30th, 2012, the Carson & Barnes Circus came to Toledo, Ohio, my home town. While there, filming, I was verbally accosted and threatened by an elephant "trainer" who I had seen using a "bull hook" on an elephant. Also, he has the elephant in an area with no barricade of any kind, in violation of federal safety rules. This man threatened me with physical violence. I called police, and filed a report. I have since learned that this man is John Walker III aka John Cauffield III, the very same creep previously with Cole Circus. He is still abusing elephants, and posing a safety hazard to the public, even though he has no license to handle elephants. When busted with previous circus, he simply switched to another.
HR3359TEAPA
12:46 am on Saturday, May 26, 2012
Recently the Cole Brothers Circus appeared at the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival in Winchester VA minus their animal acts. Apple Blossom Mall owner Simon Property Group, Inc., the largest real estate trust in the United States, barred exhibitions with wild animals from all its properties when they learned of the abuse and cruelty of elephants, tigers and other wild animals in the circus as well as public endangerment issues.
Countries around the world, as well as municipalities in the United States, have partial or full bans on circus animals. On November 2, 2011, Congressman Jim Moran introduced The Traveling Exotic Animal Protection Act, H.R. 3359, a bill that is extremely vital to the lives of these animals and to ending this cruelty. If passed, this federal bill would amend the Animal Welfare Act to restrict the use of exotic and non-domesticated animals in circuses and traveling shows. The more knowledgeable the public becomes about the suffering of circus animals and the serious safety issues involved with using dangerous animals in performances, the less inclined they will be to support, promote, employ and attend circuses that abuse and exploit these magnificent animals. http://breakthechainus.com/
David Vaccaro
8:22 pm on Tuesday, May 29, 2012
How about making a few more laws like most liberals do rather than close them up altogether? I guess you just couldn't live knowing some animal, somewhere isn't enjoying his life to the fullest. While liberals create laws protecting deer, beer, coyotes, geese and every living animal state wide ...we are all the worse for it. Shrubs and plants being eaten, little children being attacked and parks and properties being ravaged are a small price to be paid for the peace of the animal.
I'm not for a senseless slaughter but there should be some attempt to balance the animal population in New Jersey. But when the mentality of some misunderstands the supremacy of man, we are all the worse for it.
Maryann Campling
9:16 am on Sunday, July 8, 2012
Every day is a circus in Haddonfield.....bring in the clowns!!!:)