Dartmouth Goes Too Far

My wife and I have lived on Conant Road in Hanover since 1992. I have always respected the zoning and planning process for its objective rules. Where it gets subjective is in the transition from one building zone to another. This became apparent while participating in the recent site visit for Dartmouth College’s proposal for an indoor practice facility. While Dartmouth focuses on rigidly following the building code, the neighbors say, “What about us? We were here first.”

Chase Field is an island completely surrounded by residential use. That use was well established before the field development began. One could make the argument that the onus is on the college to adapt to its pre-existing abutters and not the other way around. Unfortunately, Dartmouth, in its newfound zeal to become an athletic powerhouse, has gone too far. Instead of acknowledging that it is the one coming late to the party, it is proposing a building that will be massive in scale, block light and air, be unattractive due to its warehouse-style façade, and far taller, at 72 feet, than any adjacent building in either zone.

Before Planning Board members cast a vote, I ask that they consider this hypothetical. If any one of the abutters on Tyler Road sought permission to build the exact Dartmouth-proposed building 125 feet to the east or west or north of their home, you would vote no immediately. You would say it would be completely out of character with the neighborhood. I contend the same is true 125 feet to the south.

Just because you have an artificial, man-made line separating uses, you can’t ignore the natural flow and continuation from each lot to the other. Please view this as a whole neighborhood.

Hanover is a small college town. We essentially are all neighbors. We all have a moral and legal obligation to respect and protect other owners, especially pre-existing ones. If Dartmouth will not honor its responsibility to the whole, it is the role of the Planning Board to vote no tonight.

Robert Riessen

Hanover

Diatribe Against Pornography

The May 31 diatribe against pornography (“If We Don’t Ban Pornography, Let’s Limit It”) was so full of nonsense that I don’t understand why our fine local paper published it.

A few examples from the column: first, the utter lack of any discussion of what exactly it is that we should ban or limit. That is, how does one define precisely enough for such a prohibition, which presumably would include criminal sanctions if violated, what it is that makes something pornographic? Recall that John Ashcroft, the attorney general during the first George W. Bush administration, famously covered the bare breast of the Spirit of Justice statue that resides in the Great Hall at the Department of Justice headquarters. I suppose the sculptor’s rendition of a bare breast was just too pornographic.

Then there’s the assertion that “it does not trouble us that children can view acts of rape . . . with a click of a mouse.” First, of course that is troublesome. Very troublesome. It doesn’t, however, merit the protection of Mother Nanny State; rather, in our digital age, it’s an example of poor parenting. What parents in their right minds would let children roam freely through the wild streets of the internet unescorted?

Final example of ridiculousness: the claim that the “left” is ready to take up the role of censor because of all the demands on college campuses from students that administrators and professors provide trigger warnings and safe spaces. Really think these fearful souls will take up arms and help ban pornography? I suspect that one shouted “obscenity” from the likes of a Larry Flynt directed toward these hypersensitive future members of the pornography police without the requisite trigger warning and off they’d go running to their safe space!

Mark Latham

Hartford

Democrats Must Work Together

President Obama recently thanked Sen. Sanders for everything he has contributed to this race and made clear he is wholeheartedly supporting Secretary Clinton. Elizabeth Warren is poised to do the same. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind this competitive primary has only strengthened the Democratic Party in terms of spirit and identity, and it is now time to face the very real threat that is Donald Trump.

It is imperative to understand our disagreements lie merely in how best to achieve progressive policy gains in a polarized political landscape. This is what debate is for. The process of reducing all forms of inequality has been richly debated indeed, but what cannot be lost along the way is that we share a common vision. We envision an America where upward mobility still exists, an America that promises our children will lead a better life than we have, because that is the guarantee America was built upon.

Donald Trump is not fighting for these same principles. It is often difficult to decipher what his policy positions are, which is the nature of someone who is unqualified to be commander in chief by temperament, knowledge and experience. Trump’s policy positions appear to be incoherent slogans with little actual detail. But even when he has attempted to articulate stances on economic policy, for example, it is quite clear he does not intend on tackling income inequality in the slightest.

Kathleen Doyle

Hanover

The Trouble With Capitation

In Wiliam Weeks’ and James Weinstein’s book Unraveled, recently highlighted in the Valley News, they embrace alternative payment schemes in health care such as accountable care organizations, value-based contracting and bundled payments. This reminds me that you can bundle this or value-base that in health care, but it is still “capitation in sheep’s clothing.”

The same issues that made capitation — reimbursing providers based on the number of patients — so unpalatable to physicians and patients in the 1980s are coming attractions in the “new” piecemeal capitation approaches of bundled payment, value-based contracting . . . etc.

First, such financially-based approaches conflict with the Hippocratic oath. Also, trying to hold the patient-physician relationship to financial variation levels that do not adequately capture the wider human variation in clinical practice will be futile. Developing “smart” fee-for-service medical care grounded in evidence-based medicine is more consistent with how physicians do and want to practice (putting patients first) and the oath we take on entering the profession than capitation-like financial schemes.

In addition, this risk transfer through these alternative payment plans from the insurer to the clinical enterprise should include a population-adjusted portion of the insurer reserves as well as an administrative fee for managing the insurers’ risk in order to maintain financial stability for the clinical organizations’ mission. Even large national insurers required federal government financial backing in the form of risk corridor protection, risk adjustment and reinsurance to be convinced to take on the ACA exchange population. Despite that support, many are finding they cannot manage the financial risk and are withdrawing from the exchanges.

Allen Hinkle, M.D.

Lebanon

Thanks for ‘A Life’ Story

Thank you for the June 13 “A Life” story (“A Born Fighter, She Kept Up Her Fighting Spirit”) and for devoting the space you did to it. The story of Anita Lavalette reminds us that many have a “harder row to hoe” than others. It is good to read that Anita never gave up, never stopped loving her children, and that they never stopped loving her.

Howard Shaffer

Enfield