Reporter’s notebook:

An informal survey
of Milford

By TOM KANE

MILFORD, PA — What’s on the mind of the people of Pike County these days? Our newspaper wanted to know so I traveled to Milford to find out what people have to say.

You’d expect that when you suddenly walk up to people who don’t know you and ask questions like I did, you’d get a cold shoulder. Well, you’d be wrong. You’ll find that people love to be interviewed when they know you’re not going to name them. After I talked to each person, I quickly jotted down what they had said in my reporter’s notebook.

Three people I met started right in on school taxes.

“My school tax rose 100 percent in 10 years,” one senior citizen at the Milford Diner said.

One of the three I met during lunch at the Tom Quick Inn bar said, “I know several older people with fixed incomes who had to move into a trailer park and another couple who had to move away.”

No doubt about it. School taxes are a hot issue in the community.

An intelligent, unemployed teacher in her mid 20s was having lunch at Jorgenson’s Deli on Broad Street. She said she couldn’t find decent work in Pike County. An employment agency sent her to Middletown and another sent her to Monticello.

“There’s no way I’m going to work in Monticello,” she said.

She had no idea that the county has a workforce development program that trains people and gets them jobs.

Three people bemoaned that the county has no hospital. There’s the Milford Health and Wellness Center on East Ann Street that opened a year ago, but it’s not a hospital.

“How come a rich community like Milford didn’t plan a hospital years ago?” a woman waiting her turn at the center said. Building a hospital in today’s market would be a very expensive deal, another woman said.

Next, two people asked why there wasn’t a community college in Pike County.

“What were county planners thinking? You need to get training before you get a good job,” a young woman in her early 20s said.

“Why should we have to travel to New Jersey to Sussex Community College. Why not build one here?”

I didn’t know enough about the issue to give him an answer, but then again, my purpose was to find out public opinion, not refute it.

I expected that asking open questions of residents in this neighborhood would eventually get around to sprawl. I wasn’t disappointed. Since the Home Depot issue arose, the question is on a lot of people’s minds.

“The Hunt’s want to change the zoning along the river near Hunt’s Landing and make it commercial, but they were turned down by the Westfall Planning Board,” an older woman in the Milford Health and Wellness Center said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they came back to the board with another attempt to get what they wanted.”

“Why don’t you guys keep an eye on that?” she asked.

Then, there was the guy standing in line at the Milford Diner, who had just gotten out of jail in Lord’s Valley. He knocked the police for being too strict in enforcing the new, lower blood-alcohol rates.

Only one guy drinking at the end of the bar during lunch at the Dimmick Inn told me to get lost. I guess, unlike the others, he wanted to keep his thoughts to himself.