Thank you for taking the time to respond - but I am unsure how to interpret your input.
In my other experiences with arrays (albeit somewhat limited) - I needed to set their scope/size with this type of statement prior to defining their values. Are you suggesting those two lines are unnecessary? If they are removed you get a NullPointerException in the class constructor when you try to define their values. They seem to be defined properly in the constructor but are not recognized in the class method?