Thirty-five years ago, Hightstown and East Windsor almost merged.
By: Scott Morgan
"Our two communities are at a crossroads in our history that will, in all likelihood, never occur again. That opportunity is the chance to unite on a common course that will be beneficial to both communities because of the favorable factors that exist now."
John W. Orr Jr., East Windsor, April 14, 1968
How prescient John Orr has proved to be. One year after Mr. Orr opened his letter to the Windsor-Hights Herald with these words, township voters took the opposite fork than he was suggesting. There would be no merger of East Windsor and Hightstown, and there has never been another chance to try.
But in the 1960s, "merger" was a mighty buzzword in the local lexicon. What started in the wind, with conversations and suggestions, in time led to advocacy groups extolling or denouncing the union of two disparate, interdependent, fiercely territorial communities.
By 1967, the concept of a merger gained such prominence that the councils of both municipalities hired someone from the outside to tell them whether it was a good idea. In December of that year, everybody got his answer.
On Dec. 7, the Fels Institute of Government, a school at the University of Pennsylvania, released its recommendation to "start merger work as soon as possible." Based on exhaustive data, Fels endorsed a seven-to-nine-member joint council and a full-time manager to "insure unified policymaking and planning" in a joint municipality.
Using a fictitious 1966 merger as the basis for its data, Fels concluded that a unified community could administer to 45,000 residents without a noticeable increase in the cost of running the government.
This was especially good for the area at the time. In 1967, a unified municipality would only administer to about 5,150 people or about 75 people less than the borough population of today.
Had the merger happened in 1966, the report concluded, the united government would have spent more than $682,000 less in water/sewer services. Fels also concluded that a united community would have paid an estimated property tax rate of $7.62 per $100 of assessed property value.
Now, lest you think that rate seems exceedingly high, remember that the average single-family home in 1966 was valued at $10,000-$20,000. In 1967 numbers, the owner of a house worth $15,000 would pay $1,143 in total taxes.
Compare this to 2002 numbers, in which borough residents pay a total tax rate of $4.46 per $100 of assessed valuation and township residents pay $3.67. The average area home, worth around $150,000 would cost borough taxpayers $6,690 in taxes and township residents $5,505.
But while the tax rate effectively would have stabilized, the unified rate would have strongly favored Hightstown residents. At $7.62, borough residents would have enjoyed a tax rate cut of $1.15, while township residents would have paid an extra 54 cents on the hundred.
The recommendation received unanimous approval from the local politicians and equal amounts of hatred and support from residents. Borough Mayor John Selecky announced that if a merger were to happen, the earliest possible date would be July 1969. In actuality, the referendum to decide on merger was held on April 19 of that year. But for the 16 months between the Fels report and the referendum, the fight to unite met the fight to maintain sovereignty.
Through 1968, the push to merge received its strongest thrust from the Joint Consolidation Committee (the Jaycees), a state-mandated organization charged with evaluating the feasibility of and support for a merger. The Jaycees, of which current Borough Councilman Eugene Sarafin was part, appraised the effects a merger would have on the tenure of certain officials and on capital projects. Throughout its evaluation, the group implored residents to look beyond the black and white of the tax question and consider the benefits of efficiency in a unified government.
By September 1968, the Jaycees had succeeded in persuading the East Windsor Township Council and the Hightstown Area Chamber of Commerce to back the merger being proposed for the following July. The group also had run an effective door-to-door canvassing campaign, gathering support (and the required number of signatures on a petition) from citizens, particularly those in Hightstown.
According to state law, in order to get the merger to a public referendum, the Jaycees needed to gather signatures of support from 20 percent of each municipality’s residents. By 1969, the group had succeeded in doing so.
But there were those who didn’t agree. The East Windsor Township Democratic Club voted as early as February 1968 to unanimously oppose the merger, saying the merger would amount to little more than the township subsidizing the borough’s tax payments.
Borough resident Donald Vetick challenged the Fels report, saying he had never seen a study in which Fels did not recommend a merger. Mr. Vetick added a merger would leave Hightstown with no real representation on a unified municipal council.
Township resident Edwin Weihenmayer said the Fels report did not accurately reflect the current tax climate at the time, but in the end, he sided with the merger idea.
By February 1969, the Jaycees had established its recommendation that Hightstown and East Windsor should unite. Public and official opinion largely supported the idea, though residents continued to debate identity, tax impact and representation.
In March, the Borough Council finally, formally, backed the merger as outlined by the Jaycees. The Jaycees’ recommendation was based on an option from the Fels study known as "Plan E." Plan E stated the most efficient way to run the government would be a nine-person council elected by voters at large. Richard Wright, chairman of the JCC, said this type of government would spread out evenly the work needed to run the municipality. The number of officials representing each municipality was not specified.
Plan E also outlined how to set up emergency services. The borough and township police departments would unite under a single, council-appointed chief and be staffed with one officer for every 800 residents. The Hightstown Housing Authority would become the town’s official housing unit; the East Windsor Township Municipal Utilities Authority would become the official water/sewer agency, though the JCC suggested the borough’s water/sewer plant continue operating; individual fire and first aid companies would become single, municipal entities.
All debts and financial obligations from each community would become the domain of the new government.
But by the end of that month, less than three weeks before the voters would decide the future of the towns, signs of ruin began to fracture the Jaycees’ recommendations. In public meetings, residents argued loudly over the suggestion that the new municipality be named Hightstown. William Miller, legal counsel for the Jaycees, implored that the name Hightstown is unique in all the world and that it is rooted in American Revolutionary history.
But talks stalled on a name. And then they backed up. By the end of March, an anti-merger group named Concerned Community Citizens referred to taxation disparities as the harbinger of doom for township residents. "East Windsor taxpayers," said CCC spokesman Paul Perrault, "stand to lose if consolidation is approved." The group cited its own financial results that suggested school taxes and an uneven ratable base would slam township taxpayers much more than the Fels report let on.
On April 3, the Windsor-Hights Herald reported that East Windsor Mayor Donald Schultz, despite his council’s endorsement of the merger plan, would call for a no vote on the referendum. Mayor Schultz said he decided against the merger because of a question of back taxes from Meadow Lakes, which at the time was involved in a state Supreme Court case to decide if it was a ratable property. Today, it is. The back taxes, it was reported then, referred to money the township may have to pay in order to keep Meadow Lakes operable, as much of the property rested in East Windsor.
In the last week before the referendum, a flurry of support and protest over the merger claimed a substantial amount of local news space. On April 10, the Windsor-Hights Herald officially endorsed the merger, joining the Boards of Health of East Windsor and Hightstown, which had formally endorsed the plan a week prior. But on April 17, the voice came down to the voters.
Letters to the Herald, printed April 24, reflected the joys and disappointments over the defeated referendum. Though it had passed in the borough, East Windsor voters shot down the plan, allegedly due to concern over how many representatives the borough could have on the new council.
However, the letters also reflected signs of hope. Borough resident Laurence Fish wrote that since consolidation was not ruled out in perpetuity by the voters, perhaps the issue would one day rise again. For the most part, talk of uniting the borough and township are today the domain of history’s ash heap and very few of the merger’s original advocates.
Advocates such as Eugene Sarafin. Mr. Sarafin wrote in April 1969, "Consolidation is not dead." To this day, he continues to be the strongest voice for uniting East Windsor and Hightstown. Only this time next time he would like to see a referendum for the total dissolution of Hightstown.
So far, his idea has received no popular support.