EDITORIAL
By Rick Sinding
There probably was a time, back in the days when little boroughs like Hopewell, Pennington, Princeton and Hightstown, really were distinguishable from the sprawling townships that surrounded them, when the hole-and-the-doughnut actually made sense as an organizing principle for drawing municipal boundaries.
In those days, the "hole" Hopewell Borough or Pennington Borough, for example were meaningful entities unto themselves, places with banks and offices and stores and schools and sidewalks and indoor plumbing. The doughnut, Hopewell Township, was largely uninhabited farmland with no amenities, no destinations, no services and no identity to speak of. The same characteristics marked the relationship between Hightstown and East Windsor, Princeton borough and township and, farther afield, places like Freehold borough and township and Morristown and Morris Township.
It’s a New Jersey phenomenon, this hole-and-doughnut demarcation. Other states may have places they call "unincorporated municipalities" that surround cities and towns and villages, but they don’t have independent governing bodies and separate taxing powers. They don’t have their own police forces and public works departments and zoning boards. They exist, for all practical purposes, on paper only.
But Hopewell Township and Princeton Township and all the other "doughnuts" around New Jersey do a lot more than take up space on a map. They are, in virtually every case, the growth area surrounding a built-out borough. As such, they have become destinations unto themselves and, in many cases, have begun to eclipse the boroughs they surround, not only in population but in economic development as well.
Pennington and Hopewell boroughs remain sleepy little postage-stamp-size places, but between Brandon Farms and Merrill Lynch, Hopewell Township has become a daily destination for literally tens of thousands of residents and commuters.
In a state where the property tax is king, you have to wonder how much longer these boroughs can hold on as their own little fiefdoms. With little or no room for economic growth, their tax bases cannot expand. Meanwhile, the cost of providing municipal services keeps going up, and their tax rates rise accordingly.
The boroughs relieved some of this pressure years ago when they joined their township neighbors to form regional school districts. This has allowed taxpayers in the property-starved boroughs to share the cost of public education by far the largest piece of the property-tax pie with new homeowners in the fast-growing townships. Some boroughs and townships have taken the next step of sharing certain municipal services, such as health and police services. Hopewell and Pennington both contract with Hopewell Township for health services. Hopewell Borough contracts with Hopewell Township for police services. But none has yet made the giant leap to total consolidation.
One of these days, it will happen. It may not be the Princetons where consolidation (in the borough at least) is a four-letter word or the Hopewells or Hopewell Township and Pennington. These particular places may be just affluent enough to afford the extravagance of continued separation. But somewhere in New Jersey, sooner or later, a hole and a doughnut are going to find it mutually advantageous to blend into a single taxpayer treat with tax relief as the sugar on top.