Borough mayor-elect says the feeling of transition began back in June.
By: Jennifer Potash
After a November election, most successful candidates have two short months to prepare to take office. But that’s not the case for Princeton Borough Mayor-elect Joseph O’Neill, who begins his term Sunday.
"I started getting calls after the (June) primary, as there was a feeling of transition already," Mr. O’Neill, who is currently a borough councilman, said during a recent interview.
The general election was almost anticlimactic as Mr. O’Neill faced nominal opposition from Green Party candidate Steven Syrek.
Mr. O’Neill defeated state Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Princeton Borough) in the Democratic primary. While Mr. Gusciora ran on a platform of bringing fresh ideas to borough government, it appeared Mr. O’Neill’s thoughtful approach to the issues, most evident in lengthy campaign letters mailed to residents, won favor among voters. Also, Mr. Gusciora’s plan to keep his legislative seat while serving as borough mayor was an issue that seemed to work in Mr. O’Neill’s favor.
The transition from Mayor Marvin Reed to Mayor O’Neill will likely be seamless the pair served together for a number of years on the Princeton Regional Planning Board and worked in tandem over the last two months to wrap up the Hulfish North deal with Palmer Square.
Mayor Reed said the borough is in very good hands with Mr. O’Neill at Borough Hall.
However, the two have different styles in governing and in politics.
Mayor Reed favors memos and PowerPoint slide presentations while Mr. O’Neill, a retired college professor and educational consultant, is prone to writing position papers on issues such as affordable housing and Princeton University’s financial contribution to the borough.
Yet it may be Mr. O’Neill’s earlier career as a Roman Catholic priest that may help him most in his new job. The priesthood training may help when Mr. O’Neill must listen patiently to long soliloquies from people at borough meetings, Mayor Reed said.
Mr. O’Neill left the priesthood in the 1960s and he and wife Anne have two grown children and two grandchildren.
Mr. O’Neill says he has a few changes in mind to help keep council meetings on course. Once a month or every six weeks, the Borough Council would meet in a public, one-hour agenda session to prioritize issues needing council attention or discuss when to add an item to the more formal, weekly agendas.
Also in the spirit of openness, Mr. O’Neill is asking residents interested in serving on one of the many advisory boards and commissions to contact him.
And he plans to add some short-term task forces to study and develop proposals on issues such as affordable housing and a special-improvement district for the downtown.
The next steps to enhance the borough’s affordable housing inventory may focus on renovation and rehabilitation of existing properties, he said. Many affordable-housing projects, such as the units at Maple Terrace, are over 50 years old, he said.
A special-improvement district, in which a special tax is levied on businesses to be used to beautify and promote the business district, is becoming a necessity, Mr. O’Neill said.
"Our downtown is in a sense an economic anomaly," he said. "The malls are sucking the life out of the downtowns and we, the borough, have to be much more careful about a clean downtown."
Several downtown merchants have resisted a SID in the past, claiming the borough ought to provide the cleanup service and maintenance out of the taxes the business owners already pay.
Mr. O’Neill said the merchants "have to look beyond their own individual self-interest because if one goes down they all go down."
As a joint effort, he will join with Princeton Township Mayor Phyllis Marchand to appoint a joint task force to examine the possibility of the University Medical Center at Princeton moving from Witherspoon Street to the Route 1 corridor and make recommendations to the governing bodies, including what should be done with the property should the hospital relocate.
"The route that we are likely to take will be a range of either overlays or conditional uses so we leave the players some flexibility," Mr. O’Neill said.
The broad range of issues Mr. O’Neill wants to address present a formidable challenge but would amount to "a pretty substantial improvement" if the Borough Council could take them on in the next couple years, Mr. O’Neill said.
"It’s not going to be easy," he admitted. And a big reason is any proposed change usually invites opposition from the adjacent neighborhoods, he said.
A unique characteristic of the borough is that it is a "community of neighborhoods," Mr. O’Neill said. "And the self-identity for many of them has been forged in conflict with other larger entities like the hospital, the university, the borough itself, The Arts Council, you name it."
For example, the neighborhoods surrounding the hospital, embroiled in a lengthy fight against earlier expansion plans, may find it hard to even consider major changes there, he said.
Elected officials, in that case, must step in, he said.
"And yet one of the things that leadership requires is you have to raise them up and say think beyond your self-interest and realize sometimes the life of this community, both economic and health-wise, may depend on what happens to the Princeton Medical Center," Mr. O’Neill said. "How it’s going to occur, I don’t know, but part of this is a process of helping people understand."