Marchand named Princeton Township mayor

Tenth term in leadership position and eighth consecutive time.

By: David Campbell
   Phyllis Marchand was unanimously selected by the Princeton Township Committee to serve a 10th term as mayor during the township’s annual reorganization meeting Sunday. This year will be Ms. Marchand’s eighth consecutive mayoral term. She was also mayor in 1989 and 1994.
   The Township Committee also voted unanimously to appoint Bernard Miller as deputy mayor. Mr. Miller replaces Committeeman William Enslin, who was deputy mayor for the past three years.
   "I think it’s time for somebody else to pick up the duties," Mr. Enslin said Sunday when asked why he nominated his colleague on the governing body to serve now in that post. He described Mr. Miller as "eminently qualified" to be deputy mayor.
   Also Sunday, Ms. Marchand and Lance Liverman were sworn into office for three-year terms on the all-Democratic Township Committee. This will be the mayor’s seventh term on the committee and Mr. Liverman’s first.
   The first-term committeeman replaces Casey Hegener, who opted not to seek re-election in November. However, Ms. Hegener will remain involved in local government. She was appointed Sunday to serve on the Princeton Environmental Commission.
   Another noteworthy appointment Sunday was lawyer Kim Otis of the Princeton firm Haveson and Otis as the township’s new municipal prosecutor. Mr. Otis replaces former longtime prosecutor Marc Citron, who served in that position for 17 years.
   Also, Irene White, who ran for a seat on the Township Committee on the Republican ticket in November, has been tapped to serve on the township’s Shade Tree Commission.
   In her annual address Sunday, Mayor Marchand highlighted several successes of the past year, including the opening of the new Princeton Public Library building in downtown Princeton Borough and of Greenway Meadows Park on the former Robert Wood Johnson estate off Rosedale Road.
   The mayor said that about 600 acres of township land have been preserved since the municipality’s open-space tax was instituted, and called 2004 a "banner year" for the township’s public works and engineering departments. She said a "record setting" eight miles of roads were resurfaced in the past year.
   Other 2004 accomplishments cited by the mayor Sunday included the township’s new voluntary bagged leaf program and a new computer-recycling program in which residents may drop off old equipment at the public works garage.
   Citing the ongoing success of the township’s deer-management program, Mayor Marchand said the effort, which has included lethal culling and a pilot immunocontraceptive study, has reduced deer-motor vehicle accidents by 63 percent. "I am proud of the success of our model program," she continued, and said the municipality is "8-0" defending the program in the courts.
   Mayor Marchand also cited several issues and objectives for 2005 in her address Sunday, including the future of the University Medical Center at Princeton, which may relocate from its Witherspoon Street campus to a larger site in the area, and "the critical issues of immigration, race relations and gangs."
   At the committee’s Jan. 10 meeting, the mayor continued, the governing body is expected to hire a police-management consulting firm "to work in conjunction with our police professionals to develop a strategic plan designed to make our already excellent police department even better."
   Mayor Marchand said the township plans to expand fire inspections to include more commercial uses "to protect the general public and employees in these facilities." And she said the township expects to begin work on a master plan for municipal use of the Sewer Operating Committee lands off River Road.
   "There’s a lot on our plate for 2005 but I have a committed and intelligent committee and staff to move these initiatives forward, and a constituency that is not shy in expressing opinions," Mayor Marchand said.
   "We look forward to balancing all the issues so that our community remains diverse, active, safe and beautiful," the mayor said.