Township offer: $1.66 million for one level of garage for library parking

Documents show effort by borough and township officials to deal with fallout from breaking free parking agreement

By: Courtney Gross
   Eighteen months before announcing that it could no longer afford $70,000 a year to subsidize free parking for library patrons, Princeton Township officials proposed spending $1.66 million to purchase one level of the Spring Street Garage for library parking, according to documents obtained by The Packet.
   The documents, obtained under the New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act, include e-mails in which township officials blame Princeton Borough for killing the two free hours of library parking by rejecting the garage purchase idea and other alternatives.
   Officials on both sides have repeatedly declined to answer questions about how and why the two municipalities abandoned a free parking pledge that was instrumental in locating the new Princeton Public Library within the borough in 2004.
   The mutual blackout was actually part of the municipalities’ failed negotiation, according to a Nov. 27-29 e-mail exchange between Township Administrator James Pascale and Township Committee member Victoria Bergman. The messages expressed concern about which entity would be blamed for breaking the free parking agreement and contained advice from Mr. Pascale on how to keep details of the impasse from press and public.
   Details of the garage purchase proposal appear in a confidential memo, dated June 10, 2005 from Borough Administrator Robert Bruschi to the borough mayor and council members.
   The township’s proposal, confirmed Thursday by Mr. Bruschi, was to pay $1.66 million for a two-thirds interest in one of the garage’s five parking levels, containing 85 spaces. The borough would have retained a one-third interest, valued at close to $900,000, and the two municipalities would then have turned the floor over to the library to manage for the exclusive use of its own patrons.
   According to the memo, the township’s costs, financed over a 40-year period, would have been $89,904 annually — about $20,000 more than its share of the library parking subsidy in 2006.
   Explaining the borough’s rejection of the offer, Mr. Bruschi said: "That comes back to us being able to control the financial destiny of the borough. Those are decisions we make periodically that we want to make in the interest in our bottom line."
   A less detailed reference to the garage offer appears in township e-mails from last November, which blamed the borough for causing the end of the free library parking but cautioned that public expressions of blame might be turned back on the township. For that reason, Mr. Pascale wrote in a Nov. 27 e-mail, he and borough officials ended two years of library parking negotiations by agreeing to issue only tersely-worded flyers, posters and a press release headlined: "Beginning Feb. 1, library patrons to receive 30 minutes of free parking" at the Spring Street garage.
   Since the garage doesn’t charge anyone for the first 30 minutes, the announcement was immediately understood to herald an end to the free library parking commitment that both municipalities had been funding since the library opened in 2004.
   "All agreed that we would not point fingers," Mr. Pascale wrote of his meetings with Mr. Bruschi and library Director Leslie Burger.
   In an e-mailed reply, Ms. Bergman asked whether Mr. Pascale and Mr. Bruschi could agree on additional "talking points" to explain the change. She wrote: "If one entity issues a press release or announces the fact before another, it may appear that the announcing party is the one responsible."
   Mr. Pascale warned that this could upset the pact to "low key" the change and touch off a public debate over blame. He wrote: "Mutual talking points, beyond agreement on language in the flyer, would be difficult to achieve, given each parties view of the situation."
   Mr. Pascale e-mailed Ms. Bergman and other officials that they should "advise any reporter who calls you that we eliminated library parking due to financial constraints. Period. I don’t think we should get into the multitude of alternative options we came up with i.e. buying a floor of the garage for library use, adjusting the parking rates for other users to provide for free library patron parking, etc. etc., all rejected by the Boro."
   He ended the e-mail by explaining: "I’m afraid Boro officials will only respond in kind. And we don’t need that."
   A second e-mail from Ms. Bergman, on Nov. 29, expressed concern that the "financial constraint" explanation seemed to contradict previous suggestions by township officials that their aim was to shift the $70,000 township share of the parking subsidy "toward library programming", rather than make it a reduction in spending.
   As a result, Ms. Bergman wrote: "It might be awkward to indicate that financial constraints prevent the township from continuing to make payment to the Borough for parking."
   The library parking subsidy had been funded on the basis of borough and township ratables — approximately 66 percent for the township and 33 percent for the borough. In 2006, the subsidy cost a total of $101,000, of which the borough covered approximately $34,000.
   Despite township statements about shifting its share of the subsidy to the library, Ms. Burger, the library’s director, said that she had been given no assurance of that as of Thursday.
   "We would love to see that $67,000 find its way to the library, but I have no way of knowing that based on the budget cycle right now."
   However, Mr. Pascale said Thursday that the township intends to apply the money to the library’s budget request for 2007-2008.
   Township Committee member Bernie Miller said Thursday that the subsidized parking arrangement had been unfair because there had been no way of determining whether people who stopped into the library to have their parking tickets validated stayed to use the library or went shopping in the central business district.
   "From my perspective, we were caught in a situation where we were paying for something (and) we were not knowing what we were paying for," Mr. Miller said.
   Ms. Bergman agreed.
   "It’s not fair to township taxpayers, basically its subsidizing the user," Ms. Bergman said. "But its also subsidizing the borough’s parking garage and borough merchants."
   In a Jan. 18 e-mail answering a resident’s complaint about the loss of free parking, Mr. Miller also argued that the township’s commitment to provide it had predated his arrival on the council by "many years."
   Mr. Pascale, Mr. Bruschi and other borough and township officials Thursday defended the decision to withhold details of the library parking breakdown, arguing that a public dispute would have made it more difficult for the two municipalities to work together on other issues.
   "From a ‘low key’ standpoint, I think what we’re trying to do is not make this more than a business decision," Mr. Bruschi said.
   Township Mayor Phyllis Marchand said officials also feared a public backlash against the library.
   Ms. Bergman also defended the handling of the issue but said that in retrospect, she would have preferred to provide more information to the public.
   "Having worked my life in government, unless something is sensitive and involves personnel or other people who you can’t speak for, then openness is better," Ms. Bergman said.