Anne Waldron Neumann of Princeton
There’s an elephant in Princeton Borough, which bulges into the township. And we Princetonians view our elephant — Princeton University — much as those storied blind men viewed theirs. One blind man, happening to grasp the elephant’s trunk, announces that the elephant is a snake. Another, feeling the elephant’s leg, decides the elephant is a tree. A third, grasping the ear, says the elephant is a fan. And so on.
Real blind people aren’t so silly, of course; they would feel the whole elephant, at least all they could reach. But some Princetonians do think the university’s a snake. Others value the university’s noble trees. Still others are fans of the cultural opportunities the university offers them. If we hotly defend our individual experiences of Princeton’s elephant, however, then, like those fictional blind men, we’re each partly right, but all of us are wrong.
Even Princetonians who encounter just one aspect of the university interpret it differently, as though some blind men found the elephant’s trunk a strangling serpent; others, a hose gushing life-giving water. Some Princeton merchants think they’d get more business if the university’s half of the borough were houses, not campus buildings, and if the Frist Center didn’t compete for student dollars. Other merchants believe that university parents and tourists multiply their profits.
Similarly, some Princetonians believe the university provides jobs. Others think the university’s service jobs, many of them outsourced, offer low pay and benefits. Meanwhile, teaching positions go to recruits from outside Princeton, who bid up house prices with university-subsidized mortgages. Many Princetonians, finally, admire the university’s generosity. It voluntarily keeps university residences that might house schoolchildren on our tax rolls. And, although the university pays the township only $9,000 annually in lieu of the property taxes from which nonprofits are exempt, its voluntary PILOT to the borough is now $1,000,000.
Other Princetonians think the university is stingy. Can an expanding institution with a $15.8 billion endowment be nonprofit? And, if the university acknowledges that employees’ children burden Princeton schools, why not keep all its property on the tax tolls since it all, in varying degrees, burdens the infrastructure Princetonians pay for?
We Princetonians need fairer payments reflecting what’s not on the tax rolls. Our property taxes rise steadily as service costs rise. The university’s payment should rise too — predictably — as a percentage of increasing tuition, ballooning endowment, or expanding property values. If the university paid taxes on all its property (even as currently under-assessed), borough property taxes would drop 25 percent, township property taxes, 15 percent and, astonishingly, property taxes for the rest of Mercer County, five percent.
We must therefore explore every aspect of our elephant—not just those we can easily reach. Has the iniversity disclosed all planned expansion? Have we really been consulted about a $300-million arts district for 4,000 undergraduates that the university clearly means to build anyway? We focus on whether the Dinky station should move 500 feet. We should also consider whether we want an even bigger elephant.
Anne Waldron Neumann
Alexander Street
Princeton
