LOOSE ENDS: Could Princeton be going to the dogs?

By Pam Hersh Special Writer
    According to a couple of Princetonians who spoke at the Princeton Future Forum on Feb. 14, Y2K was as threatening as Mickey Mouse when compared to the disasters that Princeton could face in the near future.
    The most ominous of them all is almost too horrible to contemplate — that famine could devastate two-thirds of the world’s population.
    There was an ominous one on the local level, too, although nowhere near the scale of a global famine’s momentousness — that Nassau Street would become totally gridlocked as traffic levels increase 50 percent by 2020.
    Both prognosticators were responding to Princeton Future’s recommendation for dealing with Princeton’s future and enhancing its quality of life. The proposal was to create The Princeton Partnership, a mechanism for planning and improving the downtown district, along with improving community- wide transportation and parking systems and the availability of workforce affordable housing.
    The conversation included all the buzzwords that generate different levels of panic in town, i.e., consolidation, property taxes, tax- exempt organizations. Surprisingly, no one mentioned the word that wins this month’s Most-Overdone- Word-Award: “shovel-ready.”
    Although meant to conjure up visions of government-funded infrastructure projects that would lead to a brighter future, shovel- ready reminds me of a stinky future caused by an absence of a consolidated municipal poo policy — doggie poo, that is.
    Even if the poo is shovel-ready for easy scooping, the underlying issue in this unconsolidated community is lack of a consolidated policy towards disposal of doggie poo, a particular problem since the Princeton Borough-Princeton Township municipal boundary line conceivably could run right through the poo. One town has a pooper- scooper fine; the other town does not.
    And the poo controversy is just the tip of the problem pile of dog- related issues. One town has a leash law; the other has none. One town prohibits dogs in parks; the other lets dogs fun free in parks.
    As the Princeton Recreation Department, Princeton Borough and Princeton Township study their new Master Plan bringing everything together in one joint “Parks and Recreation Department,” progress toward a major unification of the parks and recreation functions in the community may evaporate when someone mentions dogs. All the parks are for all the people in both the Borough and the Township — but not if you have a dog in tow.
    For the first half century of my life, municipal dog-walking regulations were irrelevant to me. My only connection to this controversy occurred when I stepped in it — literally. However, granddoggies came into my life about a decade ago, and they lived in my house for a few years. Being an experienced grandma to two dogs, I now realize that all the brouhaha about dogs has little to do with the presence of the dog per se (aside from vicious dog behavior, of course) — but rather their after-effects, the droppings that healthy, active dogs leave behind.
    European cultures seem to have mastered the dog poo issue. Beautiful parks in Paris, for example, welcome you — and your dog — with a small canister on a post dispensing your dog’s own plastic baggy.
    If the cost of baggies breaks the cash-strapped Princeton municipal budgets, the towns could make recycling the plastic wrappers from the delivered newspapers the cornerstone of the Sustainable Princeton plan. If the pooper-scooper law now covering sidewalks were extended to any public place, including our parks, the doggie controversy in the unconsolidated municipalities would disappear.
    Passing such an ordinance would cause a lot of contentious barking, I’m sure. But, it is worth trying to resolve these small, albeit somewhat messy issues, to get us in the mood for dealing with consolidation involving weightier issues.
A longtime resident of Princeton, Pam Hersh is vice president for government and community affairs with Princeton HealthCare System. She is a former managing editor of The Princeton Packet