PRINCETON: Municipalities agree on joint agency cuts

By Lauren Otis, Staff Writer
   Princeton Borough Council and Township Committee agreed to cut the operating budgets of the agencies they jointly oversee by 5 percent at a meeting Tuesday night.
   At the joint municipal meeting, the governing bodies also agreed to go forward with a study of the mission, services and operations of the Human Services Commission, and to move oversight and administration of the commission’s Crosstown senior transportation service to the Suzanne Patterson Center. Borough Council members had previously discussed farming nearly all of the commission’s programs out to other agencies as a cost saving move.
   At the meeting strains between members of Borough Council and Township Committee were in evidence, brought to the fore as a result of each body’s diverging budget objectives. Borough Council has made a zero-percent tax increase pledge for the 2009 budget and has sought budget cuts wherever it can find them, while Township Committee members have made no such pledge and appeared more willing to forgo spending cuts to preserve services.
   As the council and committee worked their way through a consent agenda detailing the 5 percent cut for each joint department, patience wore thin after a lengthy discussion of the merits of cutting 5 percent off a joint contribution to the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad, reducing that contribution by $8,482 to $161,161 from last year’s contribution of $169,643.
   Township Administrator Jim Pascale said the First Aid squad was not a municipal agency but a separate nonprofit that the two municipalities made a contribution to in order to support its day crew.
   Peter Simon, president of the executive board of PFARS, said municipal funding had been frozen at 2005 levels when the squad began to seek third-party funding. Although the municipal contribution originally was to cover 100 percent of the day crew costs, it was now less that 33 percent, Mr. Simon said.
   Mr. Simon said the PFARS had increased staff and had spent $330,000 on two new emergency vehicles last year to meet the ever increasing demand for emergency services in Princeton. Fundraising was down by $50,000 from its peak in 2001, Mr. Simon said. He said, unlike other joint agencies, the 5 percent PFARS cut would be applied to personnel costs.
   Township Committeeman Chad Goerner said he hadn’t realized the PFARS funding was a joint contribution to an outside agency and the 5 percent cut would affect salaries and benefits when the issue came before him last week at the joint finance committee meeting. Such a cut “in the case of the First Aid squad, it is inappropriate,” Mr. Goerner said. “I thing we should reconsider. It is a small amount and I think we should reconsider,” he said.
   ”We have to be careful that we are consistent in how we are treating the joint agencies,” Mr. Pascale said, noting the contribution to the Public Library was also a joint contribution. Mr. Pascale said the determination to keep the PFARS joint contribution flat was made as PFARS increased fee-for-service revenue, generating $900,000 such revenue in 2008.
   Borough Councilman David Goldfarb said Corner House also had nonmunicipal employees who might be affected by the 5 percent municipal cut. “We are trying to have an even-handed approach to all budgets and that’s hard enough,” without dissecting where each budget appropriation would go, Mr. Goldfarb said.
   ”When it comes to budgeting it is an art and not a science,” Mr. Goerner said.
   ”We just spent half an hour, 45 minutes, too long,” discussing a small outlay of $2,400 by the borough and $6,000 by the township, Township Mayor Bernie Miller said.
   A Borough Council motion to keep the 5 percent PFARS reduction carried, with only Councilman Roger Martindell opposing it. Township Committeeman Lance Liverman’s motion to maintain PFARS funding at 2008’s level, and not reduce it 5 percent, passed the Township Committee unanimously.
   Following the PFARS votes, the joint body turned to the Health Department. The 2008 Health Department budget of $442,584 was reduced $27,090 to $415,494 as a result of the 5 percent cut and converting two part-time staff positions in the vital statistics department to hourly positions, Mr. Bruschi said.
   Councilman Andrew Koontz said “the Health Department is taking a very big hit this year.” He said he had been opposed to the Borough Council’s zero-percent-tax-increase pledge. There was talk of “sharing the pain, he added, but “my colleagues voted to not let the borough taxpayers share the pain right off the bat.”
   ”Are we going to start picking winners and losers?” Mr. Koontz said in reference to the committee vote to restore funding to the First Aid squad. “Are we sharing the pain or are we as governing bodies picking folks that are going to be spared?” he said.
   Mr. Goldfarb said he voted for the zero-percent tax increase pledge, but “we can’t go through this process picking the ones we like and the ones we don’t like.”
   ”I wasn’t picking and choosing,” responded Mr. Goerner. “It wasn’t the township that was the driver of the 5 percent cut to all agencies, but we agreed to it,” he said.
   ”I agree with you for the most part,” Mr. Goerner said to his council counterparts. He said he had misunderstood the PFARS payment cut at the finance committee meeting, and would have opposed it then had he understood its implications. “For the record I did apologize to Borough Council and my colleagues,” he said.
   Health Officer David Henry and Bruce Topolosky, chairman of the Princeton Regional Health Commission, warned that the funding reduction and cuts at the vital statistics department could result in reduced hours and service to the public, and threaten the agency’s ability to monitor food safety and other health problems in Princeton.
   After another lengthy discussion, both governing bodies approved the Health Department cuts (Committeewoman Sue Nemeth and Mr. Koontz each voted no to their body’s motion to approve the cuts), but not without misgivings. “This is going to be watched very carefully,” Mayor Miller said of any potential erosion in health department services as a result of the cuts.
   In lauding a compromise whereby the joint Human Services Commission would be preserved pending a study of its mission and programs conducted by two governing body liaisons — Committeewoman Liz Lempert and Councilman Kevin Wilkes — members of committee and council struck a more collegial note.
   ”I’d like to say to my colleagues on Borough Council thank you for sitting down with us and talking this issue out,” Mr. Goerner said.
   The joint bodies chose to defer a discussion of capital budgeting cuts in the joint agencies until a future date.