By Lauren Otis
Organizers of a forum seeking public support for efforts to press Princeton University to pay more in property taxes are pleased and ready to set strategies for the campaign’s next step.
”We thought the meeting went very well,” said Township Committeewoman Sue Nemeth, a founding member of Princeton Citizens for Tax Fairness. The group sponsored the Sunday event, attended by approximately 100 people.
”We were very pleased that the community came out, and a real cross-section of the community came out. That was important. We are proceeding as planned,” Ms. Nemeth said.
She said a planning meeting had been scheduled for the coming week, and task forces would be set up to deal with correspondence, communications and other issues going forward.
Robert Durkee, Princeton University vice president and secretary, said he regretted not being able to attend but he had a speaking engagement. Based on being briefed by university Director of Community and Regional Affairs Kristin Appelget, who did attend, and what he read, Mr. Durkee said he found it “very puzzling, this idea that somehow it’s been difficult to converse with us about these issues.”
When invited to participate, he and other university representatives “have been very receptive to having conversations about these issues in whatever ways the communities proposed to have them,” Mr. Durkee said, be it a public conversation at Borough Council or elsewhere, or private conversations with the mayors and other officials in Princeton Borough and Township.
”In the past 10 years our (annual) contribution to the borough has increased from $80,000 to now almost $1.2 million. That strikes me as being pretty responsive,” Mr. Durkee said.
In addition to its nearly $1.2 million payment to the borough, the university pays property taxes of approximately $7 million to both the borough and township. It does not make a payment in lieu of taxes to the township.
Mayor Mildred Trotman also cited strides made in university payments as a result of ongoing private conversations between herself, Borough Administrator Robert Bruschi and Mr. Durkee and Ms. Appelget, although “we didn’t get the kind of increases that I had anticipated, that I had hoped for, that I think we should get.”
”I have always felt that the university wasn’t paying their fair share and that hasn’t changed,” Mayor Trotman said.
Mayor Trotman said to truly compel the university to pay more would require action by the state legislature, something she has been in contact with Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, D-Princeton, about. Without legislation “you can’t force a tax-exempt institution to give up any more than they are willing to give,” she said.
Mayor Trotman said of the Sunday forum, which she attended, “I was there and I thought it was a great presentation, and I thought the presenters were great.”
Of statements made at the meeting by Councilman Roger Martindell that the negotiating process with the university should no longer be private but should include the public, Mayor Trotman said, “He has every right to believe they (the negotiations) should be more open. I’m not opposed to an open meeting.”
Ms. Appelget, in a letter to The Packet, said that Borough Councilman Kevin Wilkes spoke in error at the Sunday forum when he said the university had embarked on a 20-million-square-foot expansion over the next 10 to 15 years.
”In fact, the proposed amount was just over 2 million square feet, much of which (Whitman College, Lewis Library, Butler College dorms) have already been constructed or are almost completed,” Ms. Appelget wrote. “Because of the university’s current economic circumstances, most of the additional proposed construction is currently on hold, but even if it is all constructed it would still add up to only 2 million square feet, not 20.”
Mr. Durkee said at future forums on Princeton University’s contributions to surrounding communities he hoped the facts would be presented, and the university would have an opportunity to describe all it does for surrounding communities, both in financial payments and in other ways.
The economic problems encumbering the rest of the Princeton community haven’t bypassed the university, Mr. Durkee said. Under revised budget projections, the university has projected a 30 percent decrease in the value of its endowment by June 30, from a value of $16.3 billion in 2008 to $11.4 billion. A 7 percent cut in the university’s operating budget, amounting to $170 million over two years, was also announced recently by the university.
”People need to understand that our capability to contribute for the moment and for the foreseeable future is constrained by our own financial circumstances,” Mr. Durkee said. “That is another fact that needs to be taken into account.”
”I would certainly like to be going through some of the economic problems they have,” said Mayor Trotman.
Township Mayor Bernie Miller did not return calls seeking comment.
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