Peter Marks, Princeton
Princeton Borough is at a crossroads. We can choose to reduce our spending and thereby reduce our property taxes. Alternatively, we can seek increased revenues as a means of preserving lavish compensation packages for our municipal employees and urban service levels for our residents.
Discussion of the recent reassessment has thus far focused chiefly on solutions that assume the presence of a free lunch (i.e. somebody else pays the bills). The free lunch crowd has suggested several possible targets: Princeton University, those who inhabit large houses, the wealthy, state and federal governments, and other municipalities (i.e. shared services). Unhappily, the university is tax exempt, the wealthy can easily move, the budgets of our state and federal governments are already stressed, and the ceding to other municipalities of the delivery of basic services entails both a loss of control and a reduction in service levels.
If we are willing to loosen our zoning and permit greater densities, we can of course create additional “ratables.” Some view as desirable the transformation of Princeton Borough into a “regional hub.” Others view that transformation as inevitable.
Proponents of these views have engaged in a determined, decades long, take no prisoners effort to transform our town into a small city. They have been confounded, however, by costs which have risen faster than revenues. The recent reassessment shows the extent to which the resulting revenue gap has been filled by raising taxes on long time residents and businesses.
Consolidation is a density wolf in the clothing of a free lunch sheep. The merger of Princeton Borough and Township admittedly has a simple logic. In theory, we can eliminate duplicative services and pass the resulting savings on to our residents in the form of meaningful tax reductions. In practice we are likely to find that staffing levels are not easily reduced and supervisory costs tend to increase. Because the resident borough population is dwarfed by the population of the township, we in the borough would lose control of our neighborhoods and the loss of control would facilitate the transformation of the borough into a small city.
Before sliding into decisions with transformative consequences, we in the borough should decide what kind of a community we wish to be. Because there is no free lunch, we have a simple choice: small, simple, and affordable, or dense, complex, and expensive.
Those who advocate the creation of the city of Princeton should at least be honest as to the accompanying costs. Green space will disappear. Buildings will become more massive. Single-family neighborhoods will be replaced with apartment blocks. Roads will be widened.
Government will become larger, more intrusive, and more unwieldy. Land values will increase. And, notwithstanding the larger tax base, property taxes will increase driving out the elderly, the poor, and the wealthy.
I prefer to keep the borough independent, its size as small as possible, and its government as unobtrusive as possible and will therefore be a reliable vote against consolidation and in favor of reducing municipal spending.
Peter Marks
Princeton
Mr. Marks is a Republican candidate for Princeton Borough Council.

