By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
Preserve Our Historic Borough (POHB), an organization that opposes the proposed consolidation of Princeton Borough and Princeton Township, has kicked off its efforts and launched a website.
”We are going to try and educate the electorate so that when someone goes to the polls they actually have a sense of why you might not consider supporting consolidation and so people have an educated vote,” said borough resident Kate Moore, spokesperson of the 35-member group. “We will try and follow all the things we think are missing from the (Joint Shared Services Consolidation Commission) report and trying to bring them to the attention of people for them to think about it and ask questions.”
To website is http://preserveprincetonborough.wordpress.com/.
There is no formal executive board or leadership of the group except for Ms. Moore and David Goldfarb, a borough councilman and member of the JSSCC, who serves as treasurer of the grass roots effort.
”I’m involved because we are organizing to oppose consolidation,” he said. “I was at least as active in opposing consolidation last time as I am in this go-around.”
Mr. Goldfarb also assisted the group in 1996.
The group has been lobbying against consolidation of the two municipalities since 1991. They plan to attend meetings, take ads, send letters to the editor and go door-to-door to spread the word in addition to the website.
Ms. Moore became involved because Jack Turner, the founder of POHB, called her in 1996, the last time the issue was on the ballot, in response to a letter to the editor she had written.
Now, the efforts of POHB have been renewed because “not much has changed,” said Ms. Moore. “Although the law has changed to make it more flexible than the law was in 1996, now I think if you look back at letters to the editor in 1996 and if you look at advertisements both pro and anti consolidation, you’ll see the issues are the same and there are no real cost savings. I don’t mean to make light of $500 a family, but there are no cost savings.”
Ms. Moore does not think the $3 million savings that the Joint Shared Services Consolidation Commission, a group of citizens, municipal officials and a Division of Community Affairs representative, came up with are sustainable.
”It’s based on projections and equalization ratios that will change,” she said. “I looked at equalization ratios for the past 10 years and you’ll see how wide those rates change, so it’s not a true value. I don’t know why they didn’t use assessed values; I don’t understand their reasoning why they didn’t use the assessed values, something that would have been more stable.”
The savings come mostly from the proposed consolidation and condensation of the police department, which accounts for more than $2 million of $3 million in projected savings. Public Works are also recommended to combine. Most of the savings in both departments are achieved through a reduction of staffing through retirement and attrition.
”I have talked to several police officers and several public works people and some of them say given the state of the economy of New Jersey, maybe their retirement can’t come as soon as they were hoping it could,” said Ms. Moore. “Maybe those people are going to hang on a little longer.”
She didn’t recall seeing anything in the JSSCC’s report about any incentives to encourage people to take retirements, which could be an additional cost.
She also points out the transitions costs, which are estimated at more than $1 million, will need to be paid.
The extension of garbage collection to township residents will also eat into the proposed savings, she said.
”Savings are speculative,” she said. “There’s no model to look at where consolidation took place and did everything work out well and how is it going forward. Princeton has to be the poster child for consolidation in New Jersey, it always has been.”
The speculated savings have minimal impact on residents property taxes because the municipal portion of a tax bill where the savings would be seen is only one quarter of the total bill.
”It doesn’t help you with your school tax, which is 50 percent of your taxes, it doesn’t help you with the county part of the taxes,” said Ms. Moore.
She also said the report does not talk about spending, infrastructure work and capital budgets.
”Where is all the money they plan to spend?” she said. “I don’t know of a government that just stops spending, if they stop spending, it might be sustainable.”
Consolidation is not the panacea for property tax reform, she said, and thinks additional shared services, such as police and public works, may be a solution.
The group hopes to raise $12,000 to $15,000 to support their efforts; last time POHB spent $12,000 on it’s efforts.
”Communication has changed since 15 years ago, so you may not have to do individual mailings,” said Ms. Moore.
