By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The borough said this week it would provide Princeton University with copies of emails between borough officials and members of an organization suing to halt the proposed relocation of the Dinky line.
The borough planned to turn over those records Thursday, although the emails are from a shorter time period than what the university through its law firm had requested two months ago.
On June 5, the borough clerk’s office received a broad ranging request under the state’s Open Public Record Act seeking copies of communications between Borough staff, elected officials and members of Save the Dinky Inc. from January 2006 until the present. In particular, the records included messages, electronic messages, telephone calls, conversations, meetings and memoranda with any member of the nonprofit organization.
But borough officials said this week that it would be providing only emails starting from the time when Save the Dinky Inc. was formed, which was this past January with its legal incorporation. Jonathan Epstein, a lawyer for the university, said Thursday that the Borough’s response “will not be acceptable.”
An exact number of the emails being provided was not immediately available, but the Borough said it would be sending the documents Thursday to one of the university’s lawyers.
Mr. Epstein said he would need to see what the Borough’s official response will be and then discuss with the university to determine future steps.For their part, officials said they found the university’s document request mystifying.
”I don’t know what they’re looking for,” said Borough Councilwoman Jenny Crumiller, a critic of moving the train station, in a phone interview Wednesday. “I don’t know what our emails have to do with their lawsuit.”
Borough Councilman Roger Martindell had urged the university to withdraw its request, something he called Wednesday a “cheap” litigation tactic that would be costly to taxpayers given the time it would take staff to research.
In a June letter to the Princeton Packet, he said a university lawyer had acknowledged the request was designed to find “potentially embarrassing” correspondence between Borough officials and members of Save the Dinky.
”We don’t know why they want them, except to try to suppress our comments to our public officials about the Dinky,” said Anita Garoniak, founder and president of Save the Dinky, on Wednesday. Ms. Garoniak is one of the people the university specifically named in the records request that it wanted to see any communications between.
”Princeton University encourages its students to engage in public policy issues, and it’s sad that the university is using these kinds of bullying tactics in its own backyard,” Ms. Garoniak continued. “There is nothing in our communications to public officials that they do not already know about our position. This is harassment plain and simple.”
Richard S. Goldman, a lawyer for the university writing in response to Mr. Martindell last month also in the Princeton Packet, said one of the plaintiffs in the case had admitted following instructions from a Borough council member.
”The university has a right to learn whether she or other plaintiffs in this case were similarly receiving direction from elected officials, or whether there were other communications that are germane to this case if and when it goes to trial,” he wrote in part.
In October 2011, Save the Dinky sued the university and New Jersey Transit in Superior Court to block the proposed move of the Dinky terminus by around 460 feet south. The university has said it is within its rights based on a contract between it and NJ Transit in 1984, when the university bought the station and the land on which the rail line sits.
The university has plans for a $300 million arts and transit project. The relocation of the Dinky line is necessary for an access road for university employees to get to its Lot 7 Garage from Alexander Street.
There has been a recent development in the case, with Superior Court Judge Paul Innes on Aug.10 dismissing one of the three counts in Save the Dinky’s lawsuit. He rejected the argument that the Save the Dinky members and the public had a “prescriptive easement” to use the Dinky at the current terminus.

