By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman has rejected the borough’s request that the Ivy League school publicly oppose an Assembly bill exempting private colleges in New Jersey from having to go before local land use boards.
The university on Thursday released a two-page letter from Ms. Tilghman in which she responds to a Sept.12 letter borough Mayor Yina Moore sent her asking for that public show of opposition.
In her reply, Ms. Tilghman sounds supportive of the proposed legislation, and instead turns the tables by rehashing concerns the university has had dealing with the borough regarding the school’s proposed arts and transit project.
”As you know,” Ms. Tilghman wrote, “the purpose of this proposed legislation is to achieve parity by applying the same policies to independent colleges and universities as are currently applied to their public counterparts. It is my understanding that the consequences that concern you have not afflicted communities that host public colleges and universities, where these policies have been in place for many years.”
She said that if the legislation were to become law, the university would “make every effort to continue to consult fully and effectively with local officials in all of the communities in which we are located.”
Copies of Ms. Tilghman’s letter were sent to the Borough Council, borough Administrator Robert W. Bruschi and Assemblywoman Celeste M. Riley, (D-3) chairwoman of the Assembly Higher Education Committee, which is considering the bill.
Ms. Moore, a Princeton University graduate, could not be reached for comment. She, Borough Council members and township officials oppose the legislation, concerned about the possibility of private colleges expanding their footprint without the ability of planning or zoning boards to weigh in. Sponsors of the bill want to put private colleges on the same footing as public colleges, which are exempt from such requirements.
Aside from Ms. Tilghman, Ms. Moore had written to the presidents of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Theological Seminary and Rider University, whose Westminster Choir College is on Walnut Lane in Princeton.
Borough Councilman Roger Martindell, who drafted the original letter that was sent out to the heads of all four institutions, was not happy with Ms. Tilghman’s answer.
”In opposing (the bill) and inviting the university to join in that effort, the community’s elected municipal representatives are simply asking that the university agree to deal with development issues on the same basis as all other landowners who must work within the guidelines established by the state Legislature in the Municipal Land Use Law,” he wrote in an email to the Packet. “We’re saying: ‘You may be the 800 pound gorilla in the room, but you don’t have to act that way.’
”But Princeton University apparently declines that invitation, refusing to agree to operate on the same basis as the rest of the community. Perhaps it believes its intellectual and economic power entitles it to special status and that it may develop where, how, and when it wants, independent of the decision-making roles of the community’s planning and zoning boards as set forth in the Municipal Land Use Law, the decisions of which all other developers must abide.”Later on in her letter, Ms. Tilghman transitioned to concerns the university has with the Borough Council.
”It took more than a year of persistent requests before Borough Council agreed to consider rezoning to permit the development of university lands to address one of the university’s highest priorities and provide multiple benefits to the community and the state,” she wrote of the arts and transit project.
”Equally disturbing,” she wrote, is when earlier this year, Borough Council openly discussed trying to gain greater control over the Regional Planning Board, when the board found that a proposed ordinance “that aimed to constrain the use of university lands was inconsistent with the community master plan.”
”There are not actions,” she wrote, “that engender trust in the long-term fairness of municipal planning and zoning review.”

