PRINCETON: Consolidation savings to rise over $2 million

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   Savings from the two Princetons merging are estimated to be at least $2.2 million in 2013 and far exceeded an earlier forecast, officials said Wednesday.
   Those and other details were laid out for the public at the Transition Task Force meeting, with the savings achieved mainly through staff reductions.
   Shrinking the police department is ahead of the schedule laid out by the Consolidation Commission, which recommended gradually lowering the number of sworn officers across a three-year span to reach 51. At the moment, the soon-to-be merged police departments have 54 officers.
   Originally, the commission had projected the merger saving $1.6 million in the first year of consolidation. But in a report released by task force member Scott Sillars, 2013 savings are projected to be “at least” 40 percent greater than that original forecast and could reach as much as $2.5 million.
   ”It’s really fantastic news, because we’re even in a better position than we anticipated we would be,” Township Mayor Chad Goerner said in a phone interview Thursday.
   At Wednesday night’s meeting, officials also reviewed projected transition-related costs of around $2 million for such expenses as legal, building modification, salary harmonization, tax maps and others. Those costs are due to be paid back over a number of years, and can be offset by $705,000 in savings realized this year, a $500,000 contribution from Princeton University toward consolidation and a partial reimbursement from the state.
   State and local officials will need to negotiate the “agreed to” transition-related costs, but the Christie administration has pledged to give a 20 percent reimbursement of agreed-upon expenses. Mr. Goerner said local and state officials had a preliminary meeting to discuss the issue, and he said he would expect a formal request for reimbursement will be sent to the state within the next couple of months.
   In other business, the Task Force agreed to forward the Township Committee and the Borough Council a trash collection plan calling for manual trash pickup. The plan is to divide the town into different collection zones for pickup on different days.
   Residents also would get a weekly bulk pickup day, plus the option of participating in a voluntary food waste composting collection, the details of which still need to be worked out.
   Borough Councilwoman Jo Butler, a task force member, expressed concern about the costs if all 7,100 households participated in the composting program. She said Thursday that the $630,000 expense would drive the anticipated costs of garbage and food collection well above what has been budgeted for 2013.
   ”No one really thinks we’re going to get 7,100 people to sign up,” Ms. Butler said. “But we need to protect our financial exposure on this. This is a program that we want to encourage because we believe that the cost is going to come down significantly when a composting facility closer to Princeton is created.”
   She said transporting the composted material to a site in Delaware is a major cost driver of the program.