PRINCETON COUNCIL CANDIDATE: Miller: Consolidation a big factor in future

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   For former township mayor Bernard P. Miller, Princeton is his adopted home.
   It’s where he met his wife, brought up his six children, became a community leader and spent most of his adult life.
   Mr. Miller, a member of the Township Committee, is a candidate for the consolidated Princeton Council. Mr. Miller is running on the Democrat ticket with five other council candidates. There is one Republican in the race.
   Mr. Miller has lived in town for more than 50 years. He said he has supported the two Princetons becoming one town.
   ”Consolidation is a big factor in my career in Princeton Township, both as an individual and as a member of Township Committee,” he said, and sat on a study commission that looked at the issue in the 1970s. “Ever since, I have been a strong advocate for consolidation.”
   Aside from saving money by having a smaller work force, Mr. Miller said consolidation holds savings in expenses that the two towns will no longer have to make separately. In particular, he cited upgrades to the police communication system.
   ”I would like to see the benefits of consolidation delivered. I don’t want to see the benefits of consolidation slip away from the community through a lack of follow-up on the part of the elected officials,” he said. “Can we provide services more efficiently with consolidation? I think so.”
   He said he wants government to find better ways of providing services and communication to the public. That could be through shared services with the school district, an avenue that he would like to explore.
   ”We both have grounds that we need to upkeep. We both have maintenance. We both have vehicles,” said Mr. Miller, also adding Mercer County to that mix.
   Traffic has become a major problem in town. He said it is important to encourage people to get out of their cars by walking and using mass transportation, including TigerTransit, the bus service that Princeton University runs. He said many streets in town were laid out “before there was much thought to bicyclists operating on the same street with cars and trucks.”
   In using tax dollars to add more open space, Mr. Miller said he would be guided by finding “linkages between what we already have and open space that might become available.”
   ”I think we ought to focus our attention on linking the open space we have and making it more accessible,” said Mr. Miller, who said government needs to a do better job of maintaining its trails.
   Mr. Miller, 83, has lived in Princeton for 55 years. Originally from Chelsea, Mass., he grew up in suburban Philadelphia. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania State University, later studying at the Air Force Institute of Technology and Princeton and Cornell universities.
   After a career in the military and later business, he is retired. He is the father of six adult children and has six grandchildren.
   In the 1980s, he was appointed to the township housing board, later serving on the cable TV committee.
   ”I got involved in local government well before I retired because I felt that having lived in Princeton essentially all my life, that it was an opportunity to give something back to the community, a community that had been good to me, that had been good to my family,” he said.
   In 2002, he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Township Committee left by Steve Frankt. During his tenure, there has been turmoil and turnover within the township police department, including when the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office assumed control of the force in 2010 amid allegations of criminal conduct by then Chief Mark Emann.
   Mr. Miller, the mayor at the time, recalled the Thursday night phone call from Prosecutor Joseph L. Bocchini Jr. informing him of the takeover.
   ”I was pressing very hard for them to wrap up the investigation as rapidly as possible and come to whatever conclusion they had to,” said Mr. Miller, who added county authorities would not divulge what the investigation was about.
   ”I think what happened in our department was indeed unfortunate,” he said.
   Discussing the abrupt departures of Police Chief Robert Buchanan and Township Administrator Jim Pascale in March, Mr. Miller said: “In both instances, they both felt it was time for them to retire.”