By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Mayoral candidates Liz Lempert and Richard Woodbridge said Tuesday that ensuring the success of consolidation would be high on their agenda during their first term.
”Consolidation and making that work is going to be the core mission of the next year,” said Ms. Lempert, a Democrat, in a second joint interview with Mr. Woodbridge with the Princeton Packet. The first was in September.
Ms. Lempert said she was committed to having a police department of 51 sworn officers by year three of consolidation, the target figure that the Consolidation Commission set last year.
”If we don’t have a commitment to that ultimate number of 51, we’re not going to be able to realize the savings that were projected,” she said. “Being really clear about that is going to be important.”
”Obviously, the first item on the agenda has got to be to do whatever you can to make consolidation work, it’s that simple,” said Mr. Woodbridge, a Republican. “If it doesn’t work, in terms of reducing taxes and improving efficiency and stuff like that, then not only will we have failed the town, but we will have failed the state.”
On the police force, Mr. Woodbridge said he would want to ask current Borough Police Chief David J. Dudeck, who is going to lead the department, if he is comfortable with 51 officers.Ms. Lempert also repeated an earlier promise that there will be no municipal tax increase next year.
”And we’d like to move it even further than that if we can,” she said.
Just last week, the Transition Task Force showed projected savings of anywhere from $2.26 million to $2.5 million next year from consolidation.
Mr. Woodbridge, however, warned against putting faith in budget projections “as though they were gospel.”
In looking to how he would be mayor, Mr. Woodbridge said he would seek to drive a regional approach to solving problems from transportation to economic development.
”We’ve got to start managing that future and moving it where we want to go rather than just reacting,” he said.
Ms. Lempert noted that there is already a regional approach to transportation, with a group that includes former borough mayor Marvin Reed looking at the Route 1 corridor.
”We’ve good relationship with all the regional mayors and we do meet and try to work together on things,” she said.
The candidates found some common ground. They oppose an Assembly bill that allows private colleges and universities to bypass municipal land use boards when they want to build something.
”Essentially what it does, it takes away a municipality’s right to zone,” she said. “I’m very disturbed by this bill.”
If the bill becomes law, Mr. Woodbridge said the relationship between the town and Princeton University would become “worse.”
”It means that they can effectively do whatever they wanted,” he said.
Ms. Lempert and Mr. Woodbridge have spouses who work for Princeton University.Both candidates weighed in on moving the NJ Transit Dinky train line an element of the university’s planned arts and transit project. Mr. Woodbridge said he has always been opposed moving the line.
”I don’t know any other town in the United States that’s moved light rail out of town,” he said. “So I think that part of it is a mistake.”
”I do worry about access to the Dinky station, both for people who walk there now and for people who park in the lot and are walking now from the lot to the station,” said Ms. Lempert.
Aside from choosing a mayor and council candidates, Princeton voters also will decide a referendum calling for a local tax that can be used for acquiring open space and maintaining parks and trails. Ms. Lempert and Mr. Woodbridge said they supported it.
Yet Mr. Woodbridge also called it just “another tax increase. For some people, they can afford it. Other people can’t.”
With less than two weeks before Election Day, the race is in its final days.
During the campaign, Mr. Woodbridge has cast himself as the more experienced candidate of the two. He has cited his background as a past township mayor and a Borough Council president who grew up and went to college in Princeton.
Ms. Lempert, on the other hand, has said she has more “current” experience as a sitting township committeewoman and deputy mayor.
Mr. Woodbridge said the poor condition of public streets is due to deferred maintenance.
”I think part of the road repair is just a smaller piece of a larger issue,” he said. “The maintenance of the parks, I think, has been let (to) slip a little bit like the roads.”
”The truth is that we’ve had some really tough winters and it wreaks havoc on the roads,” Ms. Lempert said.
Ms. Lempert, a proponent of biking, favors using local tax dollars to invest in bike facilities and sidewalks as alternative way for people to get around.
”Moving forward, we want to look at our transportation dollars as not just focused on cars, because if we’re only spending money on the infrastructure for cars, then that’s how people are going to end up getting around,” she said. “I think you need to give people viable alternatives.”
Both candidates support using mass transit as another alternative to automobiles.

