By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Princeton needs to find a new director of its human services department after the woman in charge for the past nearly 14 years has decided to take a job elsewhere.
Cynthia Mendez said Thursday that she plans to leave April 10 to work for Crisis Ministry of Mercer County. She said she felt it was time for a change, and that it was her choice to leave.
Her imminent departure has the town looking to start advertising the position this month. One official said the town is working on refining the job description.
”It is likely that the core parts of the current job description will be intact,” said Administrator Robert W. Bruschi in an email Wednesday. “But that being said, we will also be looking at some possible reassignment of some duties and concentrating more on the human services and social services elements of the position.”
”All of those decisions are pretty fluid at the minute,” he said.
Councilwoman Heather H. Howard, a liaison to the Human Services Commission, on Thursday cited a strong interest in finding someone bi-lingual, preferably who can speak Spanish, to have more outreach to the Latino community.
Mayor Liz Lempert said Thursday that she expected a job announcement would go out “likely next week.”
Ms. Mendez is the only employee in the department. A chief function of hers is to manage the state welfare program locally; at the moment, there are about 40 open cases serving a total of 44 people, she said.
Ms. Mendez, whose salary is around $63,000, has offered to work in the evening hours to continue managing the welfare program until her successor is found. She said she has not received an answer from the town on her offer.

