PRINCETON: Mayor: I’ll negotiate with university

Mayor Liz Lempert said she expects to be directly involved in the town’s efforts to reach a voluntary, multi-year financial contribution from Princeton University, her husband’s employer.

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   Mayor Liz Lempert said she expects to be directly involved in the town’s efforts to reach a voluntary, multi-year financial contribution from Princeton University, her husband’s employer.
   Mayor Lempert, addressing reporters at a press conference Monday, offered her first public comments on the issue since getting a legal opinion last week that said she does not have a conflict of interest in negotiating such an agreement. Her husband, Ken Norman, is a tenured professor who was hired in 2002.
   In her remarks, she differentiated the times when, as a member of the Township Committee, she recused herself from university-related issues and when she did not on others. “And I made that decision based on the advice from the municipal attorney,” she said.
   For example, she said she did not recuse herself when it came to the voluntary contribution from the University to then Township. But she did so on the rezoning that the University needed for its arts and transit project.
   ”I’m not reversing what I did on Township Committee,” she said.
   ”I guess bottom line is,” she said, “I’m not a lawyer. So I don’t want to be making the legal determination of when I should be recusing myself and when I shouldn’t be. That’s one of the reasons why we have a municipal attorney, is to give us guidance.”
   Last week, Princeton municipal attorney Edwin W. Schmierer provided her and the council an opinion stating that she is free to discuss with university officials the contribution. In his opinion, he made clear that “any conflict of interest in non-existent.”
   The university in 2013 is providing the town with a voluntary contribution of $2.475 million. For the period from July 2012 to June 2013, the school paid Princeton $9.5 million in property and sewer taxes.
   Mayor Lempert said the town does not have a date yet for when it plans to meet with the university. The Princeton Council was due to discuss in closed session Monday who should comprise the team the town sends to the meet with the university. Mayor Lempert expects she will be on that team.
   The two sides “ideally” will seek to work out a multi-year agreement, she said.
   ”I think both parties have talked about the desire for that,” she said. “Certainly from the municipality’s perspective, it helps in our planning for our budget to know what it’s going to be.”
   Later in her press conference, she declined to answer yes or no when asked whether she supported residents’ efforts challenging the university’s tax-exempt status, a potential financial windfall for taxpayers.
   ”It’s a complicated issue,” she said.