By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Democrats Heather H. Howard and Lance Liverman are running for re-election to the Princeton Council, touting their record of helping guide Princeton through its first three years as a consolidated town.
“Heather and I both didn’t go into the consolidation thinking that we’re going to save a whole bunch of money. That wasn’t the main concentration,” Mr. Liverman said. “It was a more efficient government and a lower proportionate, in the future, increase in taxes is what I think both of us went into consolidation believing. And we have done that.”
“I think we’ve done a lot we’re proud of,” Ms. Howard said, “but there’s still more to do in terms of achieving the promise of consolidation. We know there’s a lot of hard work to do to try and keep the lid on taxes.”
Ms. Howard said she and Mr. Liverman, who sit on the council’s public safety committee, are proud of the way the Princeton Police Department has “turned the corner” under new leadership. She said there are fewer officers in the department as a whole but more of them on the street, what Mr. Liverman called “more boots on the ground.”
Even though Princeton is ending its third year of being one town, officials still have consolidation-related work left to do. The council will need to harmonize land use ordinances from the old borough and the township, a process that Ms. Howard said will be “important and probably controversial.”
Both support having municipal zoning regulations that, on one hand, make sure that Princeton is an affordable place to live in and, on the other, make sure the character of neighborhoods don’t change. They talked of the impact that tear downs have in a neighborhood, when developers raze a house and put a much larger one in its place.
“You can look at our zoning standards and make sure they capture what we want our neighborhoods to look like,” she said. “It’s a richer community if we’ve got diversity throughout the town.”
“I think what we want is the character of most neighborhoods to remain the same,” he said.
They also cite the usual litany of problems facing Princeton, like parking and traffic and aging infrastructure. Mr. Liverman said he thinks the community could use more public transportation, like having light rail.
Ms. Howard, 47, is a graduate of Duke University and New York University School of Law. Her professional career has been spent mostly in the public sector, notably as the state commissioner of Health and Senior Services in the administration of Gov. Jon Corzine. Today, she works at Princeton University.
Originally from Westchester, New York, she has lived in the community since 2005.
As for her political background, she was elected in 2011 to Borough Council and then elected in 2012 to the council of the consolidated community.
According to her financial disclosure statement, she received income last year from her job at the university, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont and Rutgers Center for Management Development.
Mr. Liverman, 53, manages real estate properties for a living. He graduated from then-Trenton State College, and has lived in Princeton most of his life.
He was elected to Township Committee in 2004 and to the council for the merged town in 2012.
