By Pjhilip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The four Democrats running for Princeton Council sought to make the case Wednesday for municipal government having a role in making Princeton affordable to live in, influencing what kind of businesses are in town and shaping residential development within the community.
Incumbent Jenny Crumiller, Leticia Fraga, Anne Neumann and Tim Quinn spent about 90 minutes taking questions at a forum run by the League of Women Voters of the Princeton Area in the Witherspoon Hall municipal building. The candidates, who are running for two seats in next month’s Democratic primary, covered a range of topics facing the community.
Ms. Crumiller talked of wanting to keep “over-development in check” and using zoning changes to accomplish that.
“I’m very concerned … with the issue of tear downs,” Mr. Quinn said of builders buying up homes and knocking them down to construct new, larger ones in their place. “And it’s not so much tear downs because sometimes, houses just need to be torn down but what goes in their place, I think, is what’s most upsetting.”
Ms. Neumann said Princeton is becoming so expensive to live in, that the community is losing its diversity of age, ethnicity and income.
One idea was to have different types of housing stock in town, with Ms. Fraga called for looking at so-called “micro units” or very small dwellings. “But for many individuals in our community, they’re living paycheck to paycheck. And it’s very difficult not just to even be able to rent in this community and let alone to even hope of ever owning a home in this community,” Ms. Fraga said in calling housing affordability “the number one issue.”
Mr. Quinn talked of wanting to encourage the construction of more housing that costs less than $1 million. “There’s not a lot of housing in the $500,000 to the $600,000 range,” he said.
Ms. Crumiller touched on how high rents in town make it hard for Princeton to retain businesses. “If we could do anything about that, I think it would be very helpful,” she said.
Ms. Neumann said she favors creating an economic development commission and supports forming a Special Improvement District for downtown. She said such districts, known as SIDs, have been successful in New Jersey.
For his part, Mr. Quinn said the town should try to keep Princeton University graduates to stay in town and work locally rather than leave once they get their diplomas.
“I think that some of that brain power, rather than sending it to Wall Street, that we could keep some of the students on Nassau Street and see what kind of growth we could realize from that,” he said.
On the issue of municipal taxes, Ms. Neumann said the council “could do little” to reduce them given how the school budget accounts for half the tax bill and Mercer County government accounts for roughly a quarter of the rest.
Ms. Crumiller has talked of wanting to charge admission to the outdoor event, Communiversity. It was an idea she returned to Wednesday.
Ms. Fraga said she favored exploring sharing government services with other communities, while Mr. Quinn, a former school board member, said he thought there could be cost savings by cooperating with the school district. He did not elaborate on where those savings could come from.
Along the lines of working with the school district, Ms. Fraga said she favored creating a committee with the school board to utilize the old Valley Road School.
Through the night, the candidates touted their experience in serving on government boards. Mr. Quinn touted his tenure on the board of education, where he served six years.
“Board members, when I was on the board of education, felt that their service was meaningful, they felt heard,” he said. “We didn’t always agree, we didn’t always agree with the administration, we didn’t always agree with each other. However, everyone was heard, everyone was treated with respect and we were able to build consensus.”
On town/gown relations with Princeton University, Mr. Quinn said the school adds value to the community.
“I believe that they’re our neighbors and that we should behave as neighbors. And I don’t sue my neighbors when I have a dispute over something … ,” he said in an apparent dig at Ms. Neumann, who had moments earlier talked of the lawsuit she was a plaintiff in to fight the relocation of NJ Transit’s Dinky train. “But I don’t see that lawsuits make very good neighbors, personally.”
“But I think we were right to stand up for what we believed was in our town’s best interests,” Ms. Neumann said of the legal fight.
Ms. Fraga talked of making sure everyone in the community has a voice. A native of Mexico, she cited how 10 percent of the population of Princeton is Latino — a group that has never had a representative in town government. She said she hopes to be the first.
The June 7 Democratic primary is the de facto general election in Princeton because Democrats hold such a large edge in registered voters against Republicans. That is more true this year, with the GOP not fielding any council candidates.
