Ralph Widner, Princeton
Any leader up for our vote to continue in office should be asked two questions: What did you accomplish on our behalf in the past? What do you want to help us achieve in the years ahead? In my opinion, the answers that Liz Lempert can provide to each question more than justify both our thanks — and our vote — on Nov. 8.
During her first term, Mayor Lempert steered us on a steady course through the legal and administrative intricacies of the first municipal consolidation in New Jersey in over a century. Almost as important: the president of Princeton University now meets regularly with the governing body to cooperate in planning for the future.
In matters of traffic and transportation alone, the pay-off is already measurable. The municipality and the university are hard at work to create an integrated, convenient local transit service to help people get around town and reduce vehicular traffic on our streets. Next spring a municipal bike share program will complement the university’s already popular service and help lessen traffic still further. The town has launched a “Complete Streets” planning process (in which the university participates) to provide for balanced convenience and safety of pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists alike. Further, Princeton was the first community to initiate the state’s “Safe Routes to Schools” program and the first in New Jersey to take up the U.S. Department of Transportation’s “Safer People, Safer Streets” challenge. Result: a “Street Smart” local campaign already in its early stages.
The list of current and future initiatives goes on:
• At the municipality’s urging, 20 percent of the university’s Merwick-Stanworth apartments are affordable housing open to non-university residents.
• Zoning and building regulations of the former borough and township are now under examination to determine how they might be modified and harmonized to protect neighborhood character.
• An analysis of ways to improve our downtown streetscape is underway.
• A comprehensive bicycle route plan is nearing completion.
• Specific plans (the first in the state endorsed by the World Health Organization) are in place to help ensure that the community remains “age-friendly” as the numbers of seniors in our population increase.
In my view, even this partial inventory of actions taken and actions planned fully warrants a vote for Liz Lempert to keep us on track toward a still better future in an already wonderful town.
Ralph Widner
Princeton
