By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Newly re-elected Mayor Liz Lempert said Monday that the first year of her new term would see the town continue working to change zoning regulations and see officials decide whether to renovate its public works facilities or build a new one.
Meeting with reporters the week after her landslide victory, she provided no new policies or agenda items but offered that the town would look to start things in 2017 that it could not get to this year.
“Well, most of the stuff I care about we’re working on,” she said. “We have a lot of challenges in front of us. Just (because) it’s a new year doesn’t mean that the challenges change dramatically. So I think we’ll be continuing to work on them as we have been.”
In her remarks, she touched on how she and the council have been working to set a path forward with priority and goal setting.
“And I think what we’ve found,” she said, “with a lot of our discussions already, is that we have a lot of projects that we’re working on right now that are likely going to extend into 2017.”
Mayor Lempert said the town’s public works facilities have reached a point where either the town has to decide whether to spend money on rehabbing them or build a new facility, likely on River Road. “So we’re going to need to make a decision about that,” she said.
In 2017, she said the town would look to work on a climate action plan and start to implement a plan to create bike paths around town.
She said the election of Republican Donald Trump to the White House would impact the town’s municipal agenda. “And I think we’re just at the beginning stages of figuring out what that is,” she said.
Princeton is among the so-called sanctuary cities in the country, where local police follow a policy of limited cooperation with federal immigration authorities. In the campaign, Mr. Trump pledged to defund such municipalities. In response to his election, at three Ivy Leagues schools, Brown, Yale and Harvard universities, advocates have been urging school officials to open up their campuses to shield illegal immigrants from deportation.
“Well, I think it’s important that we do everything we can as a municipality to offer our residents protection,” Mayor Lempert said. Asked what that meant from a policy standpoint, she replied, “I don’t know yet.”
Mayor Lempert, who turns 48 later this month, will begin a second four-year term in January thanks to a landslide win against Republican challenger Peter Marks in last week’s election. She won her first term in 2012 to become the first mayor of the consolidated Princeton. The product of a political family from California, she has insisted she has no higher political aspirations.
She has maintained that she is not interested in running for the state Legislature in 2017, when there likely will be an opening in the town’s legislative delegation with current Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli (R-16) running for governor.
Beginning in January, the governing body will welcome its first new member since consolidation, with the election of former school board president Timothy Quinn. “So I think there’ll be energy around that,” she said.
