By Katie Wagner, Staff Writer
Consolidation of the borough and township was strongly endorsed on Saturday by participants in a Princeton Future meeting that had been billed largely as an examination of the relationship between the university and the community.
Princeton Future is a nonprofit organization composed of residents of the borough, township and other interested parties concerned with the direction of future development in Princeton’s downtown.
During the meeting, Princeton Future representatives sought input on whether the community preferred to keep things as they are or make changes in housing, the downtown, the relationship between the borough and the township and the university, and community’s partnership by a show of hands to questions.
Princeton Regional Board of Education member Dorothy Bedford was among 41 of the approximately 50 people in the room that raised a hand when asked who was in favor of consolidation.
”I’m representing the school board here,” Ms. Bedford said. “The borough is seeing a 10-cent tax increase and the township is seeing a penny increase. We feel very strongly it’s time for both towns to consider consolidation.”
Peter Kann, a director of Princeton Future who moderated the discussion, also seemed to favor consolidation.
”It does seem to me bizarre that we have two communities, two Princetons, with one political party,” Mr. Kann said.
Bob Durkee, the university’s vice president and secretary, said he would support any move to bring the borough and township together.
A few meeting attendees demonstrated a preference for more shared services among the two municipalities or departmental consolidation.
Anne Waldron Neumann of Alexander Street called for the merging of parks maintenance efforts by the borough and township and possibly establishing a communitywide parks organization.
Marvin Reed, chairman of the Princeton Regional Planning Board, who served as one of the meeting’s discussion leaders, warned the audience that sharing services might not provide as much savings as consolidation, if any savings at all and that the state officials were currently trying to decrease the number of municipalities in New Jersey.
Options for meeting housing needs also drew discussion and consensus for several solutions:
• 39 participants favored restructuring and reducing the size of available new housing;
• 35 favored encouraging special-purpose housing for immigrants, elderly, retired faculty, live-work lofts and other new housing types;
• 30 favored encouraging institutions to build mixed-use projects combining residences for town citizens;
• Seven favored allowing developers to build market-rate units in return for constructing affordable units or setting up townwide guidelines for local preference housing;
• Five favored greatly expanding subsidies for housing construction with local preference.
Preferred plans for changing the relationship between the university and the community included encouraging the university to review its present voluntary donations and payments in lieu of taxes, encouraging the university to create a community capital investment fund for community housing and transportation needs and establishing a joint structure with the university and members of the township and borough to address mutual concerns.
Several residents complained that the university was not providing enough money to the community, considering its large endowment.
Mr. Durkee responded, “As we go forward I think it’s important to look at what are the other contributions the university makes to the community.”
While most attendees also sought changes to the downtown, four people expressed satisfaction with the existing setup. Approximately 20 people said they wanted to see downtown development taking advantage of the 65-foot height limit and 35 said they wanted to see more mixed-use satellite downtown centers like the Dinky station plaza being proposed in the university’s new campus plan.
A future session, yet to be scheduled, is to take up diversity and sustainability.
