By Lauren Otis, Staff Writer
PRINCETON — What happened to the municipal consolidation of the Princetons, a topic that bloomed through spring but seemed to wilt in the summer heat?
In April, a joint session of Princeton Township Committee and Princeton Borough Council heard Mark Pfeiffer, deputy director of the New Jersey Division of Local Government Services, extol the flexibility and benefits written into updated consolidation statutes, including provisions allowing municipalities to conduct studies on the subject, fully funded by the state.
Even longtime consolidation skeptics like Borough Councilman David Goldfarb and Borough Mayor Mildred Trotman expressed cautious optimism at the time for at least taking the next step of beginning to look into the subject.
Since then there has been silence from both town halls, even from active proponents of consolidation.
”A lot has been going on, it has been going on quietly and behind the scenes,” said Township Mayor Bernie Miller.
The discussions have been on the subject of the Princetons both sharing additional services and moving towards full municipal consolidation, Mayor Miller said. The goal is to draft a resolution for both municipalities to adopt for the creation of a consolidation study commission supported by funding from the state, he said, adding “hopefully that can be done in the first half of next year.”
”We’ve had additional meetings with Mark Pfeiffer, an informal meeting, kind of a dinner meeting where we kicked things around with Mark, and informal meetings with members on Borough Council to get them on board,” Mayor Miller said.
”One-on-one conversations across the line have been underway,” said Councilman Kevin Wilkes. “We’ve been discussing a strategy throughout the summer and I think September is going to produce some progress,” in putting together a proposal for the borough and township to study consolidation, he said.
Mr. Wilkes said progress on the subject “would have happened sooner if August hadn’t intervened,” when many elected officials had work obligations or were traveling.
Enthusiasm for studying the subject in the wake of Mr. Pfeiffer’s presentation “hasn’t subsided or been on hold,” said Township Deputy Mayor Chad Goerner, who also said one-on-one meetings have been continuing throughout the summer.
In Mr. Pfeiffer’s presentation explaining the Local Option Municipal Consolidation Act of 2007 he described how the state would fund studies exploring both full municipal consolidation as well as shared services agreements, Mr. Goerner said.
Mr. Goerner said, even among proponents of full municipal consolidation like himself “basically what we had felt was after that meeting we had to keep an open mind regarding shared services because the township is generally in favor of full consolidation while the borough is in favor of a mixture,” with some council members leaning towards shared services, others towards full consolidation.
Mr. Goerner said over the summer work has been progressing on developing a resolution for both governing bodies to consider, which would call for the drafting and submission of an application to the state Department of Community Affairs for forming a Princeton consolidation commission which would seek state funding to hire an independent consultant who would study all aspects of both full consolidation and sharing further services, such as policing.
Given the Princetons’ long history of unsuccessful efforts to consolidate, and the strong feelings the subject can raise, an independent study was felt to be the best way to proceed, Mr. Goerner said, because “there is no emotion involved and they can approach it from an independent perspective.”
Mr. Goerner said this deliberate and thorough approach was appropriate given the different opinions among elected officials in the two Princetons. “Rather than let this funding dry up at the DCA we wanted to address this issue because it is important to our constituents,” he said.
”The local option allows for a phased in consolidation so you could basically start with the police force, and then do the governing bodies,” Mr. Goerner said, adding “I think that has the broadest support from both municipalities.”
Mr. Goerner said progress was being made on the resolution, and he was hopeful that a joint borough and council session could be set up in the fall, perhaps in early October. On the agenda would be the renovation of Community Park Pool along with the approval of a resolution for submitting the DCA application for forming a consolidation commission and embarking on an independent study, he said.
”Not everybody on both governing bodies is interested in exactly the same thing,” Mayor Miller said, but “there has been very effective cooperation between the members of both governing bodies.”
Full municipal consolidation “is still high on my list, very high on my list,” Mayor Miller said. “In fact, I’d like to go down in history as the last mayor of Princeton Township.”
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