Borough, Township debate landfill

Princeton Borough and Township officials sparred over the ownership of a landfill during a joint meeting at Borough Hall last night.

The dispute was over 127 acres of land in the northeastern corner of the Township. Called the Princeton Sewer Operating Committee Land, the area contains a landfill that has not accepted new garbage since 1984, as well as buildings that store equipment for sewer maintenance.

Members of the Township Committee, saying they want to develop the land, pressed the Borough Council to give them partial deeds to the acreage. Edwin Schmierer, a lawyer for the Township, alleged that since the landfill closed, some Borough Councilmembers had been "using their ownership of the deed as a bargaining chip to press the Township to meet various demands."

Though the land was jointly bought by the Township and Borough in 1931 for use by the Sewer Operating Committee, the deed was written in the Borough's name, and the Township has since tried to acquire joint ownership of the land in order to proceed with its development plans.

Township planning director Lee Solow presented a report on the development, which may include a recreation area to be built over the landfill, a schoolbus storage facility, buildings for the Board of Education and new facilities for the Princeton sewer system.

The Borough Council eventually conceded to the Township Committee's request, voting to surrender its full ownership of the deeds and establish a body to oversee use of the land, but only after a rocky back-and-forth between the two groups that almost led them to adjourn the meeting without an agreement.

Councilmember Roger Martindell said he was vehemently opposed to handing over deeds to the Township, demanding that the Township first pay outstanding debts to the Borough.

"All these issues between the Borough and the Township involving millions of dollars haven't been resolved, and here we are giving over millions of dollars in deeds," Martindell said. "It's a breach of duty to constituents, it's embarrassing and it shows how weak the Borough is."

Other members of the Borough Council also resisted handing over the deeds, with Councilmember Andrew Koontz requesting to table the topic until the Borough's concerns were addressed. The motion was voted down.

Township Committee members, meanwhile, voiced their ire at the Council's resistance to their request for partial ownership. "I don't want to be sandbagged with questions," Committee member Victoria Bergman said during the meeting. "We need to stick to our agreements."

Township Mayor Phyllis Marchand castigated the Borough Council for not making an effort to examine Solow's report. "I think that a little less than a month is ample time to go over the report," she said. "The fact that you haven't gotten to go over it is surprising."

Chad Goerner, a Township Committee member, threw up his hands in the middle of the meeting and exclaimed, "I quit, I quit, I just quit!"

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The meeting was about to adjourn without an agreement when former Borough Councilmember Mark Freda rose from the audience to make the case for conciliation. "The Council should vote tonight to turn over the deeds," he said. "From a resident's point of view, this is embarrassing."

After Freda spoke, Borough Councilmember David Goldfarb proposed that the Borough make handing over the deeds conditional on the establishment of a body within two weeks to oversee the use of the land. Martindell was the only person to vote "nay" on this motion.

Goldfarb compared the new ownership arrangement to a marriage. "The kind of legal entity we want to emulate is a matrimony," he said. "That's the kind of arrangement we want to create between the Borough and the Township."

But Borough Mayor Mildred Trotman warned the Township that, even though the Borough had handed over the land, she still intends to press the Township on "the many open issues" that have not been resolved between the two Borough and the Township.