Borough Councilmember Roger Martindell accused the Council of withholding information during a meeting last night, continuing his crusade for the release of sealed minutes from a closed session that was held in August.
The Council also scrutinized a proposal for managing stormwater runoff, discussed the danger that rock salt poses to Princeton's trees and approved the October police report.
Martindell has repeatedly asked the Council to release the minutes from its secret meeting, which took place Aug. 7, but at last night's open session, he stepped up his rhetoric, calling the Council's actions "illegal."
"During the last two months, we've had no discussion in public regarding the release of those minutes," he said. "I think that the withholding of them is an illegal act."
Martindell added that keeping the minutes secret is a violation of public trust. "If they're not put on the agenda for release, I know we're not conducting public business with integrity," he said.
Though what transpired during the secret meeting is not yet public knowledge, Mayor Mildred Trotman said that the minutes dealt with "ongoing negotiations" between the Borough and Nassau HKT, the company responsible for developing the area near the Princeton Public Library.
"There are some of us who feel that this set of minutes should not be made public at this time," Trotman said.
During the meeting, Borough Police Chief Anthony Federico also presented the police report from October, noting that the police had arrested several burglars who were armed with knives and breaking into homes in Princeton. "We recovered a large amount of stolen property taken from the victims," he said.
He also reported that there were 31 thefts and 14 burglaries in the Borough in August.
The Council members spent most of the meeting debating the merits of a resolution on stormwater runoff, which they eventually passed. The resolution requires residents building impermeable surfaces larger than 400 square feet to apply for special permits from the Borough and possibly pay fines.
Councilmember David Goldfarb was the most outspoken in his opposition to the proposal. "If you read the proposal literally, the requirements for small development projects are incredibly onerous," he said. "You have to show that your little 400-square-foot project will have no influence on anyone at all, even in the future, after the whole town gets developed."
But Borough engineer Chris Budzinski maintained that the proposal was necessary to prevent flooding in houses situated in low-lying areas. Susan Charkes, an environmental-planning specialist who testified during the meeting, added that the need to prevent flooding would increase as the earth's climate heats up.
"Pressure to reduce impervious cover is urgent," she said. "Global warming will affect this region by increasing the frequency and intensity of rainfall."
Council members also grappled with administrative as well as environmental reasons for passing the resolution, which was developed in response to a 2004 state mandate requiring that all municipalities create policies regulating impermeable coverage.
Borough Administrator Bob Bruschi told the Council that the Borough was late in complying with the law. "I don't want to put a gun to anyone's head, but we are under a significant amount of pressure," he said. "This was supposed to be done a long time ago."
Though many Council members were initially skeptical of the proposal, Goldfarb cast the only dissenting vote when the proposal passed.
The rest of the meeting focused on rock salt. The Council discussed a bid by the International Salt Company to provide 9,000 tons of rock salt to the Borough over the next two years.
"We spend all this money to plant trees along our roads, and we kill them with rock salt," Councilmember Wendy Benchley said.
Councilmember Barabara Trelstad proposed using alcohol instead of salt to clear the roads, noting that a new invention called Magic Salt uses leftover mash from alcohol distilleries to melt ice.
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