The report was prepared by the Center for Governmental Research, a nonprofit municipal planning organization. It will be reviewed by the Joint Consolidation & Shared Services Study Commission, a 10-person ad hoc commission formed in December 2009 consisting of representatives from both the Borough and the Township.
The CGR and the commission presented the study to around 60 Borough and Township residents who attended the meeting, held at the John Witherspoon Middle School.
A further report on the municipalities’ options will be presented publicly in April. If the commission makes a formal recommendation for consolidation in May, Borough and Township voters will be able to vote on a referendum on the topic in November.
The possibility of consolidation has already come before the community several times, most recently in 1996 when the Township passed a proposal that later failed in the Borough.
New state laws may make this current attempt more likely to succeed, former Borough mayor and Princeton Regional Planning Board member Marvin Reed said during the meeting’s question-and-answer session. The Local Option Municipal Consolidation Act of 2007, which allows for consolidation by phases and the preservation of separate districts for particular services, specifically addresses some of the most contentious points of the 1996 disucssion.
“When questions were asked [about ordinance changes], the answer was always, ‘Well, we don’t know. That depends on who’s elected to the new government,’ ” Reed said, referring to the act’s provision that allows communities to preserve certain separate ordinances. “That, of course, made people somewhat apprehensive ... Frankly, that is what scared many people to death in past efforts like this.”
No specific data is yet available about the potential financial savings of consolidation, though Eugene McCarthy of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs explained that it is expected to be available by the April options meeting.
Borough Councilman Roger Martindell, however, said that the predicted savings at the time of the 1996 discussions were minimal.
“I think the savings were going to be marginal, not significant,” he said. “There were other reasons to consolidate, but it wasn’t going to save a lot of money.”
Township Mayor Chad Goerner also noted that whatever savings that could arise out of consolidation would be unlikely to relieve citizens’ property tax burdens. Only around a quarter of the municipalities’ property tax revenue goes to municipal budgets, Goerner said, while the rest is directed toward public schools and the county.
Goerner explained that any money saved on municipal costs would likely go toward improving “how we deliver services, and how to deliver services more effectively and efficiently.”
The University currently has no formal position on the possible consolidation and will not yet comment on how the change could affect the University’s contributions to the community, said Kristin Appelget, the University’s director of community and regional affairs.
“We will have further conversations with both municipalities about any further contributions in 2012 and beyond after we see what the results are,” she said.
The CGR report, first released last month, summarizes both the finances and the service operations of the Township and the Borough. The two municipalities’ services include both those administered individually by either government and those administered jointly, to which both governments contribute.
Two thirds of the debt for jointly administered services are attributed to the Township, with the remaining third attributable to the Borough. However, when the debts of the two municipalities are considered in ratio to real property valuation, they are nearly identical, at 1.70 percent for the Township and 1.71 percent for the Borough.
The Borough, described as “the hole in the doughnut” of the Township, is more commercial than the Township and has almost seven times the population density.
After double-counted figures that appreared in both Borough and Township budgets were removed, the Borough’s 2010 general appropriations budget was $23.3 million and the Township’s was $35.2 million.
Consolidation would require a unified government. At present, the Borough’s government consists of a popularly elected mayor serving a four-year term and a six-member legislative council elected at large in staggered three-year terms.
The Township’s government consists of a committee of five members who serve staggered three-year terms and elect from among themselves a mayor and deputy mayor to serve one-year terms.
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