The budget of $25.9 million represents a 4.8 percent increase over last year’s budget. It includes an $800,000 surplus and no tax increase.
The latest amendments, introduced to prevent a property tax increase, reduce expenditures in salaries and wages by leaving an administrative vacancy unfilled for a year and reducing an engineering salary.
Another amendment cut a $26,000 contribution to a first aid program that, after several years of reduced subsidies, will become financially independent this year. The final budget will be approved on April 26.
The Council also discussed a request by a residential developer that is currently sponsoring a Borough-subsidized affordable housing development to expand the program to a greater number of potential buyers.
Under an agreement made with the Borough in 2002, J. Robert Hillier, a local company, agreed to rent certain apartment units on a property named “The Waxwood” at Quarry and MacLean streets at prices 20 percent below the market rate to moderate-income residents who had lived in the historically diverse John Witherspoon neighborhood for at least 10 years, or whose ancestors had lived in the neighborhood.
However, of the property’s five below-price units, one has been vacant since last spring and another since last September. “We haven’t been able to find five qualified applicants who want them,” said James Banks, development manager at Hillier.
The one-bedroom units, which have a market rate of $2,060 per month, were originally to be sold or rented to qualified tenants at $1,600 per month. Banks said that Hillier had repeatedly lowered the rate and was currently offering the apartments at $1,300 per month.
Due to a scarcity of qualified buyers, Banks requested that the agreement be altered to open up the lower-priced housing to an expanded pool of tenants after the properties have gone vacant for over 45 days. Banks requested that this expanded pool include buyers who had lived in Princeton Borough for five years and who had incomes below $62,000.
“When you’re not selling, you can lower the price and then it will sell,” Councilwoman Jenny Crumiller said, asking Hillier to lower its prices further to fill the vacancies with tenants who qualified under the original program. “To me, changing this agreement to the detriment of the neighbors because you’re not willing to lower the rent enough to fill the vacancies doesn’t seem like it’s in the public interest.”
When Councilwoman Barbara Trelstad inquired into where Hillier had advertised the lower-priced properties, Banks said that Hillier has not run mass advertisements of the lower-priced properties due to possible legal complications.
“You might be running a little afoul of the Fair Housing Act by introducing a geographic preference” into housing sales, he explained. Banks also said that Hillier had instead advertised the properties locally by public announcements and posters in the John Witherspoon neighborhood.
No decision has yet been made on the proposed housing changes.
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