Merger talks continue as debate rages

The Joint Consolidation/Shared Services Commission of Princeton Borough and Princeton Township gave a public presentation on the options for Borough and Township consolidation Wednesday evening. Several residents who attended voiced their concerns and asked questions about the proposed merge.

The commission reviewed the Options Report, which enumerates three or four different options for consolidation for each municipal department and the potential savings of each.

If the municipalities were consolidated and all of the options recommended by the commission were implemented, the two Princetons would potentially save $3.3 million. These savings represent about 5 percent of the municipalities’ combined budget of $60 million.

Tax impact figures indicating how much the savings would represent for the average Princeton household are expected to be released within the next week.

Despite the savings, members of the commission urged the public not to expect a large reduction in property taxes. Only about a quarter of residents’ property taxes goes to the municipalities’ operating budgets, municipal consolidation subcommittee chair Bernie Miller explained, while the remaining three quarters goes to state and county taxes.

Residents raised concerns about whether “the juice was worth the squeeze,” in the words of the commission.

The commission also recommended a Borough form of government, with a directly elected mayor and a six-member council.

To consolidate the two police departments, the Commission recommended gradually reducing the headcount of sworn officers from 60 to 51 over a three-year period. By pacing the reduction of officers, the departments hope to avoid layoffs by taking advantage of the attrition of retiring officers.

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“We all thought that consolidation would cause a large, significant decrease in our property taxes, and the commission discovered that that’s not the case,” Borough resident Phyllis Teitelbaum said. “Since there are twice as many voters in the Township as in the Borough, and all the positions would be elected at large, the Borough residents will, in fact, be disenfranchised. They will have little or no representation in the government.”

In response to Teitelbaum’s concern, Miller said he thought the savings were substantial enough to justify the consolidation.

“If any of you were running a $60 million-a-year business — which the combined municipalities’ budget is at the current time — and someone working for you came in and said, ‘I can identify a way to save 5 percent of the cost of running this business and that 5 percent could be returned to the shareholders as a dividend, I think you’d consider that person to have done a hell of a good job,” Miller said. “While your property taxes won’t go down substantially, $3.3 million is nothing to sneeze at.”

“One person, one vote is the way it works,” he added, in response to the concern over the imbalance in Borough and Township representation.

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Township resident Mark Scheibner, who expressed concern over the decision to not include wards and the lack of the right to pass initiative referendums under a Borough form of government, asked if the commission could recommend putting the form of government on the ballot as a separate measure.

In response to the public questions, commission member Patrick Simon explained that, because wards are determined based on equal population, not on the number of registered voters, it would be very difficult to implement wards in a way that would be fair to Princeton voters. The active voters in whichever ward holds the University and accounts for its many students who do not vote in Princeton would have a disproportionate say in the government, he explained.

Also in response to a public question, the commission said it would consider recommending that the further use of shared services be placed on the ballot as a referendum.

Several people also voiced their concerns about the differences in lifestyle between the Borough and Township.

“I would like to challenge the whole notion that there is some sort of cultural difference between Borough people and Township people, and that, somehow, if we’re combined, the teeming hordes of Township people would somehow overwhelm the Borough residents in terms of how we vote,” said Dan Preston, Township resident and president of the Princeton Community Democratic Organization.

“When I listen to the comments, I think of the United States that spent so much money and blood for Iraq trying to get the Sunnis and the Shias together, and here we are, people are trying to divide the Borough people from the Township people, and it breaks my heart that we can’t get above that,” one Borough resident in attendance said.

The commission will vote on its final item-by-item recommendations at its meeting on May 17 and will vote on whether to recommend consolidation on May 25. If it does recommend consolidation, the commission will make its final report to both municipal governing bodies in June and the bodies will have until Aug. 18 to vote on putting the referendum on the ballot for the Nov. 8 election.

The commission’s report and recommendations were the results of months spent working with the Center for Governmental Research, a nonprofit public management consulting firm.