The Borough Mayorship: David Goldfarb

Democratic candidates David Goldfarb and Yina Moore ’79 will be competing for the party’s nomination for Borough mayor in June. The winner will run as the endorsed Democratic candidate in the November general election. Due to the split of votes in what was formerly a three-candidate race, the Princeton Community Democratic Organization could not endorse any candidate for the primary election at its endorsement meeting last month. Goldfarb fell short of the necessary number of votes for endorsement. He received more than 40 percent of the votes at the April meeting, so the PCDO granted him a recommendation. His name will appear on the ballot without the official PCDO endorsement or slogan. The candidates spoke to The Daily Princetonian about their platforms on issues of importance to the Borough, including its potential consolidation of the Township; tensions with the University over its proposed Arts and Transit Neighborhood and payment in lieu of taxes negotiations; and increasing local diversity.

Goldfarb, who is a member of the Joint Consolidation/Shared Services Study Commission of Princeton Borough and Princeton Township, said he has not yet made a firm decision about whether he believes the Commission should recommend that a referendum on consolidation be added to the November ballot.

“There are a few pieces of information that are lacking, and they’re key to my decision,” Goldfarb said, citing the need to know the exact tax impact on Borough residents, which may be available in the next few days. He added that he also needs to know the actual cost of the transition process itself and whether the state will contribute.

Goldfarb said he was pleased with the work the commission had been doing so far in considering the details of a possible consolidation. If the municipalities were consolidated, Goldfarb said, he would consider running for mayor of a unified Princeton, though he sees it as a distinct job with its own challenges.

Because his employer, the law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath, represents the University on land-use issues including the Arts and Transit Neighborhood zoning ordinance, Goldfarb recuses himself from all of the Council’s discussions and votes related to the ordinance.

Goldfarb said he would like to have the University address some of his specific concerns before he would encourage his fellow Council members to grant the zoning.

“The current proposal to move the Dinky without replacing it with something better is not an enhancement of the experience of riding the Dinky,” Goldfarb said. “It is a detriment to our public transit system.”

Goldfarb added that he believes that the University’s plans for traffic development in the area would not have as great a benefit as the University has predicted and that the proposed design would give the area too much of the appearance of the University campus.

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“The proposal as designed, if built, would give to Alexander Street the same sort of feel that Washington Road now has, which is that it’s part of the campus. That is not appropriate when we’re dealing with what had been clearly defined as the edge of the campus,” Goldfarb explained.

Goldfarb said he would take action to persuade University officials to increase the annual payment in lieu of taxes contribution that the University makes to the Borough’s operating budget, which was $1.2 million last year.

He added that he would urge University officials to increase the PILOT contribution to equal the amount the University would pay in property taxes if its properties were not tax-exempt, which he estimated to be in the neighborhood of $10 million to $15 million.

Goldfarb said he believes that the PILOT negotiations between the University and elected officials from the Borough have lacked the strength that comes with making an argument on behalf of the community.

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“The University gets positive feedback from people that it interacts with in the community, and it may be making assumptions about how people in the community feel,” he said. “It’s my belief that people in the community are generally growing impatient with the University’s unwillingness to address its obligations.”

Goldfarb explained that, as mayor, he would like to include in the PILOT negotiations a public forum where members of the community could share their opinions.

“The idea is to engage in a public discussion and to allow the University to present its case and the community to present its case and for the University to make a judgment based on what it hears,” Goldfarb said.

Part of the need for a greater contribution from the University, Goldfarb said, is the ongoing gentrification of Princeton.

“Can this be a very wealthy community with a large prestigious University in the middle of it? Well, we could do that and survive, but many of us would regard that as vastly inferior to what we have experienced,” Goldfarb said. “Unless we do something about it, that’s where we’re going to end up.”

“I would strongly prefer that we maintain economic diversity to the extent that we possibly can because it adds to the quality of living here,” he added, saying that preserving the economic diversity of Princeton is also key to the University’s interests.

The University will be less attractive to scholars and students as it becomes more gentrified, he explained.

Correction

An earlier version of this story stated that Goldfarb received over 50 percent of the vote and that he had received the PCDO's unofficial endorsement. In fact, he received just over 40 percent of the vote and received the PCDO's recommendation.