PCDO hosts panel on consolidation

Borough and Township residents weighed the pros and cons of municipal consolidation at a forum hosted by the Princeton Community Democratic Organization on Sunday evening. Residents will vote on consolidation on Nov. 8.

If the consolidation referendum passes with a majority in both the Borough and the Township, the two will become one municipality beginning in 2013. They would consolidate according to a plan developed by a joint commission over the past year that predicts savings of $3.3 million, largely by combining departments and eliminating some staff and police positions.

Members of the forum’s panel discussed the possible loss of representation that could arise from lifestyle differences between the Borough and Township.

“In the Township, there are many drive-in, drive-out properties. In the Borough we have walkable streets,” anti-consolidation panelist Alexi Assmus said. “And I think those are significant lifestyle differences, and I think those interests should be represented.”

“There are cultural differences, but they are the same cultural differences across the Borough and across the Township,” pro-consolidation panelist Patrick Simon said. “The Borough and the Township, when they split apart, were village and farms ... Now we have two towns, with similar profiles in every respect.”

Sixty percent of the population in a consolidated municipality would live in the town center and in the immediate area around the town center, Simon said.

Pro-consolidation panelist Claire Jacobus attributed the perceived differences between Borough and Township lifestyles as “the absolutely illogical trope that people in the Township are different from people in the Borough.” She said she is unable to distinguish between Borough and Township residents, “and quite frankly, it is of absolutely no value or interest to me. We always were one community, and we should be.”

Assmus questioned whether the commission’s report reflected bias. She said she felt that “the commission was there to convince residents that consolidation would be a good thing, rather than it be a time to for the citizens to discuss the pros and cons” of the merger.

The tax rate and debt burden of the Borough and Township were nearly equal in 2010, while in previous years they had varied by 15 percent or more. “Hearing that these are given as reasons to consolidate — that our tax rates are equal, and that our debt rates are equal, suggested to me that consolidation had been long planned and that the commission would focus on the positive in the report rather than the negatives,” Assmus said.

She went on to say that she feels the commission is overstating the potential property tax ratings, which are not guaranteed. The predicted property tax savings depend on the new municipal government’s actual implementation of all the commission’s prescribed changes, Assmus noted, including the elimination of 16.5 staff positions. If the prescribed cuts are not made, the tax burden on all residents will increase due to the extension of trash collection into the Township, she said.

Panelists also disagreed on how state law would allow them to combine their legal codes. The Local Option Municipal Consolidation Act of 2007, passed since the most recent consolidation referendum in 1996, would allow the former municipalities to preserve separate legal codes rather than combining their books. The panelists disagreed over whether the law’s vagueness on requirements for renewal would give the municipality the security to preserve its laws or would produce more legal trouble down the road.

“We can preserve the differences,” Simon explained. “All that’s required is for the government to review them every five years, and the review is, frankly, what the government and the municipality want it to be. It can be as thorough or as routine as ‘we should continue this until we get to it.’ ”

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“Some people we’ve been working with have looked into this, and it seems like the law on renewal of separate ordinances is somewhat unclear,” Assmus said, adding that the law did not state what was required for the municipality to renew separate ordinances every five years. “We’ve had some lawyers tell us this will probably be challenged in court.”

Panelists were somewhat united, however, when asked whether consolidation would “reduce or increase the ability of the two Princetons in dealing with the University’s power in Princeton.”

The University made payment-in-lieu-of-taxes contributions to both municipal budgets last year as part of two separate agreements that end this year. After the November election, both municipalities will be negotiating with the University for another contribution.

“I don’t want to overplay this ... but, frankly, we take away the strategy of ‘divide and conquer,’ ” Simon said. “But we do have more leverage and we can work together with the University better as a consolidated community.”

“From what I’ve heard, the University is very much for it,” Assmus said of the consolidation proposal. “They don’t like going to two sets of community meetings. If it really was going to make us so much stronger vis-a-vis the University, why would they want it?”

One question submitted by the audience asked why the commission had decided not to recommend a ward system for the new municipality. Under a ward system, the municipality would be divided into six wards and one representative would be chosen from each district.

Simon answered that it would be very difficult to create a fair ward division in Princeton due to the University’s presence.

“Wards by state law must count population, not voters. So whatever ward contains the students and the University is overrepresented in terms of the actual voters,” Simon said. Because many undergraduates vote in their home districts instead of in Princeton, the votes of the few registered voters in the district containing the undergraduate population would be much more influential than those of the voters in other wards.