Township candidates praise arts neighborhood

All of the four candidates for the Princeton Township Committee this fall support the University’s proposed Arts and Transit Neighborhood, as they explained in last night’s debate. All but one of the candidates supports municipal consolidation.

Four candidates are running for two available seats. The Democratic candidates, Bernard Miller and Sue Nemeth, are both sitting Committee members. Miller is a former Township mayor and Nemeth is a sitting deputy mayor. The two are running a single campaign on a combined ticket.

The Republican candidates are Geoff Aton, who works in financial services, and former lawyer and trader Mark Scheibner.

Of the candidates, only Scheibner is opposed to the proposed municipal consolidation. If the consolidation referendum passes with a majority in both the Borough and Township in November, the two Princetons will become a single municipality beginning in 2013.

Scheibner took issue with the consolidation plan’s provision for a Borough form of government, as well as the plans to reduce the number of officers in a consolidated police force.

“If you have a systemically weak leadership, one which favors the prerogatives of the politicians over the rights of the people, what are you going to end up with? You’re going to end up with bad decisions,” Scheibner said of the plan for a Borough form of government, using as examples the Borough Council’s negotiations with the University over the past year and the Council’s response to the revaluation controversy.

While Scheibner granted that a Borough government would give the public the rights to citizens’ initiatives and directly elected mayors, he added that, “Ultimately, the Borough form of government would not give the provisions for the people.”

He also spoke strongly against the proposed police force reduction, explaining that he feels the cuts are overstated and will be “dangerous,” falling well below the minimum recommendation of the FBI for the size of the municipality.

“You’re going down to 51 police officers — this is subpar,” Scheibner said. “When you consider the rise in gangs and drugs, this will not allow for the proper coverage.”

The remaining three candidates expressed support for consolidation under the proposed plan, saying that they felt that a united government would better represent both Borough and Township interests.

“Consolidation will be enfranchisement for the entire community, not disenfranchisement for any part of the community — the line dividing the Borough and the Township is a line on a map,” Miller said, pointing out that many of the community’s distinct neighborhoods straddle the Borough-Township boundary.

He also spoke in support of the proposed smaller police force.

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“A consolidated police department will indeed be smaller in size than the sum of the two individual departments at the present time,” Miller said, though he explained this would not mean a decline in the force’s services to the community.

“In fact, there will be an increase in service in the form of safe neighborhood services that we’ve had to cut out now,” he said, referring to the report’s plan to assign individual officers to dedicated traffic and community service roles.

Miller is a member of the Joint Consolidation/Shared Services Study Commission.

Meanwhile, Nemeth said she felt strongly that her colleagues on the Township Committee could capably represent Borough interests, and vice versa.

“We are so intertwined that it’s almost impossible for me to tease them apart,” Nemeth said.

This integration means a Borough resident shouldn’t feel disenfranchised through a combined Princeton, Aton noted — and the consolidation, he added, would provide a “strong mayor figurehead” to the community.

“It will give us better negotiation with the University, and that will help make both Princetons together stronger,” he explained.

All four of the candidates expressed support for the University’s plan to build an Arts and Transit Neighborhood in the Alexander corridor and consented to the University’s plan to move Dinky station 460 feet south.

“Alexander [Road in its current state] really represents a less-than-optimum use of the land and the facilities around that side of town,” Miller said. “There’s an opportunity to improve that part of the community and bring it up to par with the rest of the community.”

Such an improvement would be a huge boon to the local economy, Nemeth said, and would provide roadway and mass transportation improvements to the Township and Borough that would be “hard to turn away from.”

“It’s beautiful, what they want to do down there, absolutely beautiful,” Aton said of the design for the Arts and Transit Neighborhood. He cited an “unscientific study” that he conducted where an “overwhelming majority” of the 93 everyday Dinky riders he interviewed were unopposed to the move.

“It would be a real shame for the University to move the Dinky, and then, worst-case scenario, build the Arts and Transit [Neighborhood], say, in West Windsor, and then that will be something that our community doesn’t get to utilize in our town,” he said.

Scheibner added that the Arts and Transit Neighborhood, which he noted would be no cost to Princeton taxpayers, will prove an “improved station” to residents.

The candidates also discussed better methods for preparing the Township for emergency situations, ways to reduce traffic in the Township and Princeton Regional Schools’ upcoming decision on the fate of the former Valley Road School site.

The debate was sponsored by The League of Women Voters and broadcast online at AllPrinceton.com.