Princeton Council candidates discuss platforms, U. relations

Two seats on the Princeton Council are up for grabs this fall. Incumbent Democrat David Cohen is running for a fourth term, and another seat is now open following Councilmember Leticia Fraga’s announcement that she will not seek a fourth term. Besides Cohen, three Democrats and one Republican are running. The Democrats will face off in a primary on June 2.

All the Democratic candidates spoke with The Daily Princetonian to discuss their platforms and their views on the municipality’s relationship with the University. The Republican candidate, Antonio Merolli, declined a request for an interview.

The candidates shared their thoughts on how greater relationships between the wider municipality and the University could be fostered. Cohen suggested increasing avenues for students to work with local employers.

“There are all kinds of private employers throughout the town, especially nonprofits, who would really benefit from student volunteers to support the work that they do.”

Jon Durbin, who is an editor and vice president of publishing company W. W. Norton, suggested that, in addition to local nonprofits, students could volunteer with the municipal government itself, decreasing the need for the municipality to hire consultants.

“The current Council likes to hire consultants a lot, and I think we probably should hire consultants for the really big [projects],” Durbin said. “But there are many other smaller initiatives that we can’t keep paying consultants to come in and do all these things, and it’d be great to have interested groups of students work together on those.”

Merolli, in a campaign flyer, expressed a similar view on drawing more from University expertise.

“Princeton will benefit from an improved cooperation between the municipal council and the university. This could provide a good propositive not-binding consulting,” the flyer reads. “Let’s hear the opinions of the many brilliant minds from PU and do not rely, in the early stage, just on one (or few) co-opted professionals.”

Leanna Jahnke is the CEO of Princeton Nursery School and the former Office of Wintersession and Campus Engagement program coordinator at the University. She advocated for more spaces on the campus to be explicitly open to outside community members, citing the University Art Museum as an example.

“What I’ve shared with others at the University is that sometimes it feels like you’re invited to our house, but we’re not invited to your house,” Jahnke said.

Marina Rubina, a local architect and the co-owner of Tigerlabs, a flexible office space, pointed to the NJ AI Hub as an example of where greater collaboration could have happened. The AI Hub, a collaboration between the University, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, Microsoft, and CoreWeave, is located on University-owned land in West Windsor, rather than on the main campus. Rubina questioned why such a decision was made.

“There’s no easy way [for Princeton affiliates working at the AI Hub] to bike there or to walk there. Can they go to lunch to a restaurant in Princeton? No,” Rubina said. “How can we make these sorts of relationships … where these are vital future-oriented businesses effectively that could be creating pedestrian traffic, eliminating car traffic. Those kinds of collaborative relationships, I would love to have more of a partnership rather than an opposition.”

The candidates also talked extensively about transit options in Princeton. Last week, the University announced that an e-bike ban would take effect for most of the campus in June. This comes after a state bill was signed into law in January that places some of the strictest regulations on e-bikes in the country. Additionally, the municipality rebranded its free bus service as the Princeton Loop this year and opened a new express line between the Princeton Dinky station and the Princeton Shopping Center.

Durbin expressed hesitation about the e-bike regulations, noting that some people on the outskirts of town rely on e-bikes to get to work. He advocated for differentiating between “ones that go under 20 [miles per hour] and ones that go over 20” when developing regulations.

“A number of immigrant families live out [in the outskirts] in town, and they commute along Mount Lucas [Road] to get to work, either in Princeton or down Route One, and you can see the big increase in the number of e-bikes, and that’s something that they can afford,” he said.

Cohen agreed that the speed e-bikes of different speeds should be regulated differently. “There shouldn’t be any registration required. There shouldn’t be any insurance required,” he said of pedal-assist e-bikes that go under 20 miles per hour.

Rubina cast doubt on whether the regulations are realistic, saying it is “hard to believe this would be permanent and enforceable.”

On the other hand, Jahnke favored being more deliberative when introducing new technologies. She argued that doing so would limit the chance that they would have to be banned later.

“Sometimes when you just jump to a solution like having e-bikes present without really thinking, should they be here? And then we have to undo it,” Jahnke said.

In regards to municipal busing, both Durbin and Cohen advocated for a “microtransit” system where residents would be able to request a non-fixed route bus to come to their location directly and pick them up for a subsidized price.

“The service is so infrequent that only people that have no [other] choice use it,” Cohen said of the current buses. Durbin agreed that the microtransit system would be “very popular,” but said such a system would be difficult to justify without greater bus ridership in the first place.

“The catch-22 here is that that’s a more expensive option than even the one that we have going right now, and it’s going to be hard to justify the more expensive option if we don’t embrace the new express Loop bus option more fully,” Durbin said.

Jahnke said she wanted to specifically focus on the needs of historically underserved communities when thinking about transit and mobility, especially the Vision Zero initiative, which aims to eliminate traffic fatalities through roadway design and public information efforts. She noted that there is “no crosswalk for students to safely cross the street and access the school” outside the Princeton Nursery School.

“For me, it’s just a priority to prioritize Witherspoon-Jackson, to really prioritize the Black community and the immigrant community,” Jahnke said. The Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood is a historically Black community in Princeton.

Another major priority of Jahnke’s is childcare. She described it as an “unspoken challenge.”

“Specifically, what Council can do is make themselves aware,” Jahnke said. “The reason it’s unspoken is because it’s looked at as a women’s issue, and it’s often a [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] women’s issue.”

She noted that the universal pre-K offered by Princeton Public Schools may not serve all families well because it is not offered while school is not in session and the school day ends before the work day does. “It’s a solution that people have just accepted the wrong answer for for a long time,” she said.

A major component of Rubina’s platform is increasing housing development. She advocated for more “organically, naturally-occurring housing” beyond what developments are mandated by the state under affordable housing laws.

“The way we’re going to start creating homes that people could start purchasing or getting their foot in the door, they have to be condos, or they will have to be duplexes or they will have to be triplexes,” Rubina said. However, she noted that the municipality’s current zoning code prevents housing like duplexes and triplexes from being built in many areas.

She also advocated for the University to make it easier for students to stay in their dorms over the summer to increase their involvement in the Princeton community.

“I understand the University is saving money by not operating the dorms during the summer, but on the other hand, that eliminates that working relationship and that ability to collaborate and establish roots,” she said. “It’s a brain drain, because we have an absolutely brilliant student population that could be starting startups, working for local companies, doing amazing things.”

Cohen and Durbin advocated for the University to build housing on the Butler Tract, an empty piece of land east of the Princeton Stadium, owned by the University. They noted that, if the University allows housing to be built on its land, a “Princeton preference” system could be implemented to direct the housing towards people who are employed in the University or the town.

However, Durbin also cautioned against overdevelopment, in contrast to Rubina’s view.

“I’m definitely pro-growth. We need to grow, we need to grow by a good amount for the sake of economic diversity and inclusiveness,” he said. “I also want us to not lose sight of the fact that what everybody loves about this town is that it’s a town first and foremost, not a suburban city or an urban city.”

In making the case for his reelection, Cohen underscored what he saw as the benefits of experience.

“I do bring some wisdom of experience. I bring some subject-matter expertise that I’ve acquired over nine years,” he said. He also noted that, due to Fraga’s retirement, there will be at least one new person on the Council no matter what.

The primary election will occur on June 2, and the general election will be held Nov. 3.

Oliver Wu is the assistant News editor for the ‘Prince’ leading town coverage, focused on the Municipality of Princeton and beyond. He is from Stony Brook, N.Y. and can be reached at oliver.wu[at]dailyprincetonian.com.

Teresa Chen is a staff News writer from Shanghai. She can be reached at tc7069[at]princeton.edu.

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.