said statement shall be entered in the minutes of the speeding of this meeting as required by sections for a three d thirteen fourteen of the open public meetings that has been provided to the public in the form of the two thousand and twelve schedule of regular meetings on january third two two slight changes to our consent agenda which all girls are momentarily a is bills and claims item b we have music amplification requests we have one for polly burlingham for a wedding to be held june sixteenth two thousand and twelve at four sixty one minute lucas road from five pm to eleven pm we have one for joseph schwarz for a wedding to be held june sixteenth two thousand and twelve and mountain lakes from four thirty pm to eleven pm we have and to eighty four mercer street from seven thirty pm to eleven pm i am see we have a resolution for our little renewals for two thousand and twelve to two thousand and thirteen we are going to  take the item d off of the agenda and we will reconsider this at our next meeting just need to do some additional work here item the e p we have the westerly road church conservation easement and license agreement and i am f integrated construction change order number one and final improvements to help tom drive mans grove road and woodland drive in the mail of ninety nine thousand seven hundred thirty dollars any questions from township committee on items on the consent agenda ok say minute there are any questions or comments from the public on items on the consent agenda ok same done is there a motion to between little brook road and the princeton kingston road appropriating the sum of thirty thousand five hundred dollars therefore providing for the financing of said appropriation by the making of a downpayment and the issuance of bonds or notes of said township and further providing  special assessment of fifty percent of the cost around one property owners on both sides of roper road and or so we're sending ordinance number two thousand and twelve dash for so this is a continuance of a discussion that we've had going back several of this and the previous slide to use raw on the corner there we've actually opened that area up to create planting opportunities we truly are better you rise to underneath the utility and then we plant the area with a very nice buffer screening of matters that we're going to deal with the other two trees should the side walk be installed in the side the rug which will need to be removed and again that will provide us with enough area for some some area a lot of interference with these and significant outages in the area i met with an individual from white pine lane who was very concerned about that so we are also at this time taking advantage through this project and remov trees which are into feeling with the wires were potentially going to cause outages and as i said with the replanting will be keeping that in mind to make sure the trees are of ornamental nature where they will not int wires we also have a couple of other trees that are in decline and again we're speaking with the homeowner the about improperly or about this and the discussions will continue this on not will take them as removing these trees at this time during the project competitive goods that we squeeze seen from the contractor the contractor actually has to work on the road to do with sanitary sewer repair work and they've been working out there this past week and will be working there this week see a letter from one of the homeowners suggesting that if there was a sidewalk on one side of the road that perhaps it should be on really the southern side of the road from discussions with the engineering department and they are brisk regular neal from a traffic safety point of view and from the police department's point of view it makes more sense to put the sidewalk in on the proposed side which in this case would be to southern side a couple  road at that time under a previous traffic safety officers ten year it was also his opinion that when the sidewalk be installed is as a way to sort of complete part of the master plan that would govern on  that side of the roadway as well my concern with having the sidewalk separate into separate areas meaning that a pedestrian would have to question it block is at the very nature that defeats the my purpose for sidewalk  if i were to be asked whether if i had had it one way or the other naturally i would favor a sidewalk because i would want the pedestrian to be out of the try to push on the roadway however i would like to see it stay on one side to remain consistent so we don't invite that very pedestrian into the roadway if you prefer to some of the slides that we had up earlier the site distances considerable from little brick road to random a lot of road is not so favorable from random to route twenty seven so for a cloud to come off of twenty seven and head down towards white pine you're sort of coming off the quest of the hill and i would have concerns about having a pedestrian in a crosswalk with a limited amount of sight distance in that area the very reason why you don't see what we in traffic refer to as the mid block cross walk the state does not favor those and they frown upon them whenever we see state approval for something for the very nature is that people do you just cannot expect pedestrians to be crossing in that area they usually expect them to cross at a stop walk or across wept at a stop sign so that's  pretty much princeton township police department traffic safety boroughs opinion on that senator question yes thank you very much yeah so john kerry and the other questions by my committee thank you don't have any questions from township committee and then ok with that i see some residents in the audience so it like to open up the walk to the street and i'm not completely at war with this at all my feeling is that i don't think we need a sidewalk on the street i mean i've lived there since ninety eight and want to probably the older people on the around i've raised three kids there i work at home my office actually looks over ripper so i see when people walking and you know in conference calls and i honestly don't see people ever walking on a rope or rope ever and i so i find it that is one it's going to really destroy wrecked my property because the side i was going to go in is going to take out a lot of the you know the but the trees in the bush and you know and what have you and that's the beauty of the property the properties that is a spectacular very nice natural beautiful neighborhood property which i enjoy a lot and what's go happen is a sidewalk is going to go in that's going to have to be removed it's going to really you know open it up and take the beauty out of it so i once it just in is that if you know if especially the neighbors that want to go from little brook down to white pine which most of them do want the sidewalk stop now if everything you say is true that's far more dangerous to work across roper road to get to the bus stop then to walk across roper road at the bottom of the hill where you can see traffic coming for two hundred feet and cross over now i don't want to be argumentative but those are the facts by the way a second thing failed to mention new police department allowed that i don't know i didn't pay all the residents of apologize i have a job and i have to work to earn a living till just like everybody else in this room so i didn't have a chance to do i also spoke to to mr o'neill in regards to destruction of trees there's a property if you look on the north side between random road and little broke covers three point eight acres the gun family that is a wooded area there is no improvements in that property yes there would have to be trees cut but i think give it to people who actually improve the property and landscape versus people who like having the woods maybe i'm crazy maybe words are wonderful i don't disagree with that but i think that caviar it's kind of the put me when you make decisions regards to you know cutting trees down all the pictures of my parents property sort of leave out minor little details such as the sprinkler system will be are screwed up the beautiful gardens that my mother created in the last fifty years are all going to be ripped up ok besides the two trees and the third tree that's dying that i never got any mention though mr kaiser pointed out to me instead of the township will take care of it but i haven't heard anything from the township  i think the decision to put a sidewalk in should be based on rational facts not cherry pick facts you know like you know going into iraq because there were weapons of mass destruction we know there were not weapons of mass destruction i don't believe in fantasy i think this project impacts my family more than anybody else on the street is ok it would require me to have somebody shoveling snow whenever it snows because i don't like paying traffic tickets ok this hasn't been mentioned at all yes each side of the street will pay half the cost but what about the liability what about the liability of somebody tripping and falling because you left a rake out on the sidewalk where you don't have to worry about if there's no sidewalk but of course you have to clear off the snow because you have forty eight hours of quoting mr scherer so i'd like to see all the facts on the table i'd rather not just rely on the quote unquote experts i think anyone can be an expert if they research it sufficiently and i think i have and i'd like you to make a decision based on the facts so that provided to you and not simply the cherry picked facts that have been provided to you is required to stop or whether it's safe for a person to rush from the bus stop it's currently on twenty seventh that side of the road is that the main difference is that on either end of roper road is a stop sign and under vehicles that travel in the middle meaning from one intersection to the other intersection on roper road there is no requirement for be it will traveling east and west on roper road to stop at random road that is cars all of the same concerns come up whenever we discuss putting a sidewalk in and we'd like to take advantage of these projects to complete what we call a sidewalk system to promote people especially school children be able to walk to school and neighborhood change the i respect all the comments that have been here but i can tell you that based upon past experience there may not be anybody walking in the neighborhood now i'm not going to comment on that i whether i can tell you th past experience has shown that even if there is not somebody utilizing it now the chances are that somebody will be utilizing it in the future and will corrodes a perfect example to the more speed groups and people that moved into the neighborhood have young school children one of which supports this plan snowden when we had people tell us that nobody walks on snowden lean you could walk there today in which people walking up and down the pathway every day i heard the exact same thing about the project that we did a broad ripple and overall nobody walks and nobody would need a sidewalk over there the fact is that it gets utilized every day and i think the real facts came out at the end and i respect your opinion mr roast but i think the real facts came out at the end when we come down to whether it's a maintenance and liability issue and if everyone felt that way then we would all be walking in the streets we would not have a sidewalk or have a sidewalk or safe  to stay out of the way traffic was and my personal opinion with all due respect i think that's a real issue here thank you thank you sergeant marie any other public comments on this ordinance  put the curb in the both sides of the road to make the road now or you know but my mother did spend a lot of time making beautification is a both ends of her property and that will be destroyed which is annoying you know what i yes and there aren't many people walking on the road either and i do agree with my private that the bus is on the other side of the street it used to be on my mother's side but not there it's now on the other side of the street so it's more logical for they sidewalk to be there on the north side ok thank you thank you for  stated earlier that the curb cut would put been put in there by previous drop exceeds the officer or if i had to be if i had to make that decision today i would put it in the same place and i would venture to say that the reason it was going on outside is that foods the greatest sight distance at that intersection so i don't understand what that means said i just that means for somebody coming around the corner if they were headed they were headed east or west bound on little rock there is not as much sight distance coming around that corner for somebody in the in a cross walk in there is from the other direction meaning west to east bound i would venture to say that that is why the previous traffic safety officer decided that if they were going to put a could cut in to accommodate a future sidewalk that does want to put it there and once again when a car comes up the road and proceeds up the little brick road there's a stoplight on there and there's a stop or there and under title thirty nine for one forty four it's the and that's what i'm concerned about people averting the light at snowdon i'm also concerned about people making a left eye right on to roper road from princeton kingston road where the speed limit's forty five miles an hour and they don't have to stop at ro were to make that left hand a right hand turn they could be travelling thirty forty miles an hour and hitting a pedestrian i'm not concerned about the people who are on roper road making a stop i'm worried about people coming off a little block and i'm worried about people coming  tell for as long as i live there ok but you know you guys are hell bent on putting in a sidewalk so since i brought up all these issues that i think should be addressed thank you thank you and thank you for bringing up those issues and i did have a chance to review your letter and you know i do encourage people to do i have concerns and issues to bring them up with us and that's why we do have you know our police department and our arborist and our engineer here to review those items because there are some things that sometimes we you know  we may miss and we need to take into consideration and what you had in your letter especially in regard to you know movement of the sprinkler system and things like that you know our engineering department will stand by to work with you on that on that particular aspect as far as some of the other traffic safety items if that's something that we feel is appropriate to add to future traffic safety agenda for review that's something that we can do as well but i one of the things that has come up several times that i just want to address is that a lot of times you know it this also have to happen with snowden you know because snowden was one of the first sidewalk projects i ever dealt with you know it's six and a half years ago when i was first on township committee and that was controversial and it was controversial in a lot of people did say at that time that you know no one was walking on the roadway you know no one's using this roadway nail so why do we need a sidewalk but part of this is an opportunity to not only look at what we're doing today but what we may be doing ten fifteen twenty years down the road if we already look at snowden today so many more people are utilizing that sidewalk and we talk about being a community that wants to encourage more walking encourage more placate that means we have to put the infrastructure in place to do that and that is one of the reasons why i think you know something like this does make sense and i do think that you know bob i just want to thank you for putting together the neighborhood meetings and having the residents in most part come together in terms of coming up with some type of solution there maybe some residents that and i'm satisfied with it and i understand that and i understand what their concerns are but i also think that by putting it on one side of the road it does save save the taxpayers money in terms  of relocating it to the one side the people on the other side of the roadway will share the cost to offset the burden for the people on the other side of the roadway and i think that's important i don't know if committee has any other questions or comments ok are yes shakers thank you the next item on our agenda is a bond ordinance authorizing as a local improvement by the township of princeton the installation of belgian bloodcurdling on both sides of andrews lane in full a drive appropriating the sum of one hundred eighteen thousand six hundred dollars therefore providing for the financing of said appropriation by the making of a downpayment and the issuance of bonds and or notes of said township and further providing for a special assessment of one hundred percent of the cost thereof and the for toppling construction and improvements and grow revenue and roper wrote in the amount of one hundred twelve thousand nine hundred eight dollars and sixty cents bob kaiser which comment oh yes thank you very much this change will actually relates to coding one hundred percent of the cost and i will note the public hearing for this would be june twenty fifth and bob kaiser yes right pine may need one of the miller yes it's lumber and mayor yes rushing harris thank you and again the public hearing for this will be on june twenty fifth thank you the next item on agenda is a work session we have several different items on there i just want to change the order around a little bit we'll do the open space tax referendum last year but we have agreed with princeton borough council to form a personnel selection committee appoint them and move forward with the selection committee secondly and all those in favor i facilitator and i don't know if you had any comments to bring us up to date just we did meet with barbara lee and employment attorney and she was highly qualified for the position and kerry so we have formally appointed be a personal selection committee and agree to the facilitator and i believe that i know that you've been working with borough council counterparts to schedule a meeting i'm not sure if there's already one  on the agenda but i know that that will happen shortly the next item is our open space tax referendum and i will hand that over to cathy and ed before i do so i just want to comment briefly on it  now that we are consolidating to a single municipality right now there is a different level of open space tax levied in the borough there's a different and for both a residence there's a different amount levied in the township we maintenance for historic preservation and all of those things which are permitted to do with an open space tax the the township collects the tax at the rate of two cents per every one hundred dollars of assessed value the borrow collects it at the rate of one cent for every one hundred dollars of assessed value they working with the department of community affairs on our consolidation we're advised that if the township and the barrel once they become one minister power will be as of the first of january one to continue collecting the open space tax going in the year two thousand and thirteen it would have to submit a question to the voters of both communities on the ballot a separate ballot question this november about continuing the open space tax and if we are to put it on the ballot for a vote by the soon to be consolidated community that has to be done and sent to the county clerk by august the seventeenth in order to make the ballot in november as the mary indicated seven cents per one hundred dollars of assessed value for the consolidated princeton and they recommended that because it's basically a neutral in terms of keeping the same level and the same amount of money being collected for the consolidated community that the two separate communities currently have so the purpose tonight is to how they work session discussion about whether or not the township committee would like to recommend and follow up with the bar council on introducing separate but reciprocal warden and says shortly that would be placed before the voters at the election and november whether or not we want to continue the open space tax and if we do do we want to do it at one point seven cents per one hundred dollars of assessed value after i think that sums it up very well i think it's important to note that you can't say it enough that a lot of people think that the open space tax is really just to go out and acquire open space or other properties but both the the broad form of the ordinance and allows not only for the acquisition but also the development of those lands into parks or any other type of development on those open spaces and most importantly as we enter into after we've already purchased a lot of open space and it's been done very well in both the borough and township but there's going to be a need coming up to maintain these properties as well  but it's also for historic preservation it's repayment of debt service if we have to finance or bond for a certain acquisition so these are all of the things that either if they're not currently being using those funds for they may be used for that and it's also i think too important to note that as the mayor mentioned the finance subcommittee of the transition task force is has been taking a look at this and what type of blended rate we could have in the new municipality and i believe that they are going to one wednesday night make that recommendation to the transition task force so and that's why we're discussing it here today but it should go through that process there were some time constraints on this that it needs to get to the a the form of a question by august seventeenth so this is why both of the communities are looking at this now thank you kathy any comments or questions from tension committee we're going to be open space tax question come just mean i just want to say that it's incredibly important that we continue to collect this open space tax into the new year two thousand and thirteen that any lapse would  could endanger our ability to maintain the open space we have now and any future acquisitions that we made need to make to link the open spaces we have now the you know  the survey of the town residents about the things that they most enjoy about parks and recreation you know put trails and these and the open spaces at the very top of the list of things that make our town special and we want to make sure we that the same income or revenue level as it has been in the past is very important also in the news mentioning is the fact that very often the township has had to front the money for the acquisition of open space with the promise of repayment by other organizations as time goes on and why loosen repayments have always been made in the past and will be made in the future it's necessary that the municipality be in a position to be to be able to front the phones should that be necessary i think to ask a question about the wording of the question is not that's much the wording of the question itself but we would be an explanation i'm concerned that someone reading this without really thinking through the fact that we had an open space tax now and both municipalities might come to the conclusion that this is a new tax that the referendum issues to explain that this builds on the existing tasks taxed in both municipalities and provides a rationalization of the tax to maintain the revenue at the same level as it has i don't know if that would be completely accurate though because the levees slightly different right so but i guess we have to defer to our attorneys now lance had the same suggestion when we refer to the consolidated cranston i mean that's a new community as of january one so they really can't continue to do anything but i think mr miller suggestions a good one when the question went on the ballot for consolidation and the county clerk did allow us and allowed the kind of study commission to recommend a an explanatory statement so i think we can put a brief explanatory statement allowed to question and say basically disallow the communities to continue in a revenue neutral fashion to collect open space tax and we can word that word that so that people can understand it's really a continuation of what we've had that's a good suggestion and could you  i think as professor frank highlights what we're doing is giving the voters to the opportunity to decide as they have decided before that open space not just its acquisition but also its maintenance is very important to them and to their sense of community and i would note that there are still over two hundred twenty acres identified in the master plan as part of saul's that it would be desirable to require exclusive of the nasa builders tract and recommendations for creating pocket parks when there is in child development or  redevelopment so i think all of those counts that it is take you have the voters this opportunity and i'm glad that you're thinking about the issue and i'm sure h which will hopefully be the next joint meeting of the governing bodies and at that time we would be expected that we would have an ordinance to introduce to create that referendum you can put in pizza boxes you put in like meat products pretty much anything that was ever alive you can put and really helps to do that because your way stream  check it out it's good beer bait mr miller ok i just have one report and that is that thursday the fourteenth is flag day and our flag day ceremonies will begin at noon right by the american society of civil engineers central jersey chapter loon the mountain lakes improvement project as a project to do in central new jersey thank you congratulations to you and your department project but obviously these two words would not have been possible without the generous contribution from our anonymous donor which allowed us to do this project with zero cost to taxpayers otherwise think this project would be questionable me police department will be hosting the youth police academy from monday august twentieth to friday august twenty fourth from eight am to one pm the cabin is going to be open to any students entering that six seventh or eighth grade that attend a public or private registration process along with contact information with any questions we've also extended invitation to the princeton borough police department to co sponsor and participate in the event we're just waiting bachelor a response from them in all those in favor not opposed to motion carries thank you be resolved by the township committee of the township of princeton this body will now convene into a closed session that will be limited only to consideration of an item or items with respect to which the public may be excluded pursuant to section seven b of the open public meetings that the general nature of the subject or subjects to be discussed in said session is as follows personal say it is precisely as presently possible the following at the time when in the circumstances under which the discussion conducted its session can be disclosed to the public within ninety days or upon settlement of litigation if