good evening and welcome to this forum for the democratic candidates six of whom you see here all vying for a three year term on the princeton municipal council and there are two open seats that will be contested in the primary in june there are no incumbents included on tonight's panel this forum is co sponsored by the league of women voters of the princeton area and princeton community t v my name is nicole platt as moderator i live outside the voting district and do will not be voting in this voters the league of women voters is a nonpartisan political organization that encourages informed and active participation in government works to increase understanding of major public policy issues and influences public policy through education and advocacy the league of women voters never by the supports or opposes a political party or a political candidate princeton community t v is taping the forum for rebroadcast in its entirety on comcast channel thirty and horizon phials channel forty five date to be announced the video will also be posted on line at princeton t v dot org and on the league's website vote for one one dot org and on the princeton areally own website l w v princeton dot org thank me or the league or t v or anybody so that we can you know use our time on the issues and we owe the says we understand you are grateful for this opportunity so the format is as follows for the next ninety minutes candidates will answer questions generated by the league and submitted by our audience here tonight raise your hand if you need an index card or you have one ready to be collected we're very keen to have your questions now the questioning will be done in rounds with three candidates answering one question and then the next three question candidates may then raise their hand to request that they are given sixty seconds to respond to either of the two questions that have just been asked in this six person round and we also have to ny a one or two questions that actually are for the whole panel each candidate will be given sixty seconds for a closing statement and again in the interest of time we are not beginning with an opening statement i hope everybody is aware that our time keeper tonight is patricia casey she has two cods for you one giving you a fifteen second warning towards your ninety second response another one that says stop when you see the sign that says stop you may finish the sentence that you're on and you may not start another one and please keep your eye on patricia so you the candidate know where you stand and i think that everything in each round and i'm going to try to keep track of that here so often asked question two related questions are about the princeton municipal budget question and the question is are there efficiency is that can be that can still be gained from shed services with other municipalities and please give examples if you know of services when it comes to infrastructure cleaning of the cleaning the roads emptying the garbage things like that they haven't shown any direct interest and i know of and any forums i've gone to but i was at ice and this is something that we sh whether there could actually be some efficiencies if it's a came to say snow removal some of these other these other larger things if there were if there were a larger and if you had more communities that were involved that might help lower the c sees on three levels with princeton university for example one thing that i'd like to see happened is for us to share our the composter that they have right now our compost is being shipped out of the area costs us more money it's not a green thing to do so that's one thing i'd like to see happen with the university with the schools in term in terms of shared services public works you know raking taking care of facilities these are things that could be shared between the municipality and the schools and the other level of shared services would be with the county in terms of our green spaces in particular i think that we could possibly get more funding from the county to help with some of that princeton is underserved in terms of county wide green spaces here so i think that's another area we could exploit and there are other areas that we could look into but that's just a sampling thank you for instance you know on the raid a bull's eye i think on commercial property there's a lot of opportunity there stand it that's underutilized right now it's for sale so hopefully you know there be some development there i like to possibly see a hotel or some some type of hotel tax there's also maybe some raid we need to explore the air b n b situation and then in terms of other revenue sharing i think that there's things that we can do maybe with  bus and other types of private public partnerships that we can explore to underwrite various services and also look and see what the university can help us with because that's also maybe underutilized and maybe we have number of opportunities that we can increase of of revenues i have been going through the school board meetings and i noticed that their number not only shared services but also by lampel we have the dispatches we can share those with the others and in tournaments we can also increase the revenues but most importantly we have to increase our businesses be happy to improve upon that we have to have either revenues we really have to make sure that we're talking about property tax revenues because the property taxes are you know we need it but is this bird as it is right now we don't need that to increase so we have to look at our property tax revenue opportunities of course the first place we can look is to see what are not for our local not for profit institutions are contributing in the way of pilots payments of taxes we need to make sure that  is even though in some parts it doesn't have a legal obligation but it certainly has a moral obligation as a citizen of our town to make sure they're paying their fair share of payments indo of taxes and not just university we have other not for two million dollars last year that's a budget that we have that's the part of the budget which we have more control over unlike the first two parts which is to meet our responsibilities for the school board and  responsibilities to the county but for the part we do have control over we just have to make sure that we are doing so efficiently thank you ok so we now we're going to offer each candidate sixty seconds to respond to them out possibly sell them maybe we can get a team of experts and have them have a contest i mean people do do this work in other towns where we have we have so many great people in this town architects and builders and see what they say they can do with this  again we have it renovated for affordable housing and for for our offices something like that too we have done a pretty good job getting nonprofits to pay no one to talk about cutting i'm assuming and i'm i'm still looking at that maybe things we can cut we don't as much i know we've done a pretty good job getting things like the arts council and the senior resource center to raise or raise money to support that there are there are programs we have to look at look into that more too but also we have to look into cutting stuff to hopefully sense i also think this year a new economic economic development committee was started and i've spoken to a couple of people that are serving on that and they have a lot of creative ideas what we need is to attract something you know start ups and sexy kinds of businesses that people want to patronize and i think that would really revive the downtown economy and also provide additional revenue for the for our municipal staff one of the large parts of the budget where we have more control our expenses for benefits and there are some opportunities as far as sharing medical expenses and finding the proper pools and see if we can and cleared the air thirteen by suicide they don't have to sit in the cold out in heat that we can they take advantage of that so i've now already working on that and i was might be trying to see if we can think you know just what we talked about the county in the parks pretty i'm in some disrepair so there may be a way i know speaking to freeholder we talked about the fact that the county could do more a can you mike but my only comment again comes to back to small businesses and whether and what can be done to maintain them and there's the issue there is one of what i call amazon the nation that amazon is now so large you know you have to leave the house you get things to live with and that's having a of an effect on the small businesses that that are here that's why i think so many of them have gone  have gone out of business so why don't have a solution i do see the issue and the problem that's one thing i think we need to work on security ok thank you we're now going to move to round two which will be about affordable housing in princeton we have two related questions and we'll be beginning our questioning this time with you m have two rather formal questions here i would like the candidates to keep in mind this related question as you talk as you respond to questions about affordable housing we've got an audience member who is very concerned what do you plan to do to enable long time residents and working people to remain in their homes so as i said all six of you will be speaking about housing which is principles of factors that you feel the town should apply in deciding where to site affordable housing question concerning longtime residence there are two programs in princeton now there was a settlement with the university and as a result of that there is tax relief that's being provided to generally to if you qualify income to everyone in town if that could be extended and expanded as i believe it's only about two or three years that could be expanded that would be a good thing  in the neighborhood where i live with a spoon jackson as part of that settlement there's also money being provided to help maintain residence in the community it's part of the where the smooth jackson redevelopment corporation again if that could be expanded so you it's just not a temporary two or three year item that i had for the full town that would be very helpful as for principals and factors for where to locate affordable housing i guess there are several quite frankly they start to clash after a while you don't want affordable housing built up in one neighborhood you don't you know so you want to spread it out over several debut hoods if your kin you also want to keep it not clustered but if you can spread it out as to individuals but to start with the affordable housing one of the principles by which that should be cited so i think there are a couple things i think it needs to be spread throughout the community but it also needs to be spread in such a way that enhanced is principles  smart growth for example some people have suggested river road as a place to cite affordable housing and i think that's an environmentally sensitive area it's way too far from services people need to be able to bike or walk or have public transit and so i see areas like nassau street towards where i live in the riverside section harrison street parts of witherspoon street i don't think that the burden can stores and other facilities that are within walking distance those are the principles i would apply if i have a few seconds i'll take on some of the ways that longtime residents and working people can stay in town so diversity  whether it's income or race or class is really important to me and i think one way we can encourage that is through encouraging accessory units that people can build in their homes so throughout i think there's about thirteen parcels that are municipal owned parcels that could be developed so i do think that it should be integrated and i think that gives us more socio economic diversity in our town should be able to have more integration of the affordable housing i also believe that we should try and find it as one hundred percent buildable so in other words find as much private funding as we can because the more that we build with the twenty percent rule with builders the more we increase  density and possibly strain schools and services and that will bring up our taxes so in order to keep those taxes at bay i'd like to see a strong find one hundred percent in as much private funding as possible and definitely integrate the the affordable housing and if i have a few seconds i'll go to the other question i really found a lot of seniors that i've spoken to telling me how high their taxes are and how much they are thinking of leaving princeton and some who have left i've done some research and i know that there's a state program called the senior tax freeze that apparently half of our seniors in princeton can qualify for and so i'm encouraging everyone to look at that and look at that for your seniors because it's very important to to stay thank you so the related question on affordable housing and we'll begin with  suggest some avenues you think the town should consider in order to fund affordable housing i think i had the best solution for that and add two options which i actually outl drawings and so on and so forth the best option that i feel that the municipality has the moral and the ethical and social responsibility they have to take the lead so i came up with the idea six on this property which is right now being just used by the municipality to store some how we had housing issues i mean problems and i mean gas tanks and so on and so forth which is like it you can put almost two buildings in there is accessible to two or six is close by and and the people who will be living there be looking at a beautiful beautiful park and this is an excellent idea so i believe that the some avenues you think the town should consider in order to fund affordable housing in order to fund affordable housing we actually have to try to keep the municipal budget contribution as low as possible and we do the fact that every time five units are developed one unit goes towards our affordable housing mandate that came from judge jacobs and therefore we have to keep the municipal part of any funding is extremely low as possible of course there's always the avenue of raising money through bonds etc but we have to be really circumspect on how our municipal dollars are being spent and we have to find actually alternative sources that doesn't  in terms of keeping older people anyone on fixed incomes limited incomes again rezoning very important here i think we should allow people to have mother in law accessory apartments microapartment allow them to turn their houses into  is the university they are going to be developing ten in ten years maybe earlier harrison street the golf course and alexander road we have to work with them and use the leverage which we have with them  thing no one is talking about but neighborhoods i've been doing the canvassing whether it's true or not people go i don't want it in my backyard it lowers my taxes we're going to have you know this could be a flood we have to deal with bad that's going to be another fight maybe i like the sharma's idea maybe public lands could be the way to go nuts who want to get in protracted fights with neighborhoods that know what they're doing when they litigate ok so we now have an opportunity for each of the candidates to expand on maintaining neighborhood character as much as possible where we are forced to increase density as we must as there will be new building we have a finite amount of space we have to make sure that we share i would not call it a burden i would call it a responsibility because for the housing is certainly needed and that is why the mandate is is there so we need to definitely be smart about where we build and if some particular areas we need to look at well we also need to look at areas where there are already existin funding so it's purely using the space for something which is so important for the community so i just wanted to make thank you  to thank you just following on that i mean i think that what we're talking about is finding that is as much as possible private outside of the municipality and of course we're going to have to use some builder satisfied with the twenty percent but if we're going to do another four hundred five hundred affordable housing units and do it strictly on the twenty percent that could possibly raise our property taxes and you know it kind of defeats the purpose when we want  increased socio economic diversity and we want to have a mix in then we're going to lose our lower and middle class families that can't afford to live here so as much as we can do through private public partnerships i really i know that the i know that the  community supports that idea and i just really support that and in a big way thank you and ok mr made again so i want to stress if i didn't already that i feel that affordable housing is a moral obligation and not just a legal one and it is something that we should do with a glad heart and princeton has a really good record on this stating back to the one nine hundred thirty save really been a  leader so i think that it's true that if we do the affordable housing three developer set a cyber looking at a substantial amount of development if we can raise private dollars and i know there are efforts starting to happen about that that would be great i'm doubtful of the taking on long term debt to fund the affordable housing and also just remember we don't actually have to build it we just have to zone for it to allow it to be built thank you thank you stomach out people to talk about the twenty percent set aside but traditionally the way the most affordable housing has been built is with something called low income tax credits and they come from there's tax credits that go from the u s government down to the state and the state wards those to private developers so you're going to have you're going to have private development regardless i think we should also keep in mind that there when you  build these things you can get in if it's just a question of a credits there are ways to construct certain types of affordable housing that you get more credits for for instance there  should i say very aggressive but we don't want to build that remedy would be others could come in and say that we're not we're stopping them from building homes and then they can come in and always run wild pretty much and bill what they want to build again i think we have to look at our values are going to clash here though i think we will in reality and i've done some study and i've talked to alvin we're not going to get it all there forty how affordable housing exactly where we want it when we want it and hopefully we can  more tax credit more credit to from coa we have to see we have to get this done by two thousand and twenty five i hope we have some leeway with that thank you ok so we're now going to move on to round three questions and question one is this follows princeton republicans and princeton independents unrepresented on the municipal council and may feel that their positions on issues  commissions i think it's really important that we reach across the divide i think everybody has a stake in the important changes and challenges are happening in our community and i think everybody deserves a the quality of the candidate their interests and the past work that they've done and their political party would have any appointments i might make thank you  there are two thousand republican sixty seven hundred and affiliated in ten thousand registered democrats in princeton i recently wrote a letter to the editor before the change of party deadline to just t ell people you know you need to have a voice in our politics and to declare and to come out and vote so i think that's really really important and i still knock on doors even if they're an affiliated because i know that you know they want to have a voice so that's really important and i agree with what he said in terms of saying that you know appointing people based on who they are in not based on their political party absolutely that's what we should do based really what you know what their qualifications are and i think that we should move forward you know without of course that's the decision not mine but i think that's a great idea and definitely again i just say i really encourage people to forefront and we can listen to them why and they will have some suggestions particular ideas that we can implement so in as far as the republicans are independents they're just as good as anything political polarization which mr williamson will begin is a sort of other ways of reducing the polarization and this kind of double question asks the following how will you personally maintain an independent mind and represent everyone in the town and do you thing nonpartisan elections such as those in west first of all i'm an independent person and i will add that i'm proud to be a democrat i'm proud to support progressive values that being said as my luther king said i believe in judging people by  r leaders have to have backbone and be willing to stepha something that staff what is right i do believe in inclusion but i do think it's important just to say that we are not going to roll over for  humble circumstances as a kid in jamaica came in to try to graduate a trend high on the georgetown lot of my peers didn't do that i didn't i've never heard a penny in my life when i bought my house here marcus allen prison is something i worked for and worked hard for it's been an nonpartisan local elections i think we're seeing a it happens if human nature we're seeing a tribal and people getting insular people running with their herd that's why out i said before i like you all but i'm always on the mental council i don't want to be friends with anyone republicans vote and get in get rid of this two party system for local elections i said before potholes don't really care what party you are i don't know about how trump fits into this so let's seriously think about that then candidates don't have to pander to party  voters don't have to be confused by labels we'll see how it goes we'll monitor it which way can it help in other cities race participation by twenty percent thank you mr mckenna interesting questions about boards a commissions i'm chairman of the affordable housing board and one of our members not only is a republican but he's somewhere between conservative and libertarian and he's a perfect member he's you know eek participates and then i found out there's another member of those doing this that actually when she votes she's achieved votes as an independent the housing board has exactly which which are asking for it up in a wrapper it's fine now as far as my independence while i go back but my my my slogan if you will is regular democrat regular princetonian for the  future i was all born here and i have been through all the public schools here beginning with the princeton nursery school all the way away through the high school then through college then and then after college came back again and then left again went to law school came back again worked for three counties the point is i'm a princetonian i've been a princetonian and i know and i know what it is to be a prin create troublemaker because i didn't necessarily recognize the authority of people that were telling me what to do i felt even as a child people had to earn their authority and that they needed to explain what they were doing when i came moved here to ten princeton university is a graduate student and i was assigned to teach my first class i looked around for some kind of training system for the graduate students which didn't exist at that time so with a couple of other people we started a series of colloquium to help train graduate students so they could teach it later points in my life i've done similar things where there's been a need for something that hasn't been accomplished i've been able to step in to think independently and to pursue the goals of bringing people together  you i guess i'm just going to go down in my emerged new jersey training program for democratic women who want to run for office i interact a lot with other women in politics that are running for office in different parts of new jersey cross political polarization that's happening with with the republicans keeping the democrats out in purple purple towns you know really having a lot of battles so i'm thankful we don't have that here on the other hand there is a problem of under representation and very low voter turnout because a lot of people eighty seven hundred people are not really participating in the selection of the town council so not based on some political affiliation what the one party believes or what the other attached has to be based on every day in space so i will always not just follow somebody i will actually follow what is right based on the every day in space west these are ses so i'm not going to be like and just take take somebody whose orders but i will prove it to them are her or somebody that this is not right because the research indicated the scholars have concluded this is not right so all of my decision will be based on science space scholarly decisions and so and so forth so by definition i am going to be in the independent i'm not going to follow the line but i'm good to move the line and cross it and bring everybody good so i will be that independent that i  west windsor oh i don't believe so i don't think that helps our general goal of necessarily being inclusive i think i think the party system is an efficient system it's not because of the part not good for democracy people need to be prodded people need to be first you can get complacent and not and to show my own independence i've said this before how come no one and i we've gone to the school board meetings no one is bringing up this school referendum i know it has to do with the board of education but we have a bully pulpit here this is half our budget it could be an undue burden on the taxpayer it could work out for the schools but maybe not it could turn out to be a fiasco like we had in two thousand and two people don't bring that up y and this one is all about smart growth and we're actually going to go around beginning with mr mcgowan a no sorry seven  you guys know better than me sorry about that ok so this is about smart growth and we're going to go around for ninety seconds to everybody because the question is is kind of interesting and then has two sides to it so we'll go through once and then we can revisit it so for all the candidates  asked how would you define smart growth and how would you make sure that growth in princeton is smart and related to that is audience members who want to know what can be done to slow development somebody who wants slow development somebody else who would like to know your vision for the coming gro h ok well to define smart growth i'd say that smart growth means that you have a place housing close to its kind of a live work play environment where you're it's  you're close to retail and resources transportation so that you're moving away from the need to use cars and of course this is good for sustainability for the environment and princeton's while on its way to being a very smart growth town we have a lot of communities the trees streets close to the services we also the prince and shopping center sometimes we forget about that but that also is is a good way of having the mix  in terms of vision for growth and what we visit this in a minute but we are going to grow the university just came out with their university plan of another five hundred students and a lot of growth on the other side of lake campus there is going to put a demand for housing in princeton that's where people are going to want to live they want to live here so we need to manage and i think we really need to have develop a master plan of mixing affordable housing higher density smart growth development we need a plan for how that's going to look what our vision for the future is because we do need to manage it we don't want to lose the character of our neighborhoods so we need to get a handle on how that's going to look that's kind of like what we have to be including in this mark growth but most importantly the most important thing is that it has to be accessible to all that you dance in all forms whether it's transportation where there's medical needs or whether it is the day to day activities so that has to be taken into account so that's what the smart growth means that is it is important that all crazy danske and utilize these services and difficulties that are to be done that vision includes maintaining neighborhood character addressing the demands for greater density where it is needed to meet the both our mandates from the courts realizing this vision it's not a burden as i mentioned before it's an opportunity it's an opportunity for us to implement the results of the the the bike master plan and the whole circulation element that we've been smart meters downtown we're looking at the commercial district on nassau street and the neighboring streets or districts off of nassau it's about finding that proper marriage between technology and our needs always said to me i want to build my up to a common uptown i'm an old princetonian to town town i want to build it up so people can live and work maybe they don't work but they can they can live up to town they can they can shop uptown also again like we do have high tech solutions to centered parking art and made cars i think will be coming soon i like to also see which we're doing the bike master plan the paradigm shift change in the culture cars are the number one culprits when it comes to pollution and carbon dioxide we can talk about plastic bags that's all that's important we have to start zoning for not to car lots one and people have to get in the habit of walking riding carpooling or using public transportation that's smart and university the biggest employer again when they build it i want to have incentives for them to have their employers live and work in princeton and not drive in again walk carpool but that would cut down a lot is more a set of principles that you use when you're planning planning growth so i'll just give you three of them take advantage of existing community assets create a range of housing opportunities and choices provide a variety of transportation strike choices there are more but these are these are what sort of the the principles of smart growth now connected to that of course is the parking study because again when you can when it comes to parking and it comes to to neighborhood there are some neighborhoods here that are really overburdened of the residents can't find enough enough parking so as again connected to that you have protecting residential neighborhood from park to certain parking affects that you know that again is sort of connected to the smart oh i did it the other part of this i do want to mention is the neighborhood character committee because again we've been i think one of the questions had to do with how do you if you will control in some general sense the growth in town that in it was i think it was mentioned that there was a zoning question there was somehow in there well anyway there is a neighborhood character study that will go a long way that should be the framework for which we decide how we want how we want to grow there's a lot of the has a lot of that has to do with zoning how you know and setbacks and other thing it means putting density in some areas that doesn't necessarily that we need a skyscraper downtown but there are areas again as i mentioned before along nassau street along harrison street where there can definitely be more density again the key things are access to public transportation walkability and bike ability to support not only a smart group but the other aspect of smart growth which is to minimize o carbon footprint the neighborhood character study i think is going to take some steps towards slowing development and encouraging redevelopment rather than tear down so i think it's  e corrections to the zoning code that i think can promote better types of development i also think we need to leverage the fact that people really love this community a little personal example when my family and i moved into the house that we live in a drive in the riverside neighborhood the owner took a blower bid from us because we had kids that would attend riverside rather than a higher bid from somebody else other people love this community too and i think we need to leverage that to encourage them to make good decisions when they sell to sell to buyers rather than developers ok now for expansion on the question sixty's zoning was to push people out to the suburbs bigger lots big homes to cars that have to change but that is a very complicated i think mr williams is educate me a little bit i'm learning as i go it's a very complicated tedious process but we have to start putting teeth in ordinances and make it i would discussion how we want to look with zoning and that will set the template of how we're going to grow in the future hopefully compact smart growth thank you  so i think we really need to be proactive in planning for example the university probably has a fifty year plan and we need to really be doing the same thing maybe not quite fifty years but certainly be planning out there on the other thing that i think is really important is these are divisive and difficult issues and it's really important we're talking a little bit about political polarization i think it's really crucial that everyone weigh in on this  and one thing i really pride myself on is being a good listener and being really good at reaching out into the community i've spent a lot of time doing volunteer work i'm very good at recruiting people i'm very good at bringing people together to solve problems and i think it's crucial that everybody have a chance to weigh in but not everybody is going to have development and other issues go the way they want but if people feel listened to i think that's really important i think the i think we need to focus on the master plan like instead of coming to the zoning every time we need a variance there should be a pretty good guidelines define where the expansion should happen what why should it happen of the residential growth in the master plan you know the character of the neighborhood character study gives us some good guidelines and i think we just need to execute now on those guidelines for what this is going to look like what the future prince is going to look like and i also just wanted to add to that in terms of when we're doing a master plan in terms of resigning and looking at zoning we also need to look at our commercial areas because you know we're really very unfriendly towards businesses and development when businesses are coming in and morning to expand and we have a lot of economic base there that we're losing or we're not attracting because we're kind of known as being is about the relationship between the town council and the school board and the first question for the first three is the current council has proposed a budget with no tax increase the school board however proposes a budget that increases taxes by a hundred fifty nine dollars on the average home assessment to be followed by a bond referendum is there any way to governing bodies can work together to keep property taxes flat there is no doubt in my mind that municipality and the school board can work together and that's one of the reasons i have been attending school board meetings and actually as it is otoh those i proposed a number of up to my year to the school board in terms of their planned part expansion of ports so i had met a couple of the school board members and i really appreciated that and they work so hard just like our council people do but there's so much similarities in terms of savings in r maintenance supply lease desks we can all do that's consolidate that medical benefits all those are the same thing so i think like really need to work together and one of the most important thing which i kind of really realize that those board members had to school work so hard and don't get paid bait they get paid a penny and here there's a difference and there i think we should learn some lessons from them and for the council as well i think they have a bigger budget to take care compared to us and they work as hard as we do i think we there's a message in there and my mind thank you and mr williams thank  you we have to be very sober when we look at the issues of the school board there is the school board and there is town council the school board is elected that means is the responsibility of all of us as citizens to make sure that we elect officials who are going to really think about how the budget that is proposed and adopted how to fix our town's budget of course there are three parts to the budget there's as far as when we take the revenue and there's the part we have to give to the school board which i believe was about seven over seventy million dollars there's the part that we have to give to account these are mandated we have no choice we have to pay them that the part we do have more control over is diminished will budget section which just went up to sixty four million dollars from sixty two million dollars the school board has their response responsibility council has their responsibility that being said i think any elected official should have their voices heard and as far as making sure that things as citizens of this community make sure that what that we make sure the school board meets its mandate of providing an excellent school system but it does so is officially as possible so we should make our voices heard in that sense regarding the bond referendum of course that's you know that this been an issue that's definitely storing a lot of emotions in town the bottom line is facilities are needed at the same town council but this is their job and i just see a rendezvous with disaster with this with this referendum again our aim of an institutional memory i go back to the seventy five school referendum vote it down time and time again that in two thousand to we had this mother of all renovation for the high school in the middle school supposed to solve all the problems it did not now now what are we looking at we're looking at a budget a school of our size having a budget this big again i'm not even going to what the relationship is and i'm thinking as an independent person who feels this is so so important because i don't want this not to fail i wish i was wrong but if it does fail we're going to be continued to paying for that for a long time i've talked to many builders how do you bil you renovate the elementary schools the middle school the high school all the same time and have things not go wrong i just want you to think about that this is your money half of your money governing bodies but just one overall tax bill should council have input in school board decisions such as the bond referendum whether to keep cranbury students or to expand the charter school and sort of related to that do you see a role for yourself in collaborating with the school  i want to store with my neighborhood again the words through jackson neighborhood there has been something called the compliance plan that came from the tax department and i think it was maybe last february whatever a lot of us in that neighborhood got a notice that our taxes are going to be increased fifteen to twenty percent did not go cross it's not everywhere in town but it's definitely definitely there it's definitely in one of the more moderately priced mart of income communities so i begin i begin there  now i also understand that there's a lot of overcrowding in the school and you probably need to do something when it comes to the overcrowding i'm just not so sure you need all the programs to grant the grand design of all the programs that would go along with expanding in the space for the for the kids to be there so that's that's what that's my that's my concern and i in again i have to have that that person concerned that taxes are going up and it looked taxes go up in that neighborhood and that has nothing to do at all with where the taxes are also going to go up because there's a bond rep referendum thank you this need to ga has been said the council controls about twenty two percent of our total tax bill about sixty four million dollars and the schools control about fifty percent of that the school board is the or the duly elected representatives of we the people in terms of you know what happens with with that money and i think if anyone in this room has concerns about the referendum or the tax increase i think the proper place to pick that up is with the school board i think it's best that counsel provide advice and support but i don't think that just in terms of the way the law is written and who is elected to be in charge of what i don't think it's councils place to interfere in that my kids one of whom is here in the audience have both gone all the way through the princeton public schools and i'm a big supporter at the same time i think it's important that they use their money wisely council has a citizens advisory committee that provides another round of oversight in terms of how money is spent and they come in they do a great presentation they made a recommendation this year to keep the municipal tax flat i think this is schools might look into doing something similar bringing in a group of experts financial experts to look at school budgets in the same way thank you and the same question to miss pereira i do believe that we should invest in the schools and then the schools are really a backbone of our community and it's really important but i'm not running for school board and i was going to say as i can talk to this as a private citizen since i'm a private citizen once i'm a council member hopefully i'm elected if i have that hon and and i do think there should be a separation because i'm not running for that but we have a citizens finance advisory committee on the council that looks into and gives us transparency into the details of the budget and we open that up to public comment i think right now i'm getting the feeling from other community members that they're not happy with what's happening with the referendum because they're not understanding where the projections are coming from in terms of the increases what the numbers are concerning cranberry and what what exactly how the money's going to be spent so i think the transparency issue really lies with the school board and i would you know i would caution that if they could do some type of a finance committee like we have that may be part of the solution to opening up to transparency and as a as a as a mom of two kids at the high school you know really happy with the education that they're receiving and i really believe that we are making a huge investment and our taxes here and that this is a very important part of our community thank you i'm afraid in the interest of time we're not going to expand on this particular question i  think to the relationship of counsel to school board because we want to get in a couple more questions and your closing personal comments so the next question which will be for all candidates and we'll go to ninety seconds but if you can say the same thing in less that would be good so we can start with mr williamson and this as i said is for all the candidates if you are elected what the two or three initiatives that you would try to advance in your first year could be one or two initiatives that you would try to advance in your first year and how would you go about getting support from your fellow council members that's a great question of course the first in this it is to look at our property taxes to look for efficiencies with the part of the budget where we do control which is the sixty four million dollars budget as i mentioned earlier in this form we can look at areas such as the the benefits that are paid to i'm going to split poised to make sure we can maintain the same level of services by pulling our cost with some other municipalities for some of these shorts pools that are out there of course the other major area it is to look at is the new housing mandate and where we're going to have to start doing this building we have until twenty twenty five to do it i'm sure is going to come here a lot faster than we know and as i said before i think that's an opportunity to implement many of the smart growth strategies that we've been talking about know i want to learn the tribal creeds and customs of of the council this is the decision making process everyone has different skill sets and personality from share and so that's what i would want to do  course i'm very interested in what could be happening with the university that is again the elephant in the room they're going to be building this university industrial complex and they want to kind of look like boston harvard or something and us also can tie a thin to more affordable housing in housing for their employees which is very important to also again i think we have to work together be collegial but we don't have to be friends i did say before i'm afraid people get complacent and they could be in people can get almost tribal like and we have to watch out for that the three issues i would be concerned with was what i've called gentrification and i don't mean just gentrification and just in a traditional sense i also mean the gentrification in a very large there are a lot of people who feel that the middle class is threatened here and that you'll just have a very of just a very very wealthy wealthy community so that would be it's those middle working on those middle class fears the other challenge is i hear that there's a great concern about princeton becoming a small city and what can be done so if not become a small city somehow somehow to manage that i think both of those and again these are large principles to work with and these are good lord's communication cern's so our really wouldn't think it would be any problem all getting getting my colleagues on council if i were elected to go to go along to go along with them at last year's budget but we start from the bottom i think that's really important is there fat to be trimmed at this point i don't know there might be there might not but i think we need to really look at that carefully initiative that i would really  like to get started would be to train jar change our trash pick up to pay as you through so that you pay more for trash than you do for recycling or compost again i'm an environmentalist i work at the now the watershed institute and those values are really important to me and so that would be one step that we could do to encourage compliance with our with our climate action plan i also think a big thing that the going to be doing i think starting in two thousand and twenty is renegotiating the pilot payment with the university i think we really need to do our homework on that we need to look at all the similar institutions we need to look at yale and harvard and brown what are they doing what are they getting there's also some legislation being considered or passed in other states that might affect the taxing of a large prosperous nonprofit nonprofit so i'd like to look into that as well so those are three areas thank you and the spring thank you well i do like to drill down to the details so i take a look at the budget details and at the same time see if there's some revenue generating areas that we can incorporate some new tax areas i think in general understanding and working on a master plan that would have two levels one residential one commercial that would incorporate what's going to happen with the university expansion how that's going to impact transportation how and where we're going to put affordable housing and implementing our characters characteristics study in terms of designing on the residential level and then at the commercial level how are we going to attract some new businesses to invest here and grow here we need more retail and commercial investment and that would obviously generate more revenue so that's ways to generate that taxable revenue radicals as well as other ways we can get things paid for might be going to d n a versity to see if there's some projects and programs that they could help us with and then of course we have twenty twenty in the renegotiation but the expansion is going to happen rapidly it's going to happen within ten years and i really think that we need to get a handle on how that's going to look and what we want to princeton to look like in the future so that there's a lot of work to be done so i think it's hard to narrow down to two or three initiatives roads and sort and so forth so there are some differences which i countered mark but still i think we can do better than that and i rolled i just said specifically say that we can share a number of services with the school board as i mentioned it before and as for the second purdie is the affordable housing and i mentioned this simple and common sense solutions for that the municipality which had the ethical moral and and social responsibility has to take the lead has to share is property which i outlined in my we'll grouse when you go out say you will see that and also bring the princeton university in into the into play because they williamson and move in the opposite direction on the table and i'm going to ask the time keeper to give everyone ninety seconds because they can take a breath between thoughts so if that suits you of course you don't have to use princeton doesn't mean i'm looking at everything through rosy colored glasses i realize we have some steep challenges ahead i've been fortunate enough to to have the opportunity to show my my and my history of service to our town and have to prove my commitment to our town and i want to continue that and i would would really appreciate to have your vote at the primaries in november fifth june fifth and at the general election on experience and in terms of the analytical santa fe can innovation technology experience that's what i bring i have done this for eight hundred sixty five million dollars program or satellite program so i know i had the basic skills i have the company didn't see that i and i understand the challenges i'm a proactive person who doesn't wait for the things to go bad i predict at least i understand what could go wrong and have a plan and not wait until things go bad and based on that but i have been doing when i went door to door i just didn't i asked them to give me your signature i actually took my camera with me and a community going back for generations and i really believe that princeton has not seen the type of changes that we're seeing today since the time of my forefathers since the time i grew up here in the sixty's and seventy's and i believe that today we're experiencing changes that will impact us into the future i'm running for council because i believe that i can manage these changes with leadership and vision and i'd like to be part of that of that transition i would like to see our community continue in our great tradition of socio economic diversity putting solutions in place that we talked about a lot tonight i think think we can think out of the box for solutions to increase non tax revenue for our town open up dialogue with different groups and form new alliances between the private sector and public and there are just some different ways of be can manage these changes and shape our future and for me my life has come first full circle from early days of activism to being a small business owner and now back again but i believe wherever i've lived i have always community community committed positively to my community impacted on my community through my businesses through my events into my nonprofit work i look forward to giving back to this great community in my hometown and shape the future of princeton and i kindly ask for your vote on june fifth thank you miss need to go as a said before i think we're facing a lot of important decisions about what our town is going to look like going into the future and i think it's really important that all voices be heard i've been a volunteer in this community community that is my campaign slogan building community together and i think everybody needs to feel like they have a voice in these changes because at the end of the process we all have to live together and if people feel that their concerns have been ignored or run roughshod over we're going to have a very divided community and that's something i want to work against in the end you may not always agree with the decisions that i've made a consider myself an independent thinker relations with my colleagues on council if so lucky to be elected but i also will think for myself so you may not agree with me at the end but i hope you feel that you've been listened to i've always been a fighter for what i believe in and what i believe in for princeton is princeton where people of all income levels can thrive here where we build affordable housing because it's the morally correct thing to do were you smart growth principles to guide development where we work to protect our environment and fight against climate change and i ask for your vote on june fifth thank you thank you  yeah my my my campaign slogan has been regular princetonian for the future again i would i was all but born here and i remember the town when it ace i sleepy kind of southern town people would leave during the summer and that this and there's been a lot of growth since then it's been has become more diverse since then i say that because i have perspective i think i have the best perspective on where princeton was or princeton is now and working for what prince is going to be some of you may or may not have kno me but this is my first time running for political office that is because my my career was actually as an assistant prosecutor mercer county that means i was barred legally and ethically from being in politics so anything i've been doing and everything i've been doing has all been public service that was public service i'm the chairman of the housing board that's public service i am on the princeton housing authority i am a on the board of the princeton nursery school these are all things that i have actually done so i contribute toward education i'm obviously going to contribute toward affordable housing and i stress i'm in a civil service is politics at any level does not always offer concrete solutions i know this is the art of the best possible outcome and try to sell it so my job is again would be to listen and learn the nuances of the issues and decisionmaking dynamics of the council and then hopefully lead in some situations with that said what makes me ready i have the time flexibility and the energy to be on council i have governance and leadership experience from being an educational administrator on the workers their retroactive pay an increment you know they brought home the bacon and i bumped up our union membership in my building to ninety five percent and that was pretty hard to mourn i didn't have a lot of good things to say i'm a native son with deep quite interested in thank you thank you very much and before you give our candidates their well deserved applause i've just got a few closing comments first a thing all six of the  candidates here that you've listened to thank you for participating on behalf of the league and princeton community television please audience members remember to visit vote for one one dot org to read more about the candidates there are some reminded of a liberal in the league's been in the lobby you can also go online to check your registration status or the registration status of friends or family who can't remember if they're registered or not you can find that link on vote for one one or on the state website and the deadline to register to vote in the june fifth primary is may fifteenth and i hope everybody here knows that you can change your party affiliation on to lie oh ok if you know if you're  registered as an independent ok ok ok if you ok if you are an on affiliated voter i believe you can go to the polls on primary day and become affiliated with the democratic party that's having the primary and then you can change that at some other time so please vote on