Beyond the Sleepy College Town

On April 24, 1999, the Sandra Starr Foundation hosted its first annual Princeton Communiversity Day conference. "Beyond the Sleepy College Town: The Future of the Greater Princeton Community" was open to the public, and drew more than 100 people, who took part in the discussion about long-term trends affecting quality of life in the greater Princeton area.

Princeton University President Harold Shapiro began the meeting with a presentation on the future of the university and its plans for expansion. The university is currently considering increasing undergraduate enrollment by 10 percent. President Shapiro argued that this change would have little impact on the surrounding community.

Dianne Brake, president of MSM Regional Council (now called the Regional Planning Partnership), presented the findings of an analysis of the impact on the region of long-term growth in population, businesses, and jobs. According to Brake, the land under development in the tri-county area (Mercer, Somerset, and Montgomery) has increased 60 percent in the last 20 years, while population has risen only 21 percent. She contrasted this trend to that of Portland, Oregon, where developed land has grown by only 2 percent in the same time period despite a 50 percent increase in population. Oregon has different policies from New Jersey. It establishes urban growth boundaries that direct development toward already built-up areas. Brake predicted that unless policies change in New Jersey, our region in 20 years will be at "build-out," with all available land developed if it is not legally set aside for open space.

Ingrid Reed, Sandra Starr Foundation vice president and director of the Eagleton New Jersey Project at Rutgers, asked people to imagine what kind of place they wanted Mercer County to be and encouraged them to act upon this dream. She advocated using county government (the seven freeholders and the county executive) to look beyond our municipal boundaries, to work together and cooperatively solve problems and take control of growth and development in the county.

The second half of the conference provided the opportunity for a dozen people from the community to take three-minute to say what they would do "If I were in charge of Princeton ..."

• Wayne Meisel, President of the Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation, carrying his own new infant in his arms and recalling his youth in the town, called for all residents to "mother" Princeton, to foster a sense of belonging and community.
• Francis Blanco, the executive director of the Mercer County Hispanic Association, asked everyone to make a personal effort to get to know those in our community who are different, including people who work in our homes yet are strangers to us.
• John Kazmark, principal of Princeton High School, urged us to be more involved in the work at the schools, to help them keep up with a changing world, and to provide the schools with the necessary programs, people, and facilities.
• Reverend John White, Minister of the Witherspoon Presbyterian Church, challenged the people of Princeton to be more welcoming to newcomers. He recommended building a youth center in Princeton that would welcome all children.
• David Kinsey, a planner and consultant who is also a lecturer a Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, proposed the outlines of a general plan for local development and urged us to liberate local government, including the public school system, from excessive reliance on property taxes.
• Pam Mount, co-owner of Terhune Orchards, said that we need to foster community relationships and should build a park in the center of the town.
• Alan Karcher, former Speaker of the New Jersey Assembly (who died several weeks later), stated that tax laws should change so that the rich would pay their fair share, and the poor theirs, and so that we would end the present costly solutions we use now to fund schools. He also called for a university-affiliated think tank active in regional policy.
• Rick Sinding, managing editor of the Princeton Packet, urged all members of every municipal governing body to visit northern New Jersey to take a look at where the trends in traffic in our region are leading. He advocated abolishing property taxes and imposing a local graduated tax where citizens would contribute to the public good on the basis of their income.
• Louise Schiller, a landscape architect, suggested that we all plant gardens with our neighbors as a way to build community, acquire open space, and change our suburban ideal from large, single-family yards to clustered housing.
• Lance Lipman, businessman and member of the Human Services Commission, urged us to be more understanding and aware of the diversity of our communities, and for citizens to become more involved in local affairs and politics.
• Ann Reeves, Executive Director of the Princeton Arts Council, presented a vision of Princeton as a benevolent kingdom, where all subjects would have beautiful and safe places in which to meet, good communications with the king, and a chest full of money, hours, commitment and compassion.
• Peter Thompson, Head of Media Technologies at Princeton Regional Schools, stated that his work on uniting the town and university Web sites in the last seven years were an effort to free residents from other time-consuming tasks so that they could spend more time in parks and in town with neighbors and family.
• Elyse Pivnik, director of development at Isles, Inc., advocated building bridges between cities and surrounding areas, to make communication better across racial, socioeconomic, and urban-suburban borders. She also urged us to collaborate with people who are not like us to make a larger, more inclusive relationship between all citizens of Mercer County.

Most of the participants at this first annual Sandra Starr Foundation conference spoke about the importance of appreciating diversity and fostering community in our area. Their ideas about how to achieve these ideals ranged from calls for more public space, more equitable tax-use laws, more long-range planning, to more public participation in government and schools.