As a West Windsor citizen and student at High School South, I am shocked to read that an entire slate of candidates for town council are running without any prior knowledge of township issues.
In a letter to the editor council candidate Gary Zohn suggests that Mayor Hsueh has been “dragging his feet” on converting the old compost site to a parking lot and that Mayor Hsueh only recently announced plans for the future parking lot in response to Zohn’s team’s request for fast tracking.
Anyone who picks up the local paper can tell you the delay with the additional parking at the Princeton Junction Train Station is not a result of “foot-dragging.” The New Jersey DEP declared the former compost site a “brownfield” in 2008. DEP required a “four phase” process that included preliminary assessment, site investigation, remediation investigation, and remediation action.
Mayor Hsueh continued to push this project forward and promised during his 2009 campaign to bring additional parking via the former compost site. Mayor Hsueh’s administration applied for and received in January, 2011, grants from DEP to pay for the required assessments and investigations to minimize the tax burden of West Windsor residents.
Blaming the mayor for things clearly out of his control would be undermining the hard work that has been put into this project. This is not what I would call “throwing obstacles” but instead, working with what you are dealt. That’s how all leaders must operate, isn’t it?
Jesse Yu
Yu is a senior at High School South
