My 14 and 1/2 years on Planning Board and Council have been some of the most rewarding, yet frustrating, years of my life. The best part of my service has been the good friends I have gained and would not have known but for my having been a Member of Council. In addition, I learned a lot about the West Windsor form of government and came to appreciate why it is called the “strong mayor/council” form of government.
My first entry into West Windsor government service was not on Council, however, but on the Planning Board. Mayor Carole Carson asked me to sit in the Mayor’s seat during Planning Board meetings. That is when I learned that West Windsor ordinances provide that one member of the Planning Board is the “Mayor, or the Mayor’s designee in the absence of the Mayor.” I became the “Mayor’s designee” at every Planning Board meeting during the first two years of Carole’s term, ending only when I was elected to Council.
That “designation” led to the first political confrontation in my governmental career. A heated debate ensued whether the Mayor was “absent” when the Mayor attended Planning Board meetings but did not sit on the dais. The attorney had to make a ruling and he ruled that the Mayor was not “present” if the Mayor was not “present on the dais.” As a result, I was allowed to be a voting member of the Planning Board at the numerous meetings attended by the Mayor.
Those two years on the Planning Board were exciting and burdensome because the Planning Board was dealing with the Toll Brothers development that became known as the Estates at Princeton Junction on Bear Brook and Meadow Roads. Those were marathon meetings running well after midnight on numerous occasions. We were forced to have numerous meetings in a very short period of time with a “gun to our heads,” having lost the builders’ remedy lawsuit that Toll Brothers had won against the Township.
Perhaps the biggest issue was the potential for flooding Windsor Haven due to water runoff from the Toll Brothers site. Windsor Haven residents already were subject to flooding from Little Bear Brook, and there was fear that the Toll Brothers site would exacerbate the flooding problem. It was interesting to learn that Little Bear Brook actually reverses flow when there is a flood, backing up in the direction of Windsor Haven.
Toll Brothers and Township professionals assured us that their stormwater mitigation structures would preclude any possibility of exacerbating Windsor Haven flooding. I asked Toll Brothers to stand behind the opinions of their professionals and back them up with a guarantee of no flooding implications. They refused.
Fortunately, with significant subsequent storms and flooding over the past few years behind us, it does appear that the Toll Brothers engineers were correct. At least, I never received complaints from Windsor Haven residents that their flooding problems were worse than before the Toll Brothers site was developed.
I ran for Council in 1999 because I got angry about the way a down-zoning ordinance seemed to be rammed through Council without the public being given much chance for input. I also got angry about the members of Council — notably former Mayor Tom Frascella and Council President Shing-Fu Hsueh, voting to subpoena the Mayor for information that they felt was being withheld by the Administration. It is my strong belief that I had to act rather than merely complain about the situation, that I had to have the courage of my convictions and do something about my concerns.
Running for Council is a labor of love. The salary does not cover the costs incurred doing the job, as well as running for the privilege of being a Council Member. Asking for reimbursement of expenses is frowned upon. And anyone who aspires to be elected must walk around town and talk to the people.
I’ve walked every street and knocked on most of the doors in the Township. I learned that people had good questions and raised concerns that otherwise I would not have known about. Most folks were very courteous, although a few people expressed vocal (and even physical) displeasure at my presence on their door step. The experience gave me invaluable insights into the perceptions of our residents which, in turn, allowed me to ask the Administration to act on the issues brought to my attention.
Once on Council, it did come as quite a shock to learn that it is illegal under both New Jersey law and West Windsor ordinances for members of Council to speak with Administration staff other than the Mayor or the Administrator. Another shock has been finding that the Administration purposefully withholds information from Council. But the biggest shock was discovering that the Administration has instructed the attorneys not to respond to Council questions, notwithstanding the theory that the attorneys represent Council as well as the Administration.
The Administration does have a legitimate interest in conserving scarce staff resources and making sure that answers to questions from Council are answered appropriately. After all, five Council members asking different members of the staff the same question, without going through the Administrator, does create the potential for inconsistent answers and for impairing the Administrator’s ability to manage his people. Those are legitimate reasons for restricting the points of access into Administration for information, but they do not justify the practice of ignoring Council questions and instructing the attorneys to do so, as well.
One of the challenges of being on Council is dealing with issues of concern to residents. Council is a legislative body without Administrative functions. More importantly, the members of Council have no power to address complaints. Yet, Council meetings are the only real opportunity for the public to come before the West Windsor government and register complaints. Council powers are limited to asking, even demanding that the Mayor and Administration address the complaints. Council is without power to do anything about a complaint if the Administration fails to act. This is one reason our form of government is called the “strong Mayor/Council” form.
Another challenge of being on Council is that Council has approval authority with respect to contracts but no authority to participate in the negotiation of those contracts. Authority to negotiate contracts is an executive function and Council has no executive authority. Typically, contracts are brought to Council shortly before the proposed effective date already signed by the contractor. That puts Council in a very difficult position if the Members perceive serious defects in the contract.
Council is faced with two unacceptable choices: instructing the Administration to renegotiate the contract, thereby making the Township unable to conduct important Township business or accepting a contract with unacceptable terms. It has come as still another shock that the Administration continues this practice despite repeated Council requests that contracts be brought for Council review sufficiently early to address unacceptable contract terms. This truly is a “strong Mayor/Council” form of government.
All my years of governmental experience, starting with my time on the Planning Board, taught me a few lessons that are relevant today and should be kept in mind going forward.
First, it may be that the InterCap site in the redevelopment area might be developed without exacerbating the flooding conditions present there already and that the fears expressed by some residents may be misplaced. The Toll Brothers-Windsor Haven experience suggests that it can be done.
Second, the Township and residents ultimately bear the risk that the opinions of developers’ and/or Township professionals are correct. While this may be an obvious, self-evident fact, I have observed that Township officials tend to take professional opinions at face value without testing the strength of those opinions. The InterCap redevelopment litigation suggests that we need to find a way of preventing rejection of “inconvenient” opinions that do not support what we want to do, even when that opinion is well-founded.
Going forward all Township officials (i.e., Council members, the Mayor, the Administrator, and staff) would be well-advised not to accept the opinions of Township professionals at face value (1.) without probing for the level of confidence that the opinion is correct (e.g., is there something less than a 100 percent likelihood that the opinion will prevail) and (2.) without assessing the risk-adjusted cost of prevailing versus the cost of not prevailing.
Second opinions should be sought when the stakes are high. The cost-benefit analysis is particularly important when there is a conflict between the two opinions as was the case with respect to InterCap.
If this had been done before pushing InterCap into bringing a builders’ remedy lawsuit against the Township, we would not have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending a lawsuit that resulted in a settlement that could have been negotiated without litigation. Perhaps it was politically naive on my part to believe that the Mayor and Council Members should take responsibility, and be accountable, for the fact that the redevelopment area could not be developed with anything less than seven or eight hundred dwelling units rather than forcing a developer into bringing a lawsuit that we were then “forced” to settle with all that housing.
Third, our Strong-Mayor form of government promotes controversy between Council and the Mayor and precludes any possibility of working together collegially. Council’s role in our government is to put brakes on the Mayor and Administration in performing a checks-and-balances function. Inevitably, any Council that takes its role seriously will want to amend or reject an Administration initiative.
But the balance of power resides with the Mayor in our strong Mayor/Council form of government and, human nature being what it is, confrontations are inevitable. The fact that the Mayor and Administrator have admitted in sworn statements that they actually do exercise their unilateral power to deny access to information and deny access to legal information puts the Council in the unenviable position of taking strong action to enforce its right to information and legal advice. The subpoena threatened Mayor Carson by Council President Hsueh and my litigation with Mayor Hsueh prove the point that ours is fundamentally a confrontational form of government that is not conducive to a collegial working relationship between the Mayor and Council.
Of course, now that I find myself in litigation with Mayor Hsueh because of his unwillingness to share information with Council, I realize that his subpoena mess was a symptom of our form of government. The interesting thing is that Mayor Hsueh has forgotten about his own frustrations and has been unwilling to work with me to find a solution that will prevent history from repeating itself in the future. We should be working together rather than fighting, but fighting becomes the only option for a member of Council who takes the job seriously when the Mayor and his staff deny Council the information that members need to make informed votes.
Despite the frustrations, it has been a privilege to serve the community. It has been delightful to discover that our government truly is as much “by the people” as “for the people.” Tens of dozens of people contribute their time without compensation on our various boards and commissions. Other tens of dozens of people provide invaluable service to the Township through their expertise and/or volunteer efforts. The Township government would not function as well as it does without those people and the contributions of their time and expertise.
I look forward to continuing involvement on Township issues.
