Development, open space and finding the balance between the two dominated this year’s State of the Township address.
Mayor Dave Fried discussed the township’s short-term and long-term development plans and how they will impact the taxpayers during the April 13 address held at the Mercer County Boathouse. While the township has cut municipal taxes for the second year in a row, Fried will seek council and voter approval to increase the open space tax by approximately 2 cents per $100 of assessed value. A change of this size would nearly double the rate to 4.5 cents from the 2015 rate of 2.5 cents. For a house valued at $350,000, that’d be an increase of $70 per year.
The tax increase would be used to buy approximately 200 acres of land on Robbinsville-Edinburg Road across the high school and the former Miry Run Golf Course on Sharon Road.
“These are not going to be easy properties to save. They’re not going to be inexpensive properties to save,” Fried said, adding that each property can serve an important role to the township.
Fried said he will ask residents to vote on the open space tax increase on the November ballot, and he’s hopeful residents will vote to approve both properties. Fried didn’t discuss the specific prices of either property.
He argued preserving the land along Robbinsville-Edinburg Road is necessary in order to help control traffic, especially during peak hours when the high school is in session.
“Anyone who’s driven down there in the morning knows how much traffic we have,” he said.
Less than a week after Fried gave the State of the Township, schools superintendent Steve Mayer was struck by a car and killed while jogging with his dog on Robbinsville-Edinburg road. Fried said April 20 that the accident has made him “doubly committed” to perserving open space.
Fried wants to block further development to help control traffic along the roadway. He also argued that preventing additional homes is not only a safety issue, but a fiscal issue as well.
“We know for every 100 homes that we save, that we stop, that we preserve, we save $1 million a year in services—that’s 4 cents on our tax rate,” Fried said.
The township is currently being sued by the Fair Share Housing Center, an advocacy group that is fighting for more affordable housing units to be built throughout the state. The group calculated how much affordable housing should be required in each town, and their numbers would require Robbinsville to build 1,000 additional housing units by 2025.
“This will basically destroy everything we’ve worked for over the last 20 years,” Fried said. “This will destroy everything our school board just did making improvements to their schools.”
Fried has argued that number of additional housing units would overburden the town and the school system, leading to higher taxes.
State Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo was at the address, and Fried asked him to pass an affordable housing law that was fair to municipalities. While he admits not every town is doing their fair share to make housing affordable, Robbinsville isn’t one of them.
“Ten percent of housing in Robbinsville is currently affordable,” Fried said.
Fried has previously stated that he would push for the Miry Run Golf Course to be preserved as open space in order to prevent housing developers from building there. If the open space tax increase is passed, the Sharon Road property would be preserved.
“The golf course closed—and I’m not 100 percent sure we’ll ever be able to make it a golf course again—but I do believe it’s a place where we don’t want to see any development,” Fried said April 13.
In December, a judge ruled the township is protected from the lawsuit until June. In the meantime, Robbinsville is moving forward in preserving other parcels of land.
At the address, Fried also announced a partnership between the town and the school district to help preserve Windsor School, an idea of Mayer’s. Since the school district outgrew the school, Mayer suggested the township can buy it, preserve it and use the land for the Department of Recreation’s activities and events.
“When he brought this idea to me I was really, really pleased, and I’m happy to announce that last night the school the board agreed to sell it to the town and the town has agreed to purchase it,” Fried said.
The township also preserved 16 acres of land on the south side of Town Center in an effort to further slow residential development. The land has been marked for use as a park and a community pool for Town Center. The municipal government has approached the Hamilton Area YMCA about managing the pool project.
Robbinsville has also purchased 24 acres of land on Route 130 commonly referred to as the Tammaro Property. The township will use part of the property to build a second location in the township for Project Freedom, which allows people with disabilities to live independently.
Preserving land for township use even extended into the event’s “Pay It Forward” campaign this year. The State of the Township address raised more than $22,000 for Quilts for Comfort. The charity was founded by Susan Tonry, a township resident and Leukemia survivor, with the goal to raise awareness about the disease and the need for blood and bone marrow donors.
Quilts for Comfort, which has delivered more than 500 quilts to sick and recovering patients, recently entered into a five-year agreement to use the Robbins House as their permanent location to make the quilts. The Robbins House was recently renovated and will be used to house township programs and nonprofit organizations. Fried said it is an honor for the township to be able to work with organizations like Quilts for Comfort.
“[Tonry] is the personification of a survivor, and any assistance we can provide as a community to help her and her team ease the stress of those that have been afflicted with blood cancer is an honor,” Fried said.
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