I am running for West Windsor Council this November. This is a letter discussing township issues and proven successful measures to address them. I’m asking for your support so we can work together on these issues to strengthen our community and lower our taxes.
We just got our new property tax bill with a municipal tax hike of 4.5 percent. Most of these hike dollars go towards repairing 20 percent of our roads. Two types of traditional methods are used for the repairs: hot mix asphalt patching of large potholes and sealing of large cracks. From three pavement management courses I have taken at Rutgers University, I have learned that we could have used newer, better materials and approaches to make better repairs, at lower costs.
And the same amount of tax-hike money, if used five years ago, could have prevented these potholes and cracks from occurring for the whole township, while every family could have saved $1,500 on tire and suspension repair costs. The solution is to seal the roads early with a layer of protective coating (chip seal or fog seal) at 5 to 10 percent of the cost of repavement. This road seal has saved Hopewell Township $2 million over the past 10 years, which can be translated into a 1.25 percent reduction of the municipal property tax for West Windsor residents.
As a council person, I will introduce this pavement management program to West Windsor. There is no reason we are 20 years behind our neighbors, including: the state of New Jersey, Mercer County, Plainsboro Township, Pennington Borough, Hopewell Township and Hopewell Borough, all of whom employ these modern methods.
Another issue is the preservation of farmland to stop residential developments. If you are disturbed by the rapidly-rising buildings along Bear Brook Road on former farmland, you are not alone. Nearly every resident that talked to me about residential developments feels imposed upon by these houses—so many units and so close to the road.
Roughly speaking, each 1,000 units of non age-restricted housing units increases our taxes by more than $1,000/year (local, school and county tax combined). Preserving open spaces in West Windsor, which is mostly farmland, is the best way to slow down residential development, while retaining our agricultural beauty and tradition, protecting our water and soil and balancing our economic forces.
Currently, West Windsor has more than 500 acres of unpreserved farmland, which is almost the same size as the Howard Hughes property. Because most of the farm owners are at retiring age, these farmlands are prone to be turned into more than 2,000 residential units in the coming 10 years.
In fact, three farms with a total 130 acres presently do have active offers from developers. As a council member, I will work with the township to aggressively preserve farms with the largely available funding from the state, the county, our open space taxes and private sources.
The good news is that we have just recently preserved the 8.5-acre Censoni property on Clarksville Road facing the municipal complex, and are close to preserving the 120-acre Hall property on Village Road East.
Meanwhile, residents putting brush on the street before the prescribed time is a township wide issue. I was once one of those residents. When I moved to Berrien City last year, I followed what some of my neighbors did. After talking to residents throughout the town, having difficulty driving through sometimes two large opposite brush piles on narrow streets, and having trouble parking among piles, I realized how it affects us not only in terms of street cleanness, but more importantly, road safety for bicyclists, drivers and pedestrians.
Also, the yard waste is washed away by rain, clogging drains. The best practice I have heard from our residents is to put the brush on a tarp and place it on a grass free area. That way it is easy to drag out at collection time. I put my brush away from the street now. Measures should be taken to improve this. It can be put into our roadway safety improvement plan that I would like to introduce to West Windsor (from two training courses on road signage and safety improvement planning). Our state has an annually reviewed and revised plan, and we should also, if we are to improve our roadway safety levels.
Finally, proper recycling saves taxes. Walking past residents’ recycling bins on collection days, I notice items in bins that are not accepted recyclables. This practice could send our heartily collected recyclables to a landfill, costing us more by going through the recycling center detour.
The most prevalent incorrect practice is that people put all types of plastics to the bin: Mercer County only recycles #1 and #2 plastics. The remaining types should be trashed.
Other incorrect practices include leaving the caps of paper cartons and plastic containers on, putting materials in plastic bags and recycling unacceptable materials such as paper coffee cups.
Eventually, when recycling costs more than landfill, correct recycling practices will save us taxes. When in doubt, here is our County’s link on what goes where: app.my-waste.mobi/widget/537-MercerCounty/home.php.
On another note, perhaps the win-win practice is to reuse the material, such as a footstool I made from my campaign signs from last year that are made of an unknown type of plastic.
— Yan Mei Wang
Wang is a candidate running for the open seat on West Windsor Council this November. Also running are incumbents Jyotika Bahree and Yingchao “YZ” Zhang.
