To the Editor:
Close Encounters
With Chatty Drivers
After many recent encounters with erratic drivers in the Princeton area, I ask why the police aren’t ticketing those who are driving while text messaging and using cell phones.
Research, suppressed for years apparently to avoid antagonizing members of Congress and Americans who can’t be out of touch for even an instant, showed that both handheld and hands-free cell phone use while driving results in cognitive distraction as likely to cause an accident as drunken driving.##M:[more]##
Motorists talking on a cell phone are four times as likely to crash as other drivers. I think this research was ignored by our government for political reasons and has surely caused many deaths and injuries on our highways. It seems that most Americans now are so addicted to their BlackBerrys and cell phones that they choose to put the rest of us in grave peril.
Handheld cell phone use while driving in New Jersey has been illegal for some time, but apparently police no longer ticket offenders. The fine should be increased to $1,”000 and to $10,”000 for having an accident. Offender’s drivers’ licenses should also be suspended.
Ronald A. LeMahieu
Sequoia Court, West Windsor
WW Roundabout
Needs Improvement
I write about the unsatisfactory situation regarding the roundabout over the railroad tracks in Princeton Junction, since it appears that West Windsor Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh and the New Jersey Department of Transportation will take no concrete action to remedy the interminable delays that are now occurring on the Alexander Road approaches during rush hours.
Between 8:30 and 9 a.m. on the Princeton Junction side, traffic is often backed up so far down Alexander Road that cars attempting to enter Alexander from Route 571 are unable to do so because of the very long line of waiting vehicles. On many mornings, it takes over 10 minutes to get from 571 through the roundabout and the situation isn’t much better for the Wallace Road traffic joining Alexander from the station approach.
Similar delays also occur on the Princeton side of Alexander Road during the evening rush hour. And this is during the summer vacation season with a national recession and before the dreaded Village Transit Center is built. I hate to think what it will be like when summer is over, the economy has revived, and the transit center has thrown many more cars into the mix. Even now, with schools closed for the summer, the detouring traffic on Clarksville is becoming more congested as drivers look for any means to avoid the roundabout.
Amazingly, at a meeting I requested, the mayor told me that the problem was brought about by drivers in the U.S. not knowing how to drive through roundabouts, which work splendidly in Europe. There, drivers know the protocol and 4-way roundabouts are only erected at intersections with equal amounts of traffic from all directions. If the mayor knew that drivers here are ignorant of roundabout rules, why did he authorize the building of this nightmare?
The obvious solution is to introduce traffic lights during rush hours with a green light bias in favor of the Alexander Road traffic and lights that would revert to flashing yellow outside of the high-traffic hours in the morning and evening. But apparently this is not to be, so the only answer is to educate the driving public, in the hope of reducing the time wasting delays now infuriating drivers during peak commuting hours.
Roundabout rules require that traffic already in a roundabout have right of way. Some drivers are not aware of this and very few drivers use their turn signals to indicate whether they are turning right, going straight over or going 270 degrees around the roundabout. The use of turn signals by all drivers — particularly those in the roundabout, to signal their exit from it — would reduce the problem.
I suggest that the township produce a pamphlet to be distributed to all households, published in local newspapers and placed on the township website, with coherent instructions on roundabout protocol and the use of turn signals.
In addition, roundabout rules of the road should be incorporated in the New Jersey written driver’s license exam.
Educating the public will not solve the delays but it may help to speed up the traffic flow.
Perhaps one day, the mayor and the DOT will come to their senses and install the much needed traffic lights since it’s obvious that very little planning took place before the roundabout was introduced and they must now admit their error and rectify it.
And yet there’s even talk of another roundabout being introduced in Princeton at the three-way stop by the Wawa on Alexander Road. Heaven forbid that this occurs as the delays there may well be worse than we are now experiencing in the Junction — resulting in frayed tempers and unpleasant accidents.
Richard Moody
West Windsor
To: WW Taxpayers
From: The Mayor
Enclosed please find your 2009 property tax bill and an insert that provides a more detailed breakdown of how your tax dollars are allocated among the various levels of government. The 2009 operating budget for the Township General Fund calls for $36,”514,”000 in expenditures. Revenue includes $8,”729,”081 in miscellaneous revenue, $2,”813,”474 in state aid, $189,”989 in direct state grants and $20,”581,”456 as the amount to be raised by taxation. The township plans to utilize $4.2 million from surplus to support the 2009 budget, leaving approximately $3.4 million in surplus reserve to help stabilize taxes in 2010 and 2011. The municipal tax rate is therefore 33.1 cents in 2009, which reflects an increase of 1.7 cents over 2008.
The municipal budget represents approximately 15 percent of the total tax bill and is the only portion of the tax bill that the mayor and Township Council can directly control. This 15 percent covers all the municipal services provided to residents, including public safety (police and emergency services), public works (refuse, recycling, parks maintenance, and yard waste collection), and human services (health, recreation, senior and social services). The remaining 85 percent is used to pay for regional schools, county and library taxes, and open space acquisition and preservation.
West Windsor Township is one of only nine municipalities out of 566 in the state of New Jersey to receive a Triple A bond rating from Standard & Poor’s Rating Service. This rating reflects the township’s rapidly expanding local economy, its consistently solid financial performance, and overall favorable debt position. To date, this prestigious rating will save the township a total of approximately $802,”000 in interest on general improvement and refunding bonds.
As we move forward in 2009 and beyond, the township will continue to work on a number of important capital projects including the completion of the addition to the Senior Center, renovations to the former Princeton Junction firehouse, reconstruction of Meadow Road, and implementation of bike and pedestrian-friendly roadway design. We will continue to focus on improving our roads and infrastructure, maintaining and upgrading our recreational facilities and parks, and reducing energy costs while protecting our environment.
In addition to grants that fund the 2009 operating budget, the township has received $545,”000 in grant funds to support capital projects to include $175,”000 in New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) Local Aid Grant for Penn Lyle Road Phase II improvements, $125,”000 for the NJDOT Bike Way/Bike Lane Extension Program, $150,”000 for Wallace Road Reconstruction fully funded by the state ransportation Trust Fund, and $95,”000 for Dutch Neck Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Improvements, also fully funded by the state Transportation Trust Fund.
As always, I would like to acknowledge and thank all of the volunteers who serve on the numerous boards and committees for their generous time, ideas, and participation in making this township a truly great place to live. Together with the Township Council and our dedicated township staff, I look forward to another positive and productive year.
Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh
For the Mayor:
Questions to Ask
Like many of you, I just received my yearly property tax increase notice. I read the mayor’s commentary on what was happening and why we need another tax increase. One comment caught my eye — “the Township’s rapidly expanding local economy”. Maybe the mayor’s perspective might be more realistic if he took a drive down Alexander Road and saw for lease signs on I believe every business building or drove on Princeton-Hightstown road into the gateway of our town and viewed the blight of boarded up buildings, the abandoned construction projects, and the loss in the “Acme” shopping center.
Clearly, the economy has contributed to the blight and deterioration of our town. But maybe he could ask himself these questions:
1. Is he embarrassed for our town for the boarded up blight as you drive into our gateway area?
2. As Princeton-Hightstown Road is our real town center, why was it neglected for so long?
3. Why is his focus on his transit village, which really is just going to be a traffic congested, condo infested, taxpayer burden adjacent to a flood plain?
4. What does he think of his potential bitter legacy as the mayor that presided over crushing tax growth and boarding up of our main street shops?
5. Why doesn’t Princeton have a load of empty and boarded up buildings?
6. What is Hamilton doing smarter than us that has caused a flurry of retail building — without condos — along Route 130?
I wonder if he has ever considered any of my ideas or suggestions, but how about these:
Put your transit village plans on a shelf for five years. We can’t afford them and they siphon attention away from what needs to be the focus — main street restoration and improvements. And parking for residents, too.
Demolish the boarded up buildings on Princeton-Hightstown Road. I’d rather see empty lots there than what we have now.
Get a plan together for the stores in the Ellsworth shopping center. Either finish them or demolish them.
Build sidewalks along Princeton-Hightstown Road and Alexander Road. We seem to have more sidewalks on cul-de-sacs than we do along busy roads.
The mayor euphemistically now calls his transit village an area in need of redevelopment. Sadly, the only area that really meets that definition is our town center. The time is long past due to focus on our main street. How about start today?
And, some more information on a question from a couple weeks ago on how I calculated the municipal tax increase. Our total municipal taxes were $9.8M in 2001; in 2009 they are $20.6M. This is a 109 percent increase. If our taxes would have increased at the rate of inflation instead of what they did, our taxes would be $1,”000/year less than they are today and taxpayers would have a cumulative additional $5,”000 in their pockets. To me this is real money.
Mike Baxter
Princeton Junction
COAH Concerns
At Walden Woods
The following letter was sent to Lucy Vandenberg, Executive Director of the state Council on Affordable Housing regarding the Walden Woods issue.
Thank you for your letter dated July 21, 2009. I cannot help but be thrilled to receive a response from COAH after my four months of follow-up inquiries into the Walden Woods homeowners’ objection letter, which was postmarked March 13, 2009, sent certified mail with a return receipt, and never acknowledged by COAH. Your given reason for your failure to respond for all this time is that our objection letter was not filed in the proper form, as prescribed by N.J.A.C. 5:96-4.1, and therefore was not identifiable to COAH as an objection. This claim raises a number of interesting questions, such as:
1. Why did my follow-up letter of April 30, 2009, sent certified mail with a return receipt to COAH, and which begins, “I am writing regarding an objection to West Windsor Township’s Housing Element and Fair Share Plan by the residents of the Walden Woods housing development..” never receive a reply from your office? It would seem that if you had really not known that what we sent was an objection letter, my follow-up would have clarified our intent, and you might have shown us the courtesy of a response then, before mediation began, rather than now when it is well under way.
2. Why, when your office was unaware that we filed an objection, did we receive an E-mail on June 4, 2009, from Eileen Brennen of COAH asking us to, “Please e-mail or fax to me the objection, along with your confirmation of receipt by COAH,” and then, after complying by fax to her request, receive no reply from Ms. Brennen?
3. Why did the E-mail I sent you on June 30, 2009 also receive no reply?
4. Why did I finally receive a reply from you dated July 21 only after you received a carbon copy of my July 6, 2009, letter to Deputy Attorney General George Cohen, informing him that, as an objection has been ignored, there is a deficiency in COAH’s evaluation of West Windsor’s plan, which, if it continues to go unaddressed, will invalidate West Windsor’s entire certification process?
5. And, finally, why did it never occur to a woman of your common sense that an objection letter signed by 16 low- income families and incurring more than $30 in certified mail and return receipt fees over a period of four months in its attempt to be recognized by COAH was intended by the property owners to be a true objection? If we had wanted to merely comment on West Windsor’s plan, I suppose a simple phone call to your office would have sufficed.
Your claim that our objection was “presented as a public comment and not an objection” is curious. I am not aware of, and COAH’s procedural rules do not reflect, anything called the “Public Comment to a Fair Share Plan”. For future reference, if you wish to receive public comments as well as objections to petitions for substantive certification, you should update your rules for the next round of certifications to reflect the procedures for filing both. As the case stands today, however, any correspondence sent certified mail, by deadline, to COAH and the township applying for substantive certification, and detailing a problem with a municipality’s estimate of its fair share, is considered to be an objection.
Thankfully, the procedural rules already provide COAH with protocol for handling objections like ours which do not conform to the guidelines as set forth in N.J.A.C. 5:96-4.1. I refer you to N.J.A.C. 5:96-4.2(b), which states, “Objections which are determined to be incomplete or invalid shall be returned to the objector who shall have 14 days to correct deficiencies and resubmit them in a manner conforming to N.J.A.C. 5:96-4.1.”
I believe that the reason this subsection exists is to prevent citizens like ourselves, who lack the benefit of a lawyer to aid us in filing a conforming objection, from being excluded by COAH from the mediation process. I have been informed, but please correct me if I am wrong here, that your July 21 letter, in which you cite nonconformity with section 4.1 as the reason for refusing an objector the remedy provided for by section 4.2 is an unprecedented violation by COAH of its own procedural rules.
There are other aspects of this situation which confound me. For example, I fail to understand why both your own and former Commissioner Doria’s letters to me are carbon copied to West Windsor Township Attorney Gerald Muller, and why both of you echo Mr. Muller’s fallacious arguments.
Also, it is unclear to me why it is so important to COAH that West Windsor not have to build more units to replace the Walden Woods units that are lost through future property sales now that our 10-year restriction period has lapsed. Specifically, I am concerned as to how COAH can continue to claim the ability to mediate between municipalities and the public when there is such a lengthy and interesting paper trail of evidence of collusion with West Windsor Township against a group of affordable housing residents. I understand perfectly what West Windsor Township has to gain from this collusion. What I fail to understand is how the benefits outweigh the risks for COAH.
I have every expectation that COAH will locate our objection, send us notice of its deficiencies, and find in our favor during the ensuing mediation. To find against us would be ill-advised considering that Records Custodian Renee Reiss acknowledges that, “COAH does not have any documents that are responsive to [my] requests for lists of all the conditions the Bootstraps project was required to meet in order for its waiver to be valid or the conditions the Bootstraps program failed to meet.” Given this lack of any evidence to the contrary (and by evidence I do not mean the rather entertaining memos that former Commissioner Doria misinterprets in his letter), COAH must and will rule that our restrictions are for 10 years based on our valid waiver and our unalterable property deeds.
As for Mr. Doria’s letter, which you were so kind as to attach: it is my hope that COAH does not plan to hang its hat on the lies of DCA’s disgraced former commissioner.
My neighbors and I look forward to receiving a legally valid response from your office sometime very soon.
Caryn Trela
Walden Woods,
Bear Brook Road
For more on this issue, see story, page 13
Urgent Need
For Pet Adoptions
Our local rescue groups are overwhelmed this year with adoptable kittens. If you have been considering adopting a kitten we encourage you to visit PetSmart’s adoption center in the Nassau Park Boulevard as soon as possible. In addition many full-grown cats, dogs and puppies are looking for homes. Animals are available for adoption daily at PetSmart, and on Saturdays and Sundays the local rescue groups bring in additional animals currently being fostered and waiting for good homes.
If you cannot adopt but want to help, you can make a donation to any of the local rescue groups, you can foster a pet, or you can make donations of pet food, litter, or bedding (blankets or towels) to any of the local rescue groups. Contact information for our local rescue groups can be found on the Internet under “Petfinders” or by visiting PetSmart. Please consider helping these animals find good homes.
Susan Zanzucchi
Volunteer,
West Windsor Virtual Shelter
Dear Friends
Of David Bachner
It is with profound dismay that I write this message to you all — Dave’s friends. I saw Dave pitch that last game against Middletown and will cherish the memory of how flawlessly focused he was in executing his plan. However, there is now another plan — far different from the one we all envisioned. I hope we can celebrate David’s omnipresence by making his legacy a lasting one.
(1.) I hope you will support an effort to name High School North’s baseball field in Dave’s honor: David Bachner Field.
(2.) When Dave’s high school colleagues were wildly successful in Babe Ruth and beyond, we proposed construction of announcer’s booths at both high schools to enhance and showcase the very best from our communities. I believe we have architecturally-sealed plans from West Windsor Little League that might be modified.
The beauty of our high schools is they serve and benefit our own teams, and welcome our competitors.
All parents and school/community members strive for excellence — to the best of our ability. I always felt that way about Dave: unselfish to a fault and one who “gave it all” on the field.
As we all prepare to remember David, let us memorialize his excellence to shine on us all.
These efforts encumber no one other than to see if these suggestions have merit and broad-based support.
Thank you. God bless David’s friends and family.
Peter R. Weale
144 Fisher Place, West Windsor
Correction
In the July 24 edition of the News, it was incorrectly reported that the Dreher Group, which owns the site of the future Rite Aid at the corner of Route 571 and Cranbury Road, received Planning Board approval to construct the Rite Aid. The issue never came before the Planning Board.
Rather, the Dreher Group received Zoning Board approval to construct the Rite Aid. The site plan calls for a 14,”673 square foot Rite Aid, and an additional 6,”000 feet of retail space that could include a coffee shop and a restaurant.
