As a member of the State Planning Commission, a stepping stone to higher office, Mayor Hsueh is responsible for establishing state “urban and suburban redevelopment, housing, transportation” and other planning objectives. The commission is entrusted with creating growth districts and sees the Princeton Junction train station as critical to massive region-specific growth to reduce suburban sprawl, encourage use of public transportation, and other goals broadly outlined in the 1985 State Planning Act, most of which I support including the environmental benefits from clustering higher density in some areas to support open space in others.##M:[more]##
I am not opposed to tall buildings, public transport or lots of people including those needing low income affordable housing. It all depends on how we do it — how much West Windsor residents benefit compared with others.
What the act does not state, for example, is who pays for regional redevelopment that disproportionately impacts those closest to the regional train center. Had Hsueh addressed this critical issue over the last seven years and shown us how this will be tax positive for West Windsor residents from day one, he could have won my vote. The fact that Hillier showed the opposite and Hsueh bypassed the redevelopment’s own Finance Committee confirms this conflict.
Prior to Council’s 3-1 vote in favor of redevelopment, planner John Madden described this as “the beginning of the end” of redevelopment for West Windsor. We are entering Phase 2 with no financial plan, no contributions from neighboring townships, no government commitments, no plan for phasing the additional traffic, and no model to determine “what’s in it for us” other than a new location for the farmer’s market and a vague “sense of place.” Throughout, Hsueh has argued “we can’t tie the hands of the developers” or this won’t get built. Now comes the hard part — delivering on a genuine town center at no cost to the taxpayer.
As a member of the State Planning Commission, Hsueh desperately needs to deliver on a large and vibrant regional hub but as West Windsor mayor he needs to do this without raising West Windsor taxes or creating more traffic congestion. By deferring to New Jersey Transit’s ability to generate funds from office construction in order to finance West Windsor parking garages, and bypassing Morgan’s plan to build the garages now at no cost to the taxpayer, it became clear that Hsueh is inclined to favor the State and his career in these all-important Phase 2 decisions.
As an academic and government regulator who lacks business experience, Hsueh may not be able to deliver negotiated results that are as satisfactory to West Windsor taxpayers as they are to the state, developers and to himself.
We need a tough negotiator for West Windsor, one who has business experience, one who can ensure that redevelopment will not be the “end of West Windsor” and one who does not have a conflict of interest. I urge you to vote for Charlie Morgan.
Farrell Delman
102 Bear Brook Road
Having grown up in West Windsor and been proud of my township’s development, I have been concerned with our progress in recent years. As I watch the race for mayor, there is only one candidate who is coming up with new ideas for really doing something. The other two candidates seem not to have any new ideas, so they are stooping to dirty tricks from misleading information to outright falsehoods. Charlie Morgan is the only one running a positive campaign. I think West Windsor needs a mayor who actually has positive ideas for change and who isn’t all about negative attacks on other people. We need a mayor able to implement creative ideas balanced with strong integrity.
For example, I have been surprised to see the mayor shutting down his West Windsor Community Foundation after distributing more than $60,”000 around West Windsor just before an election. Charlie Morgan has been asking for a community foundation for several years to help keep our taxes down. And now the mayor’s supporters on Council want to add more to our taxes when a foundation could pay for it instead of us. It seems like Charlie Morgan is the only one who cares about our high taxes while the mayor and his supporters are talking about a triple A “savings” that costs $214 for every $44 saved? We need Morgan as mayor with Nitin Shah and Anupam Gupta on Council.
Jeffrey Chang
I’ve been following the candidates for mayor and wonder why everyone isn’t behind Charlie Morgan. He’s the only one of the candidates who is making specific suggestions. He is making clear statements about what he’s going to do to cut our taxes, how he will renovate the Township website, and how he will bring the open, transparent government that the others only talk about.
One of his opponents comes to Council meetings to complain about signs and to suggest solutions to the train station parking problems. He doesn’t seem to realize that he should be talking to the Mayor and the Parking Authority rather than Council. He seems just to want to get himself on television.
The current mayor likes to take credit for the work of staff in town hall. What has he done for us except create a secret foundation that distributed money just before an election in an obvious attempt to buy votes? Why did he shut it down instead of using the foundation for all of our benefit, as Charlie has been suggesting for several years.
There’s only one choice if we want someone who is sincere, will work hard for us rather than himself, and won’t blame others for his mistakes: Charlie Morgan.
Tara Cannon
The AAA bond rating is costing more than it’s saving. We would need to issue $40 million in additional bonds, 140 percent of our current serialized bond debt, to “break even” with costs.
The total $800,”000 anticipated savings quoted by Mayor Hsueh over the entire lifetime of the current AAA rated West Windsor Township bonds is about a third of the $2.45 million extra surplus needed to be maintained each year to support the AAA bond rating over other investment grade ratings of AA or A. This extra surplus costs 3.9 cents per $100 evaluation, or an extra $214 in taxes for the average $549,”000 West Windsor residence evaluation. Actual current savings for the average residence is $44.
West Windsor would need to issue now about $40 million of additional 10 year bonds to “break even” on the costs required for the AAA bond rating, even after taking credit for the anticipated 30 basis points (0.3 percent) “savings” on debt service for the additional bonds plus interest earned on the $2.45 million surplus.
Mayor Hsueh talks about “savings,” but “savings” always come at a cost, and there’s a big cost for his “$800,”000 savings.”
The $40 million in additional bonds is about 140 percent times the $28 million in serialized debt bonds that West Windsor now has. The Township’s total net debt was $38.6 million (including the $28 million in serial bonds) as of December 31, 2008. A 140 percent increase in debt is not a good idea, especially in light of Standard & Poor’s comment that West Windsor’s “debt position and debt service carrying charges (averaging about 14 percent over the past few fiscal years) are slightly high,” published April 21, 2008, in West Windsor Township, New Jersey; General Obligation.
One reason for the additional $40 million in bonds could be to help pay for BIG redevelopment. Mayor Hsueh’s other reason could be to replace current serial bonds coming due in a staggered manner, and that’s chasing a moving end point and begs the question of why he would want to have West Windsor be in a position of perpetually servicing historical debt being renewed.
If Mayor Hsueh’s reason for the additional $40 million in bonds is to help pay for BIG redevelopment, the extra $2.45 million extra surplus for the AAA bond rating will pale in comparison to the additional costs for road, sewer, safety and other needed infrastructure and services plus the costs for new schools, not to mention added congestion and negative impact on our quality of life.
A prudent municipality will want some surplus for their investment grade bonds. I think West Windsor’s surplus is too large by $2.45 million. Our families should keep those monies.
It’s interesting to note that the actual savings from the AAA rating for servicing bond debt from 2007 to date, according to Joanne R. Louth, chief financial officer of West Windsor Township, is about $184,”000. Yet this “savings” to date requires maintaining $2.45 million a year in extra surplus from taxes to support the AAA bond rating over a AA or A rating. By the way, the total historical $4.2 million surplus costs taxpayers about 6 cents per $100 evaluation, which for the average $549,”000 West Windsor residence evaluation is an extra $370 in taxes.
Our property taxes mainly contain taxes for schools, municipality and county, and have increased over the past 8 years while Mr. Huesh has been mayor. To realize now that this AAA bond rating he has been championing is costing us more than it’s saving is the last straw — especially when he increased municipal taxes 12.1 percent last year and is proposing to increase them 5.4 percent now — in these tough economic times. It’s time for a change. We definitely should not be paying extra taxes to maintain an extra surplus for the AAA bond rating over other strong investment grade bond ratings such that it’s costing us more than it’s savings us — or setting the stage for BIG redevelopment. It’s time for a change to Charlie Morgan.
The details, numbers and calculations for the above comments are available at www.best4westwindsor.com Go to the Issues page, and at the bottom of the “Let’s Lower Your Taxes” section, click on the link to AAA Bond Rating.
Sandra Donovan
Sapphire Drive
How about a final term report card for Shing-Fu Hsueh?
Roads: B. The Grovers Mill bridge was replaced and there is a new traffic circle at Alexander Road. We’ll need to wait and see how much more traffic the Alexander Road circle brings to our community. However, our roads continue to flood during heavy rains.
Parking: F. We still do not have parking for all our residents that need parking. Instead Hsueh has worked to wrap parking into his transit village plan. Hamilton had parking in 1.5 years. Why didn’t we do the same — and several years ago? And why wasn’t the parking authority and NJ Transit deeply engaged in any planning at the inception? Yes, the organization responsible for parking has rejected the mayor’s transit village plan. We are no closer to parking for residents then we were in 2001.
Taxes: F. Our taxes are outrageous. Since 2005 our municipal tax rate has increased 40 percent! Why have they not at minimum stayed flat this year?
West Windsor First: F. Our neighboring communities — in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania — must be in love with our current mayor. He is doing his best to provide their residents with parking at the expense of our taxes and quality of life. In the end, his responsibility as mayor of West Windsor is to put the citizens of West Windsor first. It is not our responsibility to provide for all of our neighboring communities.
Financial Acumen: F. How can a major plan be approved without an estimate of the financial impact? To add to the absurdity, the plan has an “objective” to be tax neutral or tax positive. That evaluation should be made before the master plan is approved — and the plan structured to meet that as a requirement. Does anyone believe the transit village will be tax neutral or tax positive? My estimates have it increasing each household’s taxes by $3,”000 to $7,”000 per year.
Future Thinking: F. We can not blindly think that New York City employment will increase and that wages there will stay at current levels. Economically, New York may have already seen its pinnacle. Building more condos without increased employment will only diminish the value of existing West Windsor homes.
Common Sense: F. Parking is at a premium around the train station. The township’s planners state that the just approved plan does not provide adequate traffic flow to support the plan. How can a design be approved that is not adequate before building is begun? It is much cheaper to change at the design stages then after building. And why concentrate retail in this traffic congested mess — where will people park? Clearly, the town center is and should be on Route 571.
Developer’s Best Interest Focused: A. The transit village plan allows developers to build condos on a site that would not have permitted it. The mayor hand picked a developer VP from Hillsborough to be part of our three-member financial review committee that was chartered to review financial data provided by developers to insure it was accurate. I can only imagine the developers’ glee when they got one of their own on our review committee.
Alignment with West Windsor Values: F. We are a community of homes with backyards. Why does he stubbornly steer us down his path towards the urbanization of West Windsor. If he wants to be a mayor for a condo community he should move to Metro Park.
Allegiance: F. What is more important to the mayor — his position on the state planning commission that is pushing for development or his position as mayor doing what is in the best interest of our town and its taxpayers?
Smell Test: D. I’ve read that business interests gave $50,”000 to a fund that the mayor controlled in 2001. This money was “invested” in the company that his son is president of and earned no return all of those years — not even the 3 percent it could receive at a bank. The funds were disbursed to charitable agencies in December, 2008. Does this smell like election related shenanigans to you?
The transit village plan has established a minimum of 500 new condos with no upper limit. From what I gather, Intercap is suing West Windsor for the right to build at least 1,”500 condos. Hillier and the mayor initially proposed 1,”000 condos for the transit village. Does this smell like a back room deal could be struck to split the difference and build 1,”000 condos?
When you are in the voting booth, take some time to review what has happened and not happened in our town over the mayor’s term. We still don’t have parking, we have an approved plan for a minimum of 500 condos with no upper limit, our taxes are outrageous and continue to get worse. Can you afford more of the same from Shing-Fu Hsueh? Do you want 1,”000 to 2,”000 more condos and the related financial and quality of life impacts?
We need a change.
Mike Baxter
If you want parking garages now vote for Morgan. If you want phased redevelopment that will add to, and not detract from, our quality of life, vote for Morgan.
If you think having a lawyer and businessman, known for being a tough negotiator, in the driver’s seat on redevelopment negotiations with developers, vote for Morgan. Hsueh’s redevelopment plan places the decision on parking garages in the hands of New Jersey Transit who will want to build corporate offices to throw off the funds for the garages.
But Morgan’s plan does not rely on such fantasy planning done by academics with no business experience. The mayor’s giant redevelopment fantasy, on the other hand, takes thousands of moving parts to work together, to get anywhere.
No wonder all the cross-walks, lights and sidewalks in town are exactly where they were eight years ago — nowhere. Before all this redevelopment talk started, we had a growing quality of life in town. Now we are all waiting for Hsueh’s giant changes, in order to have any changes at all, changes that will no doubt come at our taxpayer expense as we fund Hsueh’s developer profits as well as his career advancement in state planning.
Bruce Smith
Candlewood Drive
We came to reside in West Windsor for its suburban charm, less traffic, great schools and a safe neighborhood. We don’t need to change this. Charlie Morgan has opposed the proposed 1,”000 or more residential units at the train station. The new redevelopment plan will bring us up to 1,”400 housing units and Charlie has voted against it twice.
Charlie has been promoting modest redevelopment proactively for a couple of years now. He was the one who initiated the Princeton Junction overlay ordinance years ago to protect the town from development along our “Main Street” on Route 571 near the Acme. He succeeded despite the current Mayor’s efforts, assisted by his Planning Board chair, to stop him.
Charlie believes that the only way redevelopment can move forward is to do it piecemeal, in bite-sized chunks starting with parking garages rather than the grand effort pushed by the Mayor. The wisdom of Charlie’s approach has been proved by the indigestion caused by the huge redevelopment plan.
Vote for honest, thoughtful and decisive leadership, vote for realistic redevelopment, vote for Charlie and put Anupam and Nitin on Council so that Council will no longer stone-wall his efforts.
Shikha Vyas
