With a 2009 budget adopted, a redevelopment plan on the books, and a new council member elected, the West Windsor Township Council is preparing to head into a new year.
The council will hold its reorganization meeting on Wednesday, July 1 at noon, without two familiar faces at the dais.
Councilwoman Heidi Kleinman and Business Administrator Chris Marion said their goodbyes during the council’s meeting on June 22.
Along with that change, council will also select its new president to replace Charles Morgan. While it is hard to predict ahead of time what will transpire during the meeting, talk among council members is that they will elect George Borek to serve as this year’s council president, and that the title of council vice president will go to Linda Geevers.
If elected by his colleagues, it will be Borek’s first term as council president since his election in May, 2007. Since 2000, members of the council have annually rotated the position of council president. Borek was an obvious contender for the position on a five-member council containing two new members and another who is currently serving as president.
Kamal Khanna was elected in May to replace Kleinman, who chose not to run for re-election, and will take his seat at the dais for the first time. Diane Ciccone, who was selected by the council in April to fill a seat vacated by Will Anklowitz in March will also take the dais for the start of the new council year. She will hold that seat until November, at which time she will need to run for re-election to continue serving the rest of the term.
Geevers already served as council president in 2006, a year after being elected to her first four-year term on council in 2005 — with Kleinman on Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh’s ticket. Geevers won re-election this year. She and Khanna will be sworn in at the reorganization meeting.
Geevers said Borek expressed an interest in serving as council president this year, and that she anticipates she will serve as president again in her second year of this new term, which will be in 2010.
She also said the selection of Borek as president makes sense since “you need people with at least a year behind them” on council. She pointed out that Khanna is new to the council and that Ciccone, also newer, will already be busy serving on the township’s mediation teams dealing with lawsuits filed by InterCap Holdings and the Fair Housing Center.
The two parties filed objections with the township’s third-round Council on Affordable Housing plan submitted in December.
The first team in dealing with InterCap consists of Township Attorney Michael Herbert, Planning Board attorney Gerald Muller, Township Planner John Madden, Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh, Planning Board Chairman Marvin Gardner, and Ciccone.
Council selected Ciccone based on the fact that she and Kleinman had served on the Planning Board since the township’s fair share plan was being drafted. Kleinman, however, will no longer serve on council. In dealing with the Fair Housing Center, the council chose the same team, but without Herbert, stating they felt that both attorneys were not needed in this case.
Ciccone will also look to serve as the council’s Planning Board representative, and Geevers is looking to remain as the West Windsor Parking Authority Liaison, Geevers said, adding that she was not aware of the other appointments.
Goodbyes. During the last meeting before the reorganization meeting, both Kleinman and Marion said their goodbyes, and each received a proclamation from the council for their work.
Morgan read Kleinman’s proclamation, which detailed her service to the township. Elected in 2005, Kleinman served as vice president from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2008 to 2009. During her four-year term on council, she served on the Planning Board all four years, and served on the Zoning Board from 2005 to 2006. She also served as the Parking Authority liaison from 2007 to 2008.
The proclamation highlighted her work on the Princeton Junction train station redevelopment. Kleinman was part of the search committee for proposals from planners to help create the redevelopment plan, and she was appointed to the steering committee to work with RMJM Hillier once the firm was appointed. Most notably, the proclamation pointed out Kleinman’s role in the months of drafting the redevelopment plan this past fall, which eventually led to adoption of a redevelopment plan.
During her comment period, Kleinman read an entry from a diary she says she has kept for the past 40 years. The entry recalled her feelings as she stepped down from the dais. Kleinman said she would “miss being well-informed about what’s going on in town,” which included a list of common questions residents had asked her over the past four years.
One question, she recalled, came from a resident who asked her why InterCap CEO Steve Goldin was suing the township after launching a campaign in support of redevelopment. “Each day, I learned the answer to yet another good question,” she said, explaining how she would look to township staff for answers on a variety of township issues.
Kleinman also said she felt privileged to have the opportunity to serve on the Site Plan Review Advisory, Planning, and Zoning boards, as well as council, all in one year. “I will miss not being able to wear all of those hats,” she said.
She did urge council to continue pushing for initiatives she touted and supported during her time on council, most notable of which was “the importance of land use planning.” She specifically warned against “shaving dollars from the Planning Board budget.”
On that same topic, she said she would also miss not being able to attend the League of Municipalities annual conference, during which she attending all of the sustainability lectures — another issue she has pushed during her time on council.
Kleinman also thanked Township Clerk Sharon Young and Deputy Clerk Gay Huber for “the endless mothering they dole out to each of their five children equally.”
She said that with regard to the mayor’s goals for redevelopment, “I understood his vision of building a future for West Windsor” — one that supported diversity — and was pleased to see a redevelopment plan that “builds a culture of community interactions, and not just builds buildings.”
Hsueh said that when he first met Kleinman, she was serving on what was known as the task force for the arts council at the time. Because of her background, he appointed her to the Planning Board. While over the past four years, there have been some ups and downs, “when it comes to redevelopment, she put in a lot of effort.”
Others echoed the sentiment. Township Attorney Michael Herbert echoed the sentiment, saying, “I know that Heidi put hundreds of hours in on redevelopment.”
Morgan said that he and Kleinman “spent considerable hours together, particularly on redevelopment, to the point to where I was worried what people would think because we were together so much.” Her effort, he said, is “rare to see, and it will leave a big hole.”
Residents, including Ruth Potts, who serves as the president of the West Windsor Arts Council — an organization in which Kleinman is heavily involved — and former councilwoman Kristen Appelget also thanked Kleinman for her service. “Heidi brought such a great technical expertise on some very important planning projects,” Appelget said.
Marion, similarly, was given a proclamation, read by Morgan, that recognized his work from March 29, 2004 through June 23, 2009. The proclamation said Marion exhibited “the highest ethical and business practice standards,” and that his hard work was instrumental in the creation of a finalized redevelopment plan. It also recognized his work in responding to inquiries from taxpayers.
“West Windsor has been a very important part of my career, personally and professionally,” Marion said. “It’s a special place with lots of dedicated volunteers and residents.”
He said he would miss working with all of his colleagues, especially the various department heads. Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh said when he began the recruiting for a business administrator five years ago, there were more than 70 applications, which were eliminated down to 10. From there, officials reached consensus on two candidates, including Marion, and Hsueh performed follow-up interviews with them.
Hsueh said he chose Marion after reading about his work in Marlboro, where the FBI had launched an investigation. When he asked Marion about his involvement, Marion told him that he had no role in it, except to provide information to the FBI, but that if they ever needed more information as time progressed, he would have to make himself available to them. That dedication impressed him, Hsueh said.
When he announced he was going to appoint Marion, people questioned him, asking, “Do you think a 30-something-year-old would be too young for this position?” Hsueh said he told them: “I never thought about it.”
“Chris always looked at things with the glass half-full,” which is important to have given the long and complicated council discussions and meetings, Hsueh said.
Borek said he was thankful for all of the help Marion gave him since he was elected to the council two years ago, and had to experience a learning curve. As many times as he went to Marion’s office for explanation of an issue, “you always had your door open, and I’ll always be grateful,” he said. “West Windsor is losing a good business administrator.”
Ciccone echoed the sentiment, saying she came onto council in the middle of this year’s budget season. “I came in with questions you probably didn’t want to hear, but you were professional and answered every single question.”
Geevers recalled Marion’s efforts in implementing long-term financial planning.
Morgan said he was aware that Marion had been looking to advance his career, but that Marion had kept his search quiet for the months, perhaps even as long as a year, leading up to his decision. When he found out that the process was becoming more serious, right around the time the budget season was getting “hot” in March, he went into Marion’s office and “I sincerely wanted to know what to do to keep him,” although Morgan says he knew it would be impossible because “somebody of that caliber is going to continuously look for a challenge.”
Herbert jokingly pointed out that Marion was a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles. “That’s his only imperfection.”
Appelget thanked Marion for always “coming to the meetings with a smile and a good word, even when things were difficult.”
