Princeton Merger: Trend or Isolated Vote?

There are 566 municipalities in the state, nearly 600 school districts and 200-some other taxing districts. 

On Jan. 1, 2013, that number will fall by one, now that Princeton Borough residents have joined their township neighbors in .

The vote was historic, making the Princetons only the second set of towns to approve a merger in the last 60 years, but it may not offer a path forward for advocates of broader consolidation efforts. The Princetons – soon to become just “Princeton” – appear to be a special case.

The towns already share numerous municipal functions, including a shared library and planning board, and the school district has long been regionalized. And, as advocates like former borough Mayor Marvin Reed and Tuesday night, the towns share similar demographics and fiscal struggles, which made the time right to merge.

Borough resident Brad Middlekauff, who had been on the fence, summed the issue up succinctly to Patch after voting for consolidation Tuesday: “There is enough commonality of interest between the two towns.”

That, however, is not the case elsewhere. The large majority of doughnut-and-hole towns in the state – East Windsor and Hightstown, Monroe and Jamesburg, and the Hopewells and Pennington, the Freeholds, Manalapan and Englishtown are Central Jersey examples – find themselves with huge chasms to bridge before they can be brought together. In most cases, the larger communities are in better fiscal shape than their encircled neighbors, and in some there are demographic issues (wealth, race, ethnicity) that create antipathy between the communities.

Consolidation votes in those communities are not likely to pass, even if mergers might be in the long-term and larger interests of everyone in New Jersey – as evidenced by 60 years of complete inaction.

Gov. Chris Christie has sought to change this, making it easier for citizens to use petition drives to get consolidation on local ballots and offering to pay a portion of the cost. But that may not be enough.

Richer towns continue to have little incentive to merge with poorer ones (Monroe/Jamesburg and East Windsor/Hightstown are examples of this), while other potential mergers – Helmetta and Spotswood in Middlesex County – collapse under the weight of home rule and “historic identity.”

The state needs to become more involved in the consolidation discussion. The Corzine administration approved a weak state program designed to identify merger candidates, but that went nowhere. And while Christie’s efforts seem stronger, they still leave the state playing a junior role.

This seems odd, given that the state holds all of the cards – it doles out municipal and school aid and sets the parameter within which municipalities function. It has more than enough carrots and sticks to push towns toward consolidation.

I am not advocating for a specific number of towns, or for towns of certain populations to be merged. I disagree with the  (120 towns of Woodbridge’s size) and see value in smaller communities, provided they can sustain themselves. Take Cranbury: It has fewer than 4,000 people, but it remains a sustainable municipality because decisions made over the years have given it a large enough tax base to pay for the services desired by the community.

Others, like Jamesburg, which sought to close its public library several years ago, are having more trouble. Monroe, which is the doughnut to Jamesburg’s hole, has no interest in a merger because it will not benefit financially. It is in these cases that the state needs to step in and make everyone whole. In the short-term there will be some cost, but in the long-run there will be savings.

While the Princeton merger vote is certainly good news for the nearly 30,000 residents of the Princetons, I just don’t see it gaining traction beyond the exterior borders of the soon-to-be-unified Princeton.