To the Editor:

I don’t know which I find most disappointing: Judge Jacobson’s decree imposing 750 subsidized housing units upon our little town, or our Council’s submissive acceptance of that decree, or the alacrity with which Princeton Future has endorsed the decree as justification for the group’s long standing vision of an urban core.

As I have noted previously, the new housing units may not be given a Princeton preference.  They will represent a nearly 10 percent increase in our housing stock — or nearly 45 percent if built with 20 percent set-asides by multi-family developers.  Population growth, of course, always comes at a cost.

What I find astonishing is that our well-credentialed leaders seem unable to grasp that the growth demanded by the beneficent judge will be neither affordable, nor sustainable.  It should be obvious to all that the housing subsidies required will impose further burdens on our existing residents, many of whom are already straining to pay their existing taxes.  It should be equally obvious that increasing our resident population by perhaps 45 percent will compel us to add many more classrooms than are envisioned by our School Board in its controversial $130 million expansion program.  Note that we are already running out of land for buildings, playing fields, and parking.

Then there is the question of inadequate infrastructure and support services – e.g. narrow streets that have already been made nearly impassible by the addition of pedestrian rights of way, bicycle lanes, outdoor dining areas, and curbside parking.  As density increases, and building heights increase, the burden of providing fire protection will at some point become too great for a volunteer fire department, creating a need for a paid, unionized fire department with an annual cost approximately equal to that of our present police department.  There is a reason why larger communities are more expensive than smaller ones, and why property taxes per acre always increase with density.

The involuntary growth we now face represents the culmination of the zoning coup that we euphemistically called “consolidation.” Princeton Future chirps that more of us will be able to live in our core neighborhoods.  Isn’t that wonderful. I am reminded of the scene in Dr. Zhivago when Yuri returned from the eastern front, found his lovely house turned into a shambles by a horde of squatters, and was berated by his communist minder for having previously appropriated a building that should have accommodated 25 families.

Is that what we really want for our lovely little town?  Have we no consideration for our existing residents?  Doesn’t anybody think it odd that those with modest incomes should be driven out to accommodate the state’s non-resident indigent population?  Or that our defining residential neighborhoods should be obliterated to accommodate the self serving interests of “planners” and the globalist pretensions of the university with which they seek to do business?  Most dismaying is that a population that prides itself on intellectual superiority cannot grasp the destructive implications of the policies we so ruthlessly promote.  It makes me weep.

Peter Marks

Moore Street