To the Editors:

As a former president of the Princeton Community Democratic Organization (PCDO), I would like to address a trend I have noticed in letters various members of our community have sent in support of the three Democratic candidates for Princeton Council in recent weeks. Some have ascribed the current tense atmosphere on Council to the fact that certain members refuse to accept municipal consolidation and move on with the business of governing our town. One tongue-in-cheek letter proposed secession of the tree street neighborhood from our newly united community! I strongly disagree that any members of the governing body reject consolidation. I know all of our Council members personally and can attest that all supported unification when it was under consideration, and still agree that it was the right thing to do.

I would like to offer an alternate explanation concerning friction on the Council in recent months: I believe there are differences in attitude and governing style between members of the former Borough Council and Township Committee, and each has strong opinions about whose preferences should prevail; this is in no way the same thing as wanting to turn back the clock or undo consolidation, rather it is a natural and proper process of accommodation that could have been predicted, and must be worked through in order for consolidation to succeed. If I had to summarize in a sentence what those stylistic differences are, I would say that former members of Borough Council tend to have an idealistic, process-oriented approach to governing, while former members of Township Committee generally have a more pragmatic, results-oriented approach. Both points of view have their virtues, and I would argue that we have a better government thanks to having both represented on the Council. Without the pragmatists, nothing much would get done, but without the idealists, community engagement and public support for the actions of Council would falter. There is a great old Tom Hanks movie from 1985 called Volunteers, which perfectly captures the tension and synergy between these contrasting styles of doing good – I urge you all to check it out.

This letter is not a plea for support of any individual council candidate. I hope my observations will help shed some light, and elicit some sympathy for all our public servants working through this challenging adjustment period. I suspect the pragmatists in the community already support the more pragmatic candidate(s), and the idealists support the more idealistic candidate(s). My hope is that there are many others out there like me, who value the presence of both, and will vote to keep a balance on the Council. And above all, I hope that members of the community will come to more fully appreciate that we are one town now, and that differences of opinion on public questions, even when they may roughly follow old municipal boundaries, do not constitute a rejection of consolidation. To assert that they do is to perpetuate old divisions and delay the synthesis of a new, vibrant, and united Princeton.

David E. Cohen

PCDO President 2009-10