To the Editor:

Council task forces were created with an admirable goal to help the municipal government solve problems by tapping into local volunteers instead of paying for outside consultants. The recent controversies surrounding permit parking and cannabis dispensaries, however, highlight the urgent need to establish robust governance policy, particularly in the following four areas.

First, there must be transparency in task force activities. Even though task forces are technically outside the purview of the Sunshine Law, their mandate to draft policy recommendations underlines their critical role in the policy making process and calls for adequate disclosure. Considering that most task force meetings were held in the middle of the day and practically impossible for residents with a full-time job to attend, the fact that the Permit Parking Task Force (PPTF) had no meeting minutes for the entire year of 2021 and the Cannabis Task Force (CTF) had no meeting minutes or voting records for its entire existence is beyond disappointing.

Second, task force membership needs fair representation from the broad community. While fair representation can sometimes be difficult to define, the opposite of fair representation is not when parts of the community that a reasonable person would expect to have an opinion of the underlying issue don’t have adequate representation on these task forces or their representation is nearly invisible in all the public meetings as were the case for the Board of Education, the Board of Health, Corner House and the Police Department on the CTF. Not surprisingly, this lack of fair representation shows up loudly in the rather one-sided CTF report.

Third, task forces should adopt a code of ethics. When the CTF was tasked to evaluate whether Princeton should allow cannabis retail industry licenses, it seems highly inappropriate to have not one, not two, but three of the task force members who are currently or were recently employed by the same cannabis industry lobbying group. The importance of formal procedures to identify and safeguard from potential conflicts of interest cannot be overstated when three of the six Council members could be unduly influenced by interest groups.

Finally, the role of Council members on a task force needs to be clearly defined. The recent revelation that Council members were non-voting members of these task forces suggested that the intention was for Council members to play the role of facilitators. To ensure an open and comfortable environment of different opinions, Council members should stay in that facilitator role until the task force reaches its resolution. By publicly supporting recreational dispensaries in town and declaring it as “consensus” two months before the CTF released its final recommendations, the three Council members short-circuited the task force’s deliberation process.

Task forces by no means have outlived their useful lives. However, for task forces to be effective, their integrity must be protected by addressing these deficiencies in governance policy. Restoring public trust in task forces will bring fairness to everyone involved.

Jian Chen
Ettl Farm