October 17, 2012

Council of Princeton Future Backs Opposition to Assembly Bill A2586

To the Editor:

We support the efforts of Mayor Goerner and Mayor Moore to oppose N.J. Assembly Bill A2586.

Over its long history, the town of Princeton has enjoyed a cordial and extremely constructive relationship with the gown institutions of higher education in its midst. Comity matters. Working together matters. Large scale, balanced planning matters to this host community. We agree with Peter Cantu, the long-time mayor of Plainsboro, when he wrote to the Trenton Times on September 28: “The fractured logic behind this legislation is that private institutions should be treated as public institutions because they also ‘contribute substantially to that important public mission.’ But the primary danger in extending this exemption is that private colleges and universities are also private developers.”

We must work to preserve the framework of municipal land use law for the common good.

The Council of Princeton Future