Topics in Brief
A Community Bulletin

The Princeton Public Library announced last week that it had received a $500,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which is part of the NEH’s “We the People” funding for projects that encourage the study of U.S. history and culture. The grant is, however, conditional on the library raising $1.5 million in matching funds. The library has four years to raise the matching funds, creating a $2 million endowment to support humanities programming. Gifts made to the endowment from December 1, 2006 are eligible to be used against the match. From December 1, 2006, through December 11, 2007, the library raised $214,000 in matching gifts towards the endowment challenge. In her report to the Board of Trustees last month, library director Leslie Burger thanked Julie Borden, who wrote and submitted the successful grant proposal last May. The library can extend its campaign through 2012 if it does not meet its $1.5 fund-raising goal by 2011, library development director Dickie Ann Boal said Tuesday.

In other news, the Princeton Public Library has endorsed a policy to help library staff members deal with patrons who act “inappropriately.” The policy, which was drafted by library board member Grayson Barber, enables library staff to ask disruptive patrons to leave and gives those individuals the ability to appeal. Staff will also be authorized to suspend the borrowing privileges of customers whose behavior prevents effective use of the library by others. Patrons determined to be serious or repeat offenders will be asked to keep off library premises unless they abide by the code of conduct. 

Princeton Borough Council and Princeton Township Committee will each conduct respective reorganization meetings Sunday, January 6, at noon. The annual meeting serve as venues for the respective mayors’ municipal addresses, as well as for naming appointees to governing agencies. Borough Council will hold its meeting in Council chambers at Borough Hall, and Township Committee will meet in the main meeting room at Township Hall.

The Princeton Regional School Board will meet on January 8 in the Valley Road Administration Building to discuss the “Uniform State Memorandum of Agreement Between Education and Law Enforcement Officials.” The meeting will be closed to the public and no action will be taken. The next public meeting of the board is scheduled for Tuesday, January 22, at 8 p.m. in the cafeteria at John Witherspoon Middle School.

County officials confirmed this week that Big Sky Airlines, a commercial airline operating as a partner of the Delta Airlines Connection service, which includes flights from Trenton-Mercer Airport, has announced its intention to cease its East Coast operations as of January 7, 2008. The airline had been offering three roundtrip flights a day on weekdays, two roundtrip flights on Sundays, and one roundtrip flight on Saturdays between Trenton and Boston’s Logan International Airport. Big Sky began operations out of Trenton-Mercer in April 2007. A legal notice filed by the company at the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C. cited “severe financial distress due to continuing, extensive and unsustainable losses” in the competitive Northeast corridor as its reason for eliminating the Trenton-to-Boston service.

Return to Previous Story | Return to Top | Go to Sports