All right, good evening everybody. Welcome. Thanks for joining us. It is November 10th, 2025. This is a meeting of the mayor and council of Princeton, New Jersey. Uh could we have the meeting statement, please? Notice of this meeting was
provided in accordance with the requirements of the open public meetings act and state regula regulations governing public meetings including the time, date, and location of the meeting and clear and concise instructions to the public for assessing the meeting and
making comments. In addition, the agenda and all related materials were posted electronically and made available to the public on Princeton's meeting portal in advance of the meeting. Thank you. Brian's going to do the land acknowledgement tonight.
>> We gathered today on the land of the Len Lape. As members of the Princeton community, we aspire to show appreciation, respect, and concern for all peoples and our environment. We honor the Lape and other indigenous
caretakers of these lands and waters, the elders who lived here before, the indigenous today, and the generations to come. >> Thank you. We have roll call, please. >> Mr. McDonald >> here. >> Miss Peron Lamrose >> here.
>> Mr. Cohen >> here. >> Miss Sachs >> here. >> Miss Froggera >> here. >> Mr. Nulan >> here. >> Mayor Freda >> here. Thank you. Right. If you're able and uh want to join us, please stand. We'll do the pledge of allegiance.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you. All right. One quick uh thing to note
for everybody that's listening and that's here. Tomorrow is a holiday. We are closed. So if you try to call here, you will not get an answer. Call Wednesday. And also for everybody up here, don't call anybody here tomorrow. Leave
them alone. It's a holiday. All right. Thank you. We have four sets of minutes. Uh move them. Move them in block. Thank you, Leticia. Is there a second to that? Thank you, Brian. Uh just make sure no questions or comments on any of those.
All right. Everybody in favor of all four, please say I. >> I. >> There we go. Council announcements or reports. Leticia. >> Yes. Uh on behalf of the human services department, uh for those who aren't
already aware, I I want to announce that they are currently uh they have already begun the holiday gift drive for this year. This will be mark the 27th year that human services has been uh
conducting this. Last year uh we had 350 applications uh from children uh a from ages up to 12 years of age who participated and uh this year we expect
as just as many if not more. So encourage everyone to please who's live in the given mood to contact human services to sign up. Uh but also this is a uh call for families who have children 12 and under who wish to apply on behalf
of their children also contact human services. Thank you. >> Thank you. Other council announcements or reports? Oh Leighton. >> Thank you mayor. Yes. Excuse me. on behalf of the mayor, uh, Councilman
Cutwin and myself, Jeff Grosser, and the, um, group, the steering group working on, uh, short-term rentals. Uh, we are, we'll be giving a thorough upgrade at our next meeting. We are continuing to evaluate, uh, a couple of
our options and continuing to get both community and council input on it. So, please stand by for that. Uh, also I would like to share uh from Adam Welch at the Arts Council. Uh, and also want to acknowledge
Councilwoman Leticia Fragger for attending the event this weekend. Uh, the Arts Council of Princeton's 31st annual sauce for the Goose Art Market took place this past Saturday on Paul Roberson Place right in front of the Arts Council. The event was a huge
success, drawing more than 6,000 attendees and featuring over 100 vendors. It was an energetic and creative day that truly showcased our community's vibrant art scene. And I just want to add, you know, as a person who was there.
They sold no drinks and no food in all of the tents that were positioned between the Arts Council, the Paul Robersonson at at Witherspoon Street and the uh church at uh John Street, tents
filled on both sides, no food and no drink. and I could see and I watched and I actually have video of the streams of people that left the event and headed right into town to spend money. I just want people to know the arts council
churns and the events that they have are beneficial to the community. Uh I just got one more thing I want to add. Thank you. Looking ahead, the Winter Village on Hines Plaza opens this Friday, November 13th, and will run through December 21st. The festive market offers
a wonderful opportunity to shop local and celebrate the season. And lastly, on Wednesday, November 20th, the Arts Council will host monthly story and verse in the Salt Lake Theater. This series provides a warm and welcoming spotlight for both emerging and
established artists to share their stories, poetry, or pros inspired by the monthly theme. It is an intimate and inspiring event in the heart of downtown Princeton. Thank you. >> Thanks, Leon. Any other announcements or
reports up here? Okay. Nothing down there. All right. We have a presentation. We are going to hear about the Westminster Acquire College planning update. Good evening everyone.
>> You need to be right up against the >> I heard. Eat the mic. Okay. How's that? >> Very good. >> Good. All right. Um, good evening everyone. Thanks for having me. Um, my name is Chris Collie. Uh, I'm a planner
with the firm Topology. Um, we are the folks that, uh, the municipality has hired to, um, assist in the planning process with, uh, Westminster Choir College. So, excited to be here. I'm going to start a timer so I don't go too long. Uh, thanks for having me, council, mayor, public, and everyone. Um, so
really, I'm here this evening to give an update uh, on the status of our work. And I wanted to start that update by explaining what exactly it is we've been hired to do and sort of where we stand in that process. So, we've been hired for uh really a four-step process. Uh we're somewhere in the second phase
right now. Uh for the first phase, we really wanted to sort of establish a clear project plan. Um, we're in a second phase which I'm going to sort of present to you some of the findings from where we're working to develop a project vision uh that's sort of informed by the
characteristics of the site as well as a series of objectives and then in the future we're going to be developing uh a few different alternatives having an engagement process around that and hopefully ultimately coming together with a uh preferred alternative. So really tonight we're talking about this
second phase and there's two phases of my presentation. The first one is about the characteristics of the site and the second one is about some design parameters and objectives that we've worked to put together. So, some of this is going to be well known to folks publicly uh who live here. So, I'll I'll
be brief on that, but if you don't know, uh Westminster Choir College campus is about a 23 acre piece of property that the uh municipality purchased. And it sits at kind of an interesting location in town uh surrounded on most sides by residential neighborhood uh but also
critically by the schools along the north and then sort of at a center point between uh three commercial areas in town, the three main uh commercial sections of town. And uh one really fun part of the work that we've been able to
do to date has been sort of digging into the history around the property. And that includes finding old pictures uh that we were able to get through a rider, but also sort of learning about the evolution of the site. And I will just sort of flag what we're looking on the right there. That's a subdivision
plan from the 60s. And what's interesting if you know the property now is you'll see Franklin Avenue on the south side here going straight through the campus. uh and and of course that now does not go straight through and that sort of an interesting uh old old wrinkle on the property. So, um, you
know, we've been learning as much as we can, uh, about the history of the property. Talking about the site today and the work that we've been tasked with, it's a big property, right? So, to sort of help you understand what 25 acres looks like,
if you hear, you know, 5 acres, 10 acres thrown out there, um, we've created a couple graphics to help understand that, and those will be part of the presentation, uh, that we can circulate afterwards. Critically important to the planning process here is an understanding of the
buildings that are on site. This is not a, you know, fresh piece of land. There's at least 16 structures on the property and we've been spending a lot of time sort of developing an understanding of them. Um, to sort of put them into four groups. There's a group of buildings
that center around uh what we're calling the historic quad, which if you've been on the site, you'll know what we're talking about. And you sort of see three of those on up on there. Now, these are buildings from the 20s that were part of the original campus. Um, you've got
another group of buildings which are really sort of associated with like the very specific history of the site as the home of Westminster Choir College being a place that was a music school. Right? So, you've got a chapel, um, you've got the playhouse, uh, you've got a library,
um, and you've got a very specialized performance center. I'll just flag for this. The top two ones on there, the chapel and the playhouse. These are the buildings that were part of the um McCarter EDA application that the council considered a couple months ago.
And then of course you got dorms, right? There's a few dorms on the site which are located on the northern port. Um so if we sort of take a step back and and think about the different sub areas on the property and how we might start to
break this thing down, like we see this site in, I don't know, six six groups or so. There's obviously the big historic lawn that sits at the front of the property. There's the historic quad which has those that first set of buildings I showed. Um, there's more of
like a performance quad. There's a residential quad. And then there are three really sort of interesting other areas. There's the there's a really interesting transition up against Lynen Lane here which we think um needs sort of special
consideration. Uh there's a parking area and then up in the northwest there's there's an area which we're calling uh the field and uh the reason why we're calling it that is because it has kind of an interesting um environmental characteristic which is uh there's a
wetland there. Um, so there's a uh designated wetland uh up here in the northern portion of the property. One of the things we've been doing working with city staff or municipal staff is to um evaluate that wetland and understand what it might mean for the uh
constraints of the site. So that's a really important topographical feature out there. Uh other sorts of top uh topographical features worth noting, if you've been to the site, you know there's quite a bit of slope. So the slight slopes downward to Hamilton Avenue and then northward up to
Franklin. Um I mentioned the importance of that wetland in terms of sort of the next phase of our work which is how the site's going to lay out. Um you know if we start to think about how different uses might fit on the site that wetland is situated in an area that um will sort
of influence certainly influence our our future design work. Uh I won't get too much into the circulation analysis that we've conducted except to say that uh I showed you that subdivision plan earlier because I think I think it really matters. You know, the way Franklin comes through the site has created these
couple of really uh challenging intersections. Um and uh those are certainly things that we'll have to consider as we move to the next phase of work. Um, and I'll just say by way of close for this
portion of of the slides, uh, there's a lot of trees on site. So, we've been working with the municipal arborist to evaluate those and they've done a great job and thanks to them for that. So, that was a lot to go through in six minutes. Um, but we're considering a lot about the characteristics of the site
and and that has to inform uh really the objectives which I think are critical and we'll we'll go through um here. So, in order to sort of get a sense for what the desired uses and design might be here, um we've
done some talking to folks. Uh we've been out at a couple community events. Um we had a survey, just a one question survey over the summer. Um we've met with municipal staff, we met with um the schools, we met with um you know, a variety of different people. And really, we're just trying to sort of generate
ideas for what subsequent phases of work might be. And I just want to be absolutely clear. If you hear one thing from me tonight, make it this. Um there's certainly like more engagement to come on this process. So we're not having a one question survey and then we're going to disappear for a year and and do design. So okay. Um so that said,
we have learned a lot right um from folks and I did want to share the um answers that we got from that from that one question survey. uh when you ask people an open-ended question, it does make it hard to come to a council meeting and present the answers because
there's, you know, a variety of them. But we we tried to sort of identify what the big themes were in our responses. So we we've identified five uh we got 672 responses. So, one to promote arts and culture and music. Two, to support recreation, open space, community uses.
Uh, three, 122 responses to support creation of housing opportunities. Um, four to support the Princeton public schools. And five to retain the historic fabric of of the Westminster Choir College. So, those were really sort of the key themes that we saw in those responses. And um what we tried to do
and you know it's really important for our next phase of work is take what we heard and what we learned and create like a set of objectives or rules that will inform our next um phase of of work. So, um I won't read all of these, but I'll hit
what I think are the most important ones to retain like the key sites uh on the property, which we see as the historic quad, uh the Cull-in Center, and the Playhouse at least. Um to make sure that we retain, um sort of the core at least
of that lawn area along Hamilton. uh to be respectful of finances, uh to allocate something for the schools, uh to include open space, uh to include uses uh for arts and culture throughout the property, whether for McCarter or
Westminster Conservatory or other users, uh to address municipal facilities, to respect those buffers uh with the neighbors, to respect the trees on site, and to sort of create flexible areas for um for use by a variety of of organizations. Um
those are the parameters that we'd like to sort of craft our our scenarios around. Um in terms of like next steps and where we'll be going from here, like we'd like to continue having conversations with with potential site users um especially on the public side.
Uh and we'd really like to begin to move to developing concepts uh loose concepts, scenarios of how the site might um lay out. So I said 10 minutes. I'm at 9:42. So, I must have spoken a little too quickly, but thank you for listening and that uh that concludes my
update. Appreciate it. >> Okay, let me I I got a couple questions. >> Sure. >> Um you want me to talk into the mic? >> I do. >> Okay. >> Um Deanna, maybe more for you than for
Chris, but for the wetlands, can we buy our way out of the wetlands? Can we put money into a fund for somewhere else to I know anyway >> we we're we are looking at all of our options at this point uh talking with D
to see what what is possible >> right because it's kind of I mean I get it the area has always been wet so to speak >> but it's always been mowed it's not like it's a nobody would walk by and say boy that's that's an obvious wetlands most people would go by and say oh okay
there's a little little slope there and the water collects there. But >> anyway, okay. So, I hope we could do that. A couple of the objectives might conflict with each other obviously. Um, preserving the historic
quad versus being financially feasible. So, the one building there, Taylor Hall, it has a very significant price tag to bring that back to usable shape. So at some point this body is going to have to
talk about which of the objectives are the objectives that are really going to be the final objectives. I understand we gathered a lot and then at some point we'll need to talk about also what are the actual municipal needs on that property. But anyway, you're about to
get into next steps, but I just wanted to make sure that we're all thinking about those things because I think those are things that need more discussion. Um anyway Mia >> I just want to say if anyone thought that Chris was too brief, I did tell him
that at the 10-minute mark, he gets gonged by the mayor, so he stopped very quickly. Um and also to your point about the historic quad um there has been um very strong sentiment expressed by
um the Westminster Choir College Foundation and by um historic preservation advocates in the community uh for preserving the historic quad. There has been a lot of sentiment in the community uh in support of that.
to your point, the price tag is potentially um staggering. >> Yeah. >> Um and that is why following Chris's presentation tonight, we have someone
who is going to present to us without a price tag for now. um what is involved with evaluating how much it costs to bring those buildings up to just you know code. I
will say there are so few bathrooms on the site it makes one wonder what people used to do in that regard. Um but there is a lot of work um that needs to be done to stabilize those buildings and just to to make them safe. Uh, and
that's what we're going to hear afterward. Um, just to place it into context. So, >> other questions or comments for Bryant? >> Um, I just first wanted to start out by thanking Chris and any members of his team who've worked on this as well as
the council members who've been working on this. I thought that was one of the best 9 minute and 50 second presentations I've seen here. Um, I just want to say I agree with the mayor that I think it's going to be very
challenging to optimize for all 15 of those objectives and think we're going to have some good conversations um about about them. And I also was very pleased to see that there will be additional
community engagement as part of the process. Thank you. Okay, that's it. Phil, sorry. >> Yeah, I I guess I just wanted to u respond to both the mayor and to Brian by saying that the concepts
alternative concepts that uh topology is going to develop will be partly to flush out the the priorities, right? So one concept may optimize five of the goals, another concept may
optimize a different eight goals. And as we talk through the different options, that will help to um sort through all that. >> Oh, wait. >> Yeah. Thanks, Mayor. I I'm feeling like I don't really have a
problem with the goals right now being lofty. You know, like 15 is a large number, but we can always whittle it down. But I I I think I want to say that I appreciate that you didn't leave it at a minimalistic viewpoint because there's
still a lot of input. There's a lot of land there. There's a lot of options. There's a lot of possibilities. And as we can see by the responses, uh, a great many people seem to be in in groups around community- based
development, art, music, and open space. So that leaves a lot of open openings that you can choose from. So, you know, we'll whittle it down, but like I I don't have a problem with it being big right now. You know, let's take a big
look and come out with a great plan. Thank you. >> Yeah, I think there'll be pressure to whittle it down pretty quickly once people see the impact that the purchase of the property has in the tax bills in 2026. So, we're going to we'll probably
be pressuring you to move quickly and come back with as much as you can as quick as you can because we're going to have to make some tough decisions before too long. But anyway, >> thank you. All right. Okay, thanks a lot. Which way am I going?
>> Good evening. >> Good evening. Hopeully that will come up. Screen seems to be a little small. >> You're going to need to keep that microphone close to you. >> The screen a little bigger. For some
reason it's >> Yeah, it's turned on. It's just not uh good evening everybody. Um, my name is Annabel Rakliff Trener. I am a preservation architect. I live in Princeton, I'm glad to say. And um, I've come here really today just to tell you
a little about bit about our firm and who we are because I felt um, Chris felt that was an important part of um, what I should do. So I have five minutes, which is less than Chris um, to tell you about 35 years of practice as a preservation architect. So I'm not going to even try
to do that. But um I think um uh the purpose today is not actually to really discuss this project. Um I don't think we're ready to do that, but just to introduce you to our company and um who we are. The firm is called Historic Building Architects. Um we are a small
firm. We're based in Trenton. We moved to Trenton because we believe in inner cities and um we want to preserve them. Um we have um two licensed architects, myself and Bonner. Um and we have material conservation skills in the
office as well as a wonderful set of team of professionals, all very talented and I love going to work every day because of them. So um just to give you an idea of the sort of types of projects we do, um our
projects are all public publicly used historic buildings. um we do adapt them, we preserve them, but we primarily start with a planning process. So um you can see from the project type by client, we have federal, state, county, private,
institutional and a lot of municipality clients. Um we have um projects that range the gamut of um types of buildings. Um and most of these start with an assessment. Um we also have um
projects ranging from below 2 million the blue to um fairly large projects over 10 million now. So give you an idea we're very broad um broad in terms of our skill sets. Um we also have a
material conservation lab. we're the only ones in the um in New Jersey who do and that purpose is to understand the um makeup of buildings because one of the things we need to do and we use technology to do that is to understand what is causing the problem of
deterioration. So our material conservation lab which does mortar and masonry and cleaning as well as um paint analysis and other specialty areas helps us to understand how um how materials
are used and results in this is Stuart Hall results in a very useful analysis and understanding of mortars and colored mortars where they become very important in very significant historic buildings. Um and we have a mobile lab as well that
we use. Um so this is Stuart Hall which you probably all know. We did the entire exterior restoration of this. Um but we started with a condition assessment and we started with a detailed budget of what needed to be done and we used a lot of um technology to you do that
non-destructive um evaluation which um involves infrared surveys, ground penetrating radars. Um this is a solid masonry building. It's just pre the sort of turn of the century. And one of our sort of
expertise has been understanding um buildings of the turn of the century because they often have masonry exterior facads. Um a good example is Castle Hill here. Looks like a solid nice solid masonry building like the one I just showed you at Stewart Hall, but actually
it's a steel frame structure. And these are challenging buildings. you unfortunately have one of those challenging buildings. So we have to understand what's behind the skin and in order to do that we do pretty comprehensive assessments using
non-destructive evaluation techniques. Um the surface um but we get behind the skin because we want to give you numbers that are accurate and know what you're dealing with in terms of materials. Um we use a lot of drone work um which gets
us quick and efficient access um and then we can lay that out to give clear explanations to um our clients about what is going on. Um this is an example of infrared in the bottom left corner showing some of the steel construction.
The darker colors, the cooler colors tend to hold moisture. Um, and this helps us to understand what we're dealing with in terms of um the construction and behind the skin because that's the expensive part. Preservation has got a bad rap for being expensive.
It doesn't have to be expensive if you know what you've got and you're not going to get surprises during construction because that's when the expenses go up. So, we try and mitigate that very early on in the assessment process. Um, just a sort of fun ending.
Um, this is the crane estate. The cranes were well known for their bathrooms. What some people don't know is that plumbing fixtures um were also included downspouts. So rather than roofers doing downspouts, plumbers do downspouts. So understanding how buildings are thought
of when they were built um and put together when they were built is very important to understand the challenges that you might or might not have in the process. So, I think that was really I'm here for questions and hopefully some
answers if you've got them about who we are. Annabelle, I appreciate that you that Chris uh asked you to keep it at five, but if you could just uh I think um even more importantly than the expertise that your firm brings, if you could explain
um to the public why it is important to have such a comprehensive evaluation and assessment of the condition of the buildings and how your firm provides that. And I will just say that the committee that's been working on this has done a lot of research to try to
find who would be the consultant or group most uh best equipped to evaluate that. And um we have Annabelle is one potential uh Annabelle and her firm um uh or one potential consultant that we
may work with. Uh and I I think you know to Mark's point about um wherever we land with these buildings um it will be expensive and I think you know what we have concluded preliminarily is that if you try to cut
corners in the analysis of what's needed to restore the buildings you may end up spending more um in the long run. Uh but if you could just describe more specifically why
drones and infrared etc are actually necessary and why we as a town might want to spend that sort of money to why it is financially prudent for us to spend that sort of money on the front end.
>> Yeah, happy to do that. Um visual observation is of course what most people do when they assess a building. Um but what we want to do is to not just visually look at it but we want to find cause um because unless we find the cause of the problem you don't really
have a good solution for its repair. So there's a sort of sequence of processing here. And one of the reasons we use drones is to get access to places that you would not otherwise be able to see um and um complete a sort of really comprehensive holistic assessment of
particularly the exterior envelope um because that's where you're vulnerable. And these 1920s buildings, you cannot see steel that's corroding behind the walls. However, if you have infrared and ground penetrating radar, you get um a
much better sense of what you're dealing with. So, if we're seeing water on the exterior of a building, but we don't know where the steel is, um we can find that out through the infrared because it'll show us the cooler areas of the steel. So, understanding um how the
building is put together um is really fundamental to causes of problems and then how you repair them. There may not be a problem. Um, but there may be a problem and I'd prefer you to know that in advance and have a comprehensive
estimate that's accurate. Our estimates tend to come in with usually at the end of the project 2% change orders. So, we're very tight on construction because we really know how the building is put
together and its skin and behind the skin of what's going on. And that's really critical if you want to save money and you want to plan for these um buildings. >> I'm sorry. Can you just speak to the condition of the one building in the
historic quad um Taylor that we mentioned which unfortunately um there was a flood which resulted in um black mold throughout and I believe you felt more comfortable with hazmat professionals going in instead of your
team and um so if you could just sort of speak to the situation with that building and what would be required to assess the situation. >> Right. So, one of the first things we recommended was that we have mold is a fear of everybody's and whether it's black mold or what type of mold it is,
um we need to have a hazmat um group um assess that building first before we can determine um whether we can go into the building. We're hoping that after the results of those tests that we'll find that it's not um potentially as severe
as people have anticipated. Um, but we have to first do the assessment and then with that assessment we'll determine if we can go into the interior and complete our assessment work. Um, we we did this at at Lennox House after the fire. Um,
we were able to go in after initial testing to find that we didn't have severe black mold and we had um less impactful and we all wear masks and we're all quite familiar with having to address that in in many buildings that have moisture ingress. So, um I think
we'll um we'll wait and see what what the um test results um say. Um the exterior envelope we can obviously assess. Um it's more the interior and whether we've got a massive loss of of fabric. Um which case, you know, the
solution and and the recommendation will obviously be swayed by those findings. Brian. >> Uh, yes. Um, this is all really interesting and impressive. Am I correct that the focus of your work would be on
the four buildings in the historic quad and not other buildings? >> That's correct. We're only going to be looking at the four 1920s buildings because those are the ones that we were asked to review. >> Any other questions or comments? Okay. Thank you.
>> Thank you. >> Thanks, Chris. All right. Next up, we have a public hearing on ordinance 25-17, an ordinance by the Municipality of Princeton regulating parking and amending chapter 19 of the Code of the
Bureau of Princeton, New Jersey, 1974. Would someone like to move that? Thank you, Leticia. David's got the second. Questions, comments? All right. None up here. Anybody in the room that wants to
I'm sorry, Brian. >> Um, so I I just wanted to confirm that while this is an an ordinance that um our intent is for this to be a pilot program that will be carefully monitored
and evaluated. >> Is that right? >> Yes. Yes. It's a pilot program. >> David, do you want to talk a little bit about it? Just to to make people aware, um this is an ordinance to remove on
street parking on Armor Road in order to make accommodation for uh advisory bike lanes. um or I should call them uh bike pedestrian lanes because uh the residents of Armor have been
concerned about cut through traffic and the safety of walking in the street. There are no uh sidewalks on the street and this seemed to be uh a sort of a solution to both of those issues. both
traffic calming by having I'm not going to go into the technicalities of what these advisory bike pedal lanes are exactly but they're a proven uh traffic calming measure as well as providing dedicated space in the street for uh
pedestrians and bicyclists to be is you know um not competing with cars for uh real estate in the roadway. Is that good? You good with that? I just want to make sure. All right. Uh, anybody from the public in the room that has a question
or comment on this ordinance? Anybody on Zoom? All right. No hands are up. We'll close the public hearing. Can we have a roll call vote, please? >> Mr. McDonald? >> Yes. >> Miss Peron Lamrose? >> Yes.
>> Mr. Cohen? Yes, >> Miss Saxs. >> Yes, >> Miss Brago. >> Yes, >> Mr. Nulan. >> Yes. >> Okay. Thank you. Resolutions. Resolution 25372. Resolution of the mayor and council of Princeton authorizing an increase of
$20,000 to the extraordinary unspecifiable services agreement with R&D Consulting LLC for information technology support services for a new not to exceed amount of $85,000. Leighton has the motion. Is there a second?
Thank you, Leticia. Questions or comments? All right, seeing none, all in favor, please say I. I. >> I. >> Resolution 25373, resolution of the mayor and council of Princeton authorizing a contract with Elite Vehicle Solutions for Police
Vehicle Upfitting for 155,87629 utilizing the New Jersey state contract 17-fleet-49. Leticia has the motion. And David has the second. Questions or comments? Brian, did you have your Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry,
>> I saw your head go. >> Okay. Uh, all in favor, please say I. >> I. >> I. >> Resolution 25374, resolution of the mayor and council of Princeton opposing Williams Transco's Northwest Northeast, sorry, supply
enhancement projects project NES. I know there's people from the public that wanted to speak about this. So, um, be let me just get a motion on it. Brian's got the motion, Mia's got the second. Thanks. And then Alexi, I think you were
first. Kit's up second, and then anybody else can join in. Let me just again, no, stay there. Everybody has three minutes. A timer will theoretically go on behind me at some point. Um, and I try not to be rude, but at that three minute mark, I am going to start coaching people to
stop talking. Thank you. >> Okay, I'll be quick. The first thing I want to tell you is you don't have to worry that if we manage to stop the pipeline um which is uh we had
disappointing news quality permits were granted um on Friday uh in 2020 they were denied prejudice by New York State and New Jersey. Most people think there was a deal.
>> Try try to speak right into that microphone. Sorry. >> That Governor Hawk made to open Empire Wind and allow some uh pipelines. But I just want to assure you that if we do manage to stop this pipeline, people
in Long Island will still have natural gas. Um industry is this is a play to bring natural gas to the Atlantic coast for export. And there's ample evidence from industry conferences and all to that and I'm
happy to share that if anybody's concerned about that. The other thing I'd like to tell you is that the issue for Princeton if the pipeline does go through is the fact that Princeton will be between two gas compressor stations.
one that exists um on the Princeton Lawrence border and it one will be at trap rock quarry and I spoke with Angelie Ramos today. She's the executive director of the Sierra Club. She's a former New Jersey D research scientist.
She is putting in comments um air quality uh permit com uh comments that's still to be granted. and she told me today that the issue is that um there's a deficiency in the application and Williams Transco has not told the DP
what kind of um toxic air emissions will occur during blowdowns and that the D needs to know that to set limits on the number of blowdowns from the compressor station during the year and if they don't do that they'll have no way to
limit them or enforce them. So, I think that that's a very important thing for the municipality to do if this pipeline does go forward. And I've spoken with Mark about it and um Brian and uh Angelie will come talk to people on
council and I hope we can work on that in the next month. Um she Angelie will be submitting comments. Uh Kip's going to say a little bit more about that, but I I do think it's an issue that we need to look at and I I thank you. I um for
considering this opposition to the pipeline, I think it's very important. >> Thank you. >> Good evening. I'm representing the Sierra Club. I'm Kip Cherry. You all have this rough map that I've just handed out. Uh I think it's really
important to focus on this map because Princeton is not really what you think it is. that is uh it is surrounded by the Milstone River and Carnegie Lake. Um and we think of ourselves as sort of isolated from the rest of the world, but
the rest of the world is right outside. And um so you can see on this rough map where the compressor 206 is going to be located on 518. And uh the big issue with the compressor is that it creates a lot of pollution.
Uh we're talking about um benzene, we're talking about formaldahhide, tyloline, sylene, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and dioxide. All of which have major negative impacts
on human health. Now uh Princeton is actually within uh a mile less than a mile of the compressor. the compressor produces a lot of uh pollutants. Uh there are three ways that hap or
maybe four ways that happens. And um the first is uh and the first issue is that the application that was submitted to D is not complete. And so we are pushing very hard on that
that they need to uh take the time to do it to require a complete application. Uh Williams companies failed to analyze expected and worst case scenarios to begin. Uh
uh it does not they do not uh evaluate worst case emissions but just routine operation after startup. So what happens with a compressor like this? uh there's a startup period of about 15 minutes during which the uh technology doesn't
function uh burning off the uh emissions. So that's the first time that we take a hit and uh they just ignored that. So there's a warm-up period and a warm down period during which there are
emissions very bad emissions. Uh so no data was provided during startup or shutdown while the emissions control technology heats up to the optimal burnoff level or cools off.
There's no data from maintenance blowdowns. Now a maintenance blowdown is when you actually cleaning out the pipe and removing solids and liquids that interfere with the operation of the uh of the uh system. and they just ignored
that. And so we don't know how many blowdowns are expected. We don't know the period of the blowdowns and we don't know uh the emissions that will come out of the compressor during the blowdowns, but there's a lot of emissions that come out during that period of time.
Also, there are leaks uh leaks that are routine leaks that maybe will relate to the fact that uh the trap rock folks are right next door. Kip, you're going to be done soon, >> right? So, um, so I just want to make
sure you're aware of all that and and if you do give testimony, uh, all of this should be in your testimony. Um, on the 13th of of uh, November, um, there is a a hearing that D is putting on. We're
all speaking at that hearing. Uh, and written um, comments can be made through the the 24th of November. So, I really think it's something that Princeton needs to to worry about, frankly. Um, and it also relates to modeling of uh
wind. The wind generally seems to blow from west to east, which is good for us, but it also can blow the other way. So, uh I think that people in Princeton never dreamed that there would be a facility of this caliber right outside
our backyard. >> Thank you, Kevin. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Any questions or comments up here? >> Yep. >> Yes. >> I just want to say Kip, it's nice to see you
>> in person. Thank you for coming out. And Alexi, thank you both for all you do to protect Princeton's environment. and it was disappointing that um the news over the weekend, but I I hope we can still um advocate and let us know how we can
help you. So, >> okay. Uh all in favor of the resolution that we oppose the pipeline, please say I. >> I. >> I. >> There we go. Thank you. At least we're doing it.
Okay. Next up, resolution 25375. Resolution of the mayor and council of Princeton authorizing an extended property tax grace period for eligible federal employees and federal contractors due to the federal government shutdown. Latisia has got the motion. Brian's got the second.
Questions or comments? I would like to thank our CFO for bringing this to our attention so we could get it on the uh the agenda in time. Michelle, I'm sorry. Did you have your hand up? >> I was just going to say thank you to whoever brought it forward. This is excellent. Hopefully, it won't be
necessary for too much longer, but we'll see what happens. Yeah, >> we will find out soon. >> Soon enough. >> Any questions or comments? >> All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> I. >> Resolution 25376, resolution of the mayor and council of Princeton authorizing acceptance of grant funds
from the state of New Jersey for the venison donation program and execution of agreement. Thank you, Brian. Uh, Leighton's got the second. Questions or comments? All right. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> I. >> Next up is the consent agenda, which are
items of a very routine nature. There's 10 items there. Uh Leticia, thank you so much. Is moving them in block. Uh >> no one objects to that. Brian's got the second. All in favor? Say I. >> I. I. >> Next up are public comments for items not on the agenda. If anybody in the
room wants to come up and talk about anything that wasn't on the agenda, this would be the time to do it. >> Sure. Come on up. It's the same rule. Just say who you are. You got the three minutes. Hopefully the timer goes on. And >> great. Hello. And I guess I gather I
don't need to sign in. I saw something about that. Uh Andrea Malcolm. I'm a resident on Mount Lucas Road. Uh and I just wanted to thank both the council and the engineering department for getting the Harrison Street bike lanes on. Uh noticed a lot of controver
controversy about that in the uh mostly on the social media. Uh, I'm worried that you're going to get a lot of push back and I'm also worried that the bike lanes are somehow going to become uh blamed for traffic concerns that have been in that area for a long time. I think it's really important to remember
that, you know, that is that stretch of Harrison between uh outside the shopping center is two lanes and when you've got two lanes, you've got traffic trying to take advantage and speeding up. And, you know, we need to get that back down to one lane. I see the word road diet,
which many of us use, but it's probably good in communications just to tell people we're trying to make, you know, reduce the traffic speeds and speeding behavior to make it safer for walkers and bicyclists. And just to that point, um, the more outreach and education about this, the better. I've heard a lot
of complaints where people are feeling somewhat blindsided, not understanding what to do, and very little sort of ongoing education about it. So, I think that would be great. So, again, thank you, and keep up the good work. Thanks. >> Thanks for the thanks. Is there anybody else in the room that has anything for
public comments not on the agenda? Uh, anybody on Zoom? Okay, there is a hand up. Yep. >> Sam. >> Yes. Good evening. Good evening, Mayor and Council.
>> Good evening. Sam, just introduce yourself for the so for the minutes we get your name right. >> Yeah, my name is Sam Bunting. I'm a resident at 99 Dempsey Avenue. I'm also a board member of our new Princeton
nonprofit, Walk Bike Princeton. Uh we work to make walking and cycling easier in Princeton. And we had a meeting just last week with our members at which we discussed
the new Buffford bike lanes on North Harrison Street. And several of our members um were concerned about the bike lanes that the implementation was not as perfect as it might have been. that
there is confusion among a lot of motorists about how to handle the new bike lanes, how to handle turns across the bike lanes, that the appearance of the bike lanes was rather sudden. Um perhaps lacking a
little bit of signposting or information uh to alert uh passing drivers of uh the new traffic layout. Um so you know I think that there really was actually some concern which was mixed in with the
uh the the the sense of satisfaction which Andrea just talked about that the town had actually managed to to implement a large and significant project to add new bicycle facilities.
So I think um really where we where we see this is that you know there's there's clearly still work to be done. Um the project does not seem to be completely finished yet. Uh we need to look at it. We need to learn um what is
working and what is not working. Uh what makes cyclists feel safe, what makes uh drivers feel comfortable. So there is still work to be done. I am reading opposition and a sense of confusion from certain people on social media. So, and I can kind of understand
that because when I first drove down North Harrison Street and found that bike lane, I was rather surprised to find it because there was no signs or anything about it. But since then, I've actually cycled it the bike lane several times with my son on our way to the
elementary school soccer league over on Riverside Fields. uh on Saturday mornings and it does make it easier to cycle along that section of the road. So, it is an improvement. So, it's not perfect uh but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. Should
look at what's working and try to make it better. Thanks. >> Thank you, Sam. Adam, can we bring over the next person with their hand up? >> Carol. >> Yes. Hello, Carol Hollingsworth. Um I live on Heather Lane in Princeton and um
I just want to thank you for implementing the the bike lane um improvements on Harrison Street. Um I agree with the other uh speakers. Um this is an important part of our bicycle network and part of vision zero and uh
the climate action plan also. So it serves a lot of functions. It also makes the road safer for drivers as well. And I think um I do appreciate that that um that electronic sign went up. I think that was really helpful. I I think it
was a little bit of a surprise um at first, but I just think it'll be very important to to study this and how it's used and learn what we can from it and uh and hopefully move forward with even more improvements. Thank you very much. >> Thank you.
All right, seeing no other hands up and nobody here in the room jumping up, we'll close the uh that section of the meeting. And that is the uh last thing on our agenda. David, do you want to >> I would be happy to move to adjurnn.
>> There we go. Michelle's got the second. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> We are done. Thank you all for being here. Have a great night. >> That was good.