Voters in New Jersey’s Princeton Borough and Princeton Township have approved a consolidation of the two towns into a single municipality. The new entity will simply be known as Princeton.
During the last 60 years, there have been several efforts to merge the two separate Princetons into one. A consistent hiccup had been the smaller borough’s unwillingness to give up power to the larger township’s population. Before the merger, the two entities shared many services; it is estimated $3.1 million could be saved through the consolidation, not including $1.3 million in potential costs associated with the consolidation.
Some of the savings is expected to come from merging two police departments, and then using retirement to reduce staff by about 15 percent over three years. Other departments would be merged as well; for example, a Public Works department would include predecessor departments such as Recreation, Sewer, and Parks.