“It’s a great program,” says Mayor Liz Lempert of “Meet the Mayor,” the once-a-month “open office hours” opportunity she created soon after assuming office.
Originally based at Witherspoon Hall, “Meet the Mayor” is now held on the last Friday of every month from 8:30 to 10 a.m. in Hinds Plaza. However, the next meeting will not be until Friday, September 25. “Walk and talk outside, weather permitting,” says an announcement for the event. If the weather is bad, “office hours” are held in the lobby of the adjacent Princeton Public Library.
“The topics are all over the place,” Ms. Lempert reported, and there’s been a decided uptick in traffic since she relocated to Hinds Plaza. Rather than setting up formal appointments for “small” issues, she says, the informality of the setting encourages passers-by to come over and chat. A repeat complaint in recent months has been about noise from leaf blowers and lawn mowers, and as a result the agenda for addressing noise issues will probably be “pushed up,” as the Environmental Commission and Sustainable Princeton offices begin to do some preliminary research.
Last Friday Ms. Lempert listened as an area resident talked about the presence of bicycles on city streets. A master plan for Princeton bicycle traffic will take several months to produce, but for now the subject was bicycling in Copenhagen. A recent visit there made a very favorable impression on Ms. Lempert’s interlocutor.
The Williams Transco Pipeline is another current sore spot for many in town. “Nobody welcomed the project,” Ms. Lempert said, acknowledging that it was “a challenge.” She makes sure, though, to cite the “great cooperation” that has occurred between workers and neighborhood residents during the interruptions, and encourages people to regularly check Access Princeton and the Town’s Facebook page for announcements of the most recent closures.
Asked last Friday about the lack of details being made available to the public about the resolution of a reported altercation between Recreation Department head Ben Stentz and Town Administrator Marc Dashield, Ms. Lempert was firmly mum. As a “personnel issue,” she said, the episode is one of “three categories” that are, “by law,” supposed to remain confidential (litigation and active negotiations being the other two). She expressed concern for protecting “the privacy of the individuals involved,” and said that “everybody involved wants to move on.”
“A great pool season” (see Topics of the Town) and beautiful weather figure prominently in Ms. Lampert’s end-of-summer thoughts. She’s grateful, too, for the added bonus of an additional week to continue biking, walking, and “not having to rush kids out the door” before Princeton Public Schools open on September 8
Ms. Lempert, whose term ends on December 31, 2016, can be reached at llempert@princetonnj.gov, or (609) 924-5176.