To the Editor:

We have just sent our quarterly tax payment to Princeton, our home for the past 30 years. While filling in the sizable dollar amount, we reflected on how it relates to the most talked about issue for weeks, the stunning national election results. Let us explain. The consolidation of the Princetons, which we supported and continue to support was, among other things, supposed to result in a more efficient governing body and, logically, lead to a reduction in property taxes. It didn’t, at least for us. In fact our taxes increased every year following, unabated, until we challenged the assessment of our home, successfully. An issue for another time.

In July of this past year, we and our neighbors revived our challenge to the long standing inequity of how the municipality treats the road on which we live compared to similar situations elsewhere in Princeton. We and our neighbors at that time had, in fact pursued this issue in 1990 and had the written support of then Township Mayor, Kate Litvack, only to be stonewalled by the Township Engineer.

We and our current neighbors recently revisited the issue and were able to get a face to face meeting with the new engineer of the now consolidated municipality. At the conclusion, she requested an email outlining the issue, the history of same, and what it was that we sought. We sent a detailed email the following week and got an immediate response acknowledging her receipt of same and stating that she would respond shortly. That was July 25, 2016. The summer passed without a response. On October 2, 2016, we emailed to her what, we believe, was a very polite reminder. It is now six months since our meeting and we have received not so much as an acknowledgment of the reminder much less a response to our original request. We doubt that anyone would challenge our nation’s founder’s call to arms that “taxation without representation is tyranny.” How then should we classify “taxation with selective representation?”

The government of Princeton and its like-minded supporters, so vocally incredulous about the results of the national election, fueled by voter dissatisfaction with how poorly and callously our governments are run, need look no further than its own house for the answer.

Marc and Alta Malberg

Autumn Hill Road