Volume LXX, Number 34
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Carter Road Detour Infuriates Everyone; Bridge Still Closed
Area Students Attend Princeton Police Department Youth Academy . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Celebrating Jazz Legends Charlie Christian and Wardell Gray . . . . . . . 18 PU Women’s Soccer Ready to Start 2016 Season . . . . . . . . . . . 25 PHS Grad Watts Has Leadership Role as Senior for Amherst Field Hockey . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Known for His Love of Theater and 30 Years With Tenacre Foundation, Curtis Andrew Kaine Dies . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Books . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Calendar . . . . . . . . . . 15 Cinema . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Classified Ads. . . . . . . 34 Mailbox . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Music/Theater . . . . . . 18 New To Us . . . . . . . . . 24 Obituaries . . . . . . . . . 31 Police Blotter . . . . . . . . 4 Real Estate . . . . . . . . 34 Religion . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Service Directory . . . . 33 Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Topics of the Town . . . . 5 Town Talk . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Work on the Carter Road bridge in Lawrence Township is still suspended as a result of Governor Chris Christie’s shut down order, and nobody is happy about it. Local business owners are suffering financial losses. Motorists are facing increasing delays and hazards as detoured traffic clogs area roads. Roadways not intended for heavy traffic, let alone large truck traffic, are rapidly deteriorating. And necessary repairs and reconstruction of two historic bridges on 206 can’t start until the Carter Road bridge is reopened, because Carter Road is part of the designated detour route for the 206 bridge work. “At this point,” said Princeton Mayor Liz Lempert, “the Carter Road bridge project has been delayed so long that now the state has informed us that they won’t be repairing the 206 bridges until next spring.” Business owners are distraught. “It’s a big issue,” said Pam Mount, co-owner with her husband of Terhune Orchards on Cold Soil Road. “It’s such a problem and so unnecessary. People come from a distance to get here, and the signs on the detours don’t always tell them how to get back on the road, and they end up in Pennington or Hopewell and can’t get here. It’s a problem of public safety and economics. People need to get to work. People need to get here. Farmers are really hurting. Also there are enormous trucks coming down Cold Soil Road and tearing up the road. These back roads aren’t built to accommodate this traffic.” The bridge project was included in the governor’s July 8 order to stop $3.5 billion of “nonessential” road and rail projects in the state, in response to a stalemate in the state senate over which taxes should be cut in exchange for raising the gas tax to fund road work. Mr. Christie had earlier made a deal with the State Assembly to replenish the Transportation Trust Fund by raising New Jersey’s gas tax 23 cents a gallon, in exchange for lowering the state’s sales tax from seven to six percent by 2018. “We appealed the NJDOT decision to abandon Carter Road,” Mercer County executive Brian Hughes said, but the answer from the DOT, delivered last week by Scott Stephens, director of Community Continued on Page 12
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Wednesday, August 24, 2016
PCDO Launches Campaign, Hosts State Headquarters The Princeton Community Democratic Organization’s (PCDO) Hillary Clinton for President Campaign is underway, with headquarters on the second floor at 138 Nassau Street, between Triumph Brewery and the MacLean Agency, and voter registration tables outside the Garden Theatre and on Hinds Plaza on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The PCDO announced Monday that the New Jersey State Democratic organization will be using Princeton’s headquarters and teaming with the local group to run the whole state campaign for Ms. Clinton. “They know how important Princeton is as a central location,” said Owen O’Donnell, Princeton PCDO president.
“Also, we’re an active community with a strong record of turning out the vote. They are aware of all this and see us providing a great opportunity for the Democratic Party.” Emphasizing the importance of mobilizing voters, PCDO treasurer David Cohen added, “The main thrust of the campaign effort is to reach out and get people registered to vote, then actually get out the vote as we get closer to election day.” He also mentioned that even long before election day, they will be urging people to take advantage of the opportunity to vote by mail. Mr. O’Donnell described a high level of engagement in the campaign so
far, with more than 500 people having signed up, expressing interest, and “many great volunteers” offering to help at the voter registration tables, by canvassing and on phone banks. “People are extremely interested in this campaign,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “They know that the stakes are very high.” In addition to the Clinton campaign, the PCDO will be lending support to other area races that are anticipated to be closer. “Since New Jersey is not considered a swing state,” Mr. Cohen explained, ”we’re often unhappy about the level of attention we obtain from national candidates.” The PCDO is planning to coordinate with Democrats in nearby Pennsylvania to support Continued on Page 8
Local Lawyer Will Manage Joint Campaign
MEANWHILE THERE’S THE LIBRARY BOOK STORE: While people are anxious to make use of the “reimagined second floor” at the Princeton Public Library, they are finding plenty of back-up resources, including the wide selection at the Friends of the Library Book Store. See this week’s Town Talk for how some library users are dealing with the situation. (Photo by Charles R. Plohn)
It would be an understatement to say that Dwaine Williamson, the recently announced chairman of the joint campaign for Princeton Council candidates Jenny Crumiller, Tim Quinn, and Mayor Liz Lempert, has been around. The Princeton resident, who serves on the town’s Planning Board, was born in Jamaica, raised in Trenton, worked on Wall Street, and made music videos for rap groups before becoming a lawyer and opening his own office back in Trenton. Between now and November, Mr. Williamson will balance his busy schedule of civil litigation with working to help reelect incumbents Ms. Crumiller and Ms. Lempert, and elect Mr. Quinn. (Former Princeton Borough mayor and Planning Board member Mildred Trotman is chairing Ms. Lempert’s individual campaign.) “Dwaine is a rising star,” Ms. Lempert said. “He’s got tremendous positive energy. He is somebody who wants to give back to the community for all the right reasons and I’m excited and grateful that he’s willing to help us out with the campaign.” Mr. Williamson was six years old when his family left Jamaica and settled in Trenton. “My aunt had met a tourist from Hightstown in Jamaica, and stayed in touch with this lady,” he said. “My aunt and her husband migrated to Hightstown and then Trenton. When we came around 1977, after stopping in Bermuda for a year and a half, we went straight to Trenton.” The capital city was, and continues to Continued on Page 14