May 3, 2008 Open Meeting

Diversity & Sustainability

Present: Harini Subrahmanyam, Ellen Gilbert, Hendricks Davis, Susan Hoskins, Winifred Hall, Chip Crider, Chris Dorey, Michael Floyd, Ksenia Ulmer, Len Newton, Ruby Newton, Lance Liverman, Roger Shatzkin, Barbara Trelstad, Robert Trelstad, Grace Sinden, Helmut Schwab, Kristin Appelget, Robert Durkee, Robert Geddes, Evelyn Geddes, Mike Littwin, Kevin Wilkes, Victoria Airgood, Wendy Kaczerski, Tom Pinneo, Robert Socolow, Moises Santizo, Marvin Reed, Sheldon Sturges, Ginna Aschenfelter, Daniel Harris, Steve Hiltner, Dean Foose, Andrea Stine, Walter Neumann, Anne Neumann, J. Frederickson, Ron Berlin, Etta Steiner, Henry Steiner, Barrie Royce, Wanda Guning, Bill Moran, Sybil Parnes, Ev Pinneo, Kay Pinneo, Arch Davis, George Cody, Susan Hockaday, Barbara Highton Williams, Mildred Trotman, Jess Deutsch, Roz Denard, Pam Hersh, Reggie Wright, Shirley Satterfield, George Vogel

Robert Geddes: Thank you very much for coming to this conversation which is different from all other conversations that we have had. I’d like to make 2 announcements. One is to say ‘good bye’ to Kevin Wilkes. Kevin is now a member of Borough Council. He is no longer NGO. He is now a governmental person. We just can’t say enough about how wonderful he has been with Princeton Future and with other activities over the past years. He has been a great leader for us. We wish him well. This is actually the last meeting that Kevin has played such a leading role in. Just absolutely wonderful and we all thank you very much. [applause]. Second is a very sad point. Since our last meeting, Bob Goheen died. He, as you know, was one of the founders of Princeton Future. The University has done a magnificent job of writing an obituary about Bob. There was a Memorial service last week in the Chapel. In a sense, Bob had a very great impact on the community on this side of the street and on the region as a whole. Two examples of that: he was the co-founder of Princeton Future. I have also found out that he was one of the people, Maybe the person, who was most instrumental in getting MSM Regional Study Council started. He was one of the people most influential in getting Princeton Community Housing going. I suspect if you look at any important community event over the past 40 or 50 years, Bob was, in one way or another, instrumental in it. When you look through the University’s Campus Plan, under Chapter Two, which is called Campus & Community, there is a photograph of Fitzrandolph Gate. And it was that gate that, during Bob’s tenure as President, was open to the community. I believe that it was true, Bob, that it had been closed. So it was symbolically and actually opened. It was symbolic of all that he did. Not having him with us is a very great loss. I must say this…last week, I was going through files, I came across a handwritten note from Bob urging that the trees on the new Square be Honey Locust trees, which is what they are, as you look out the window today! He gave the reasons why they ought to be Honey Locusts. He was very much interested in the details of Princeton Future, this organization. He would write and re-write our statements. He was involved in all of the aspects we have been involved in over all of these years. And so, he will be sorely missed on this side of Nassau Street as well! Well, today, we have two subjects: one having to do with diversity, the other having to do with Sustainability. Bob believed that Diversity is central to how we approach all of the other issues facing us. The reason that these two are different from the previous discussions o Housing, Town & Town, Gown & Town is that hese two are not geographical. From a scientific point of view, Rob, these issues are not solids, they are gases. Diversity and Sustainability are pervasive. If you take Diversity seriously, it is not in one corner. It is not in one subject. The same is true of Sustainability. We have a panel. Marvin Reed represents the Community Plan, Bob Durkee represents the Campus Plan, and I represent Princeton Future. Our guests are Susan Hoskins, the Executive Director of the Princeton Senior Resource Center, Hendricks Davis long-time member of the Regional Planning Board and a resident of the John- Witherspoon community. It was his comments at our last meeting that were so important. He said that there must be a social basis to planning. And, we have Moises Santizo of the Latin American Youth Forum. So we have varying voices. Not to say that you are limited to what you bring to the table! The moderator is Marvin Bressler. Marvin is Emeritus professor of Sociology. The long-time Chair of that Department at Princeton. A much beloved colleague and comrade on both sides of the street. He is also a member of the Council of Princeton Future.

DIVERSITY

Marvin Bressler: As my first executive act, can we have people move up to the first few rows? We have all of these distinguished people, let’s have an intimate conversation. Every person, in some respects, is like every other person. And, in some respects, like some other people. And in some respects, like no one who has ever lived. Negotiating these levels of identity from the individual to the broadest sorts of commitments has been the source of much of the splendor and agony of human history. It is the source of nationalism. It is the source of wars and it is the source of distinctive cultures. Negotiating these levels of analysis is what we know as negotiating the problem of diversity. At the local level, we are hardly speaking at the most abstract and general way. We are dealing with the fact that we have people in our community who are linked in some fashion with other people in ways they are not linked to the rest of the population. I am now in my ninth decade. I have a very interesting and splendid life which means that some days I go to the doctor and some days I go to the pharmacy! This distinguishes me from adolescents, for example, who have other things on their minds. So the question then arises, to what extent am I to be conceived of as a pharmacy-goer and doctor-goer, or to what extent am I part of some larger population… How do those things operate? It is in that spirit…an example of the issue of diversity. Somebody wanted to give me a microphone. One of the reasons I resisted it is that I don’t know how it will go with my pacemaker! This is the era of the Golden Years. And since not everyone participates in it, I have a sense of identity with some others that I don’t have with most in the community. Putting those things together is what we are about today. The sequence is as follows. I have asked each of the panel to limit themselves to 7-8 minutes. Marvin Reed will present those elements of the Community Master Plan that speak to diversity. Bob Durkee will do the same for the University Plan. We will try to make some sort of judgment as to what extent they are compatible and to what extent they are not. And then we will have responses from 3 people who are going to react and as Bob Geddes said, need not limit themselves to speaking about their respective communities. But they have particular perspectives on which we hope to capitalize….Moises Santizo from the Latino community, Hendricks Davis from the African American community…and Susan Hoskins from the Venerables.

Susan Hoskins: The second half of life! We cover a great deal.

Marvin Bressler: I’ve already committed my first act of cultural insensitivity. No panel should be complete without that. Would you begin, please, Marvin?

Marvin Reed: First of all, I have to admit, I come here this morning completely unprepared. I thought I was going to be a reactor to what other people said! But I am happy to have the opportunity. Let me lead off by saying some things about diversity. The Community Master Plan and its various ordinances derive from a lot of concern about diversity in this historic community. It has attempted to reflect that…in its Master Plan and in its Land Use components without necessarily using the word. For the last 60 years, since the New Jersey Constitution was amended, the word ‘diversity’ has been used a lot in this community as a way of pleasantly addressing a lot of concern about the relationship of this community to its traditional African American neighborhood which up until 1947, was to some extent, legally separated. Certainly this was true as far as the school system was concerned. You have to recognize that that separation was a follow-up to what precede that, historically: an ethnic separation in this community.

People can still talk about their grandfathers and grandmothers, and what happened I this community at the turn of the century when a large community of Italian workers came here. Their major distinctions were their Italian ethnicity and their occupational status as masons. There was a certain commonality between the African-American community and the Italian community. They tended to live closer together. Princeton did not attempt to deal with that problem in the Community Master Plan. We tried to do it in other ways. How we controlled the size of the lots and the nature of the development. So we still said that the older, very traditional neighborhoods, if we kept them as small lot neighborhoods, they would probably still accommodate a relatively small house at a relatively small price. And that would be something people could still manage. For the rest of the community, the Master Plan called for larger and larger lots until we got out to the Ridge and we were up to 5-acre lots. Basically, we assumed that people who could afford it would build large houses and be stewards of the open land on the periphery we wanted to preserve. The Master Plan and the Land Use controls haven’t changed that much from that essential pattern that we have established here. We are still doing a lot of large space preservation. Now it is mostly being done at the expense of the community or other foundations and institutions. Preservation of open space by outright purchase. We have done very well on that and should be very proud of it.

The current situation. And I admit that the current Master Plan doesn’t really address it. We must tackle this: We must control lot size. It no longer achieves what we thought was the goal of providing some spaces for people of modest means to be able to afford. What we are finding is that even if you have an older house on a very small lot in town, it is being purchased by people and is being converted into what, for most of us here today, would consider an expensive house, beyond their means. And that is happening just 2 blocks away from here. As you go farther out in this community, and you find that where we thought we were building modest houses, in the 1950’s: those houses are being torn down and replaced by much bigger houses. In dealing with our racial and ethnic issues, we have probably been relatively successful. But we haven’t done by masterplanning. We have done it by other means. One of the major means has been the education system. Young people who have grown up in this town, regardless of their ethnic & minority status, have become reasonably educated and have become more affluent. But unfortunately, they now move away. They don’t move back into the community in which they grow up. They say they can not afford it.

Our biggest concern in terms of diversity in this community, as far as I can see, is whether we preserve ANY level of economic diversity. This is a town that has always been called a ‘golden ghetto’. I think we are closer to reaching that pinnacle-of what some people would call success- But I would call it just the opposite: in which we price ourselves out of any level of diversity. That has also caused the concern about not only price and economic status, but age and age diversity is our next challenge, quite irrespective of anyone’s ethnicity or race. Where they stand in the age spectrum has become a major issue. What we have also found is that it is very hard to control for that from a planning, ordinance and land use point of view. The attempt has been to urge certain kinds of restrictions on land use and development. The economics become counterproductive. It is very difficult at the older end of the age spectrum…and certainly, the younger end of the age spectrum. The people fresh out of college can’t come back and live in Princeton unless they live 4 to a unit in a two-bedroom apartment which is how I got into Princeton when I was younger. People don’t do that any more. So there is the challenge of the Community Master Plan.

Marvin Bressler: Thank you very much. Bob Durkee?

Robert Durkee: I want to, first, thank Bob Geddes about what he said about Bob Goheen. One of the other things Bob Goheen is responsible for, is that he chaired the panel back in the 60’s that created the community college system in this state. It is one of the contributions he made, I think, that not everyone is aware of. And, Bob was the president of the University who moved it very strongly into a commitment to diversity. It is a very high agenda item for our current president. In fact, our Campus Plan is all about creating a planning framework for a diverse community. I do want to say a little bit about the diversity the University brings to the community by being a diverse community itself. In terms of socio-economic diversity, at least among our student body, we have, now, about 55% of our undergraduates who are on financial aid. This compares ver favorably to all of our peer institutions. We also have an undergraduate student population, 37% of whom are people of color. About 10% are international students. Another form of diversity, of course, that we bring to this community. At the graduate level, close to 40% are international students. We also have an increasingly diverse faculty and staff. One of the interesting juxtapositions of today is that the next thing I will do after this meeting this morning is to go to the final program of an event that has been taking place on our campus for the last two days: the Princeton Prize in Race Relations. This is a program we began about 5 years ago that literally goes around the country to identify high school students who have made an extraordinary commitment and achieved extraordinary success in improving race relations in their communities…in 21 communities around the country. This year’s winners are on the campus for a couple of days talking with each other. Learning from each other… inspiring each other. And then meeting with students we have invited from Princeton and from this area. Some of the local participants are those who have been prize-winners in our Martin Luther King Day Program, a program we have been sponsoring for the last 15 years. One of the projects we have undertaken in the last couple of years was begun just prior to the beginning of the Campus Planning project was the creation of the Center for African American Studies. Not only have we made a significant commitment to expanding faculty and programming, but we also made a very explicit decision about where to place that program. It is in Stanhope Hall, right on the front campus, next to Nassau Hall and Maclean House, in the second oldest building on our campus. We also created the Princeton University Prep Program that works with students in Princeton & Trenton to identify very capable high school students who need some further help to prepare them to apply to and be successful in applying to some of the most competitive universities and colleges in the country, including Princeton. There is a long list of other initiatives we have taken to expand our diversity and our impact on diversity. Most recently, we have added some senior staff at the university both in the Human Resources department and in the Provost’s office to expand our work with the staff on issues of diversity and the new Council on Diversity that has just been established. In the Campus Plan itself, there are two specific proposals that relate to issues related to diversity. One is a relatively small initiative, but, I think, an important symbolic one, the location of the Carl Fields Center for Equality & Cultural Understanding, which for 30+ years now has been located in a building on the corner of Olden & Prospect. One of the plans is to bring it across to the other corner of the street, in one of the former eating clubs, so that it will be on the street, more a part of the student experience.

The one other thing that is in the campus plan that is related to this, is our continued commitment to provide housing, not only for our undergraduates and a very high fraction of our graduate students, more than our peers do….and for a substantial number of faculty and staff…in part as a way of relieving pressure on housing units that are more affordable. Of course many of the people living in this housing are diverse, reflecting the diversity of the university as a whole. In that way, we do contribute directly to the diversity of the community as a whole.

Marvin Bressler: Thank you very much. Moises?

Moises Santizo: I am Chair of the Latino Reform Youth Council. It is a non-profit based in Mercer County. Our members consist of college-aged Latinos, so we have members who go to Princeton, Mercer Cty Community College, Rider, the College of New Jersey…but basically it is anybody that is 18- 25. We work on a platform of identity. We try to teach our Latino members their history, their culture, pride in their community. love for their community. This empowers them. As we teach culture, as we teach heritage, history in America, we also ask them to volunteer in their community. Last year we had 23 programs. We go into high schools to talk to classes with at-risk students. Currently, 53% of Latinos are graduating from high school nationally. That is one of the challenges we have. This year, we had a workshop at Princeton High School. It was called ‘Now what?’ Y ar que? In Spanish. We wanted to give PHS students, specifically the Latinos, a chance to see what there options are after the graduated. We offered 4 different options to them: one, was to do nothing but menial work; the second one was to go to college; the third one was to technical school; and the 4th one was to get a job in an industry that allows a lot of growth. And we had representatives there from all of these different colleges, the State Police was there and the Trenton Police Dept was there too. And we offered in Spanish for the parents….and in English for the students. We had a great turn out. These are the things we do. We work mainly in the grassroots community. I also on the Executive Council of the Latin American Defense Education Fund Initiative. Our Chair is Patricia Fernandez-Kelly who is also Professor at the University. Those are the things that we do!

Marvin Bressler: Thank you very much. Hendricks…

Hendricks Davis: I am happy to be here. I am here because I live in the Witherspoon Jackson Neighborhood. I was invited to be here by Sheldon. I asked Sheldon why isn’t Shirley going to be the representative? Shirley at that time was scheduled to be out of town. Shirley is a member of the Princeton Future board and that is commendable. We need to have someone who has the longer view of history than I do on that board. I am happy that Mildred and Shirley and Michael, Lance and Reggie…and my neighbor who I met for the first time, in the audience. I don’t speak ‘poor’…or for a group. I am speaking from my perspective as a resident of the Witherspoon Jackson Neighborhood. I intentionally say “Witherspoon Jackson” …not John Witherspoon, because that is how it is identified by the community I live in. It is important that we teach that distinction and understanding to those of us who have not lived in the community, even for as short a period as I have. I have lived in this neighborhood for 25 years. But for those who might not remember or may not have known, there is an historic element to this discussion of diversity. I am here really, because at the last Princeton Future meeting, I spoke, but I encouraged the idea that we take our time and not give short shrift to any of the conversations, that I think are very valuable, that Princeton Future has been helping us to engage in. I said “Let the people be heard!” I think that is very important. Not particularly for this conversation, but for all of them…to give the opportunity to sustain dialogue about these very critical issues because they are all very much weighted and rooted in our varying perspectives, individually and with the group of reference that we come from.

I was very happy that a couple of people have pointed to the importance of this particular conversation about diversity. It is the kind of thing you can take as the politically correct, ‘pleasant’, as Marvin indicated, approach. But this is really a very thorny endeavor. It can be a very thorny conversation to get into. Why is that? Well, it is because diversity is really a matter of perspective. It is a matter of power. A dominant perspective …or, a dominant culture that pervades any community that you live in. If there is a dominant culture, there are subordinate cultures….or, at best, different cultures…smaller cultures with a small ‘c’. I think it is very important that we take this seriously and that Princeton Future, along with the town, that there are other communities that are having similar conversations but from very different perspectives. And that those conversations should be heard by those who are making decisions and by those who plan for the future of our community. The other thing I wanted to say and that I am happy that we are not over sentimentalizing and over romanticizing, if that is a word, the notion of diversity. It is a tough thing. In the description here it sort of says “We want to be the most diverse! The broadest community possible.” In some ways we are already. When you start to look finely at that, you see that there is not enough room to encompass all of the communities that exist right here in Princeton. We have to give ourselves the opportunity to explore, really, what does that mean? Your perception of me is that I am an African American. And, therefore, that I am a representative of the African American community. Well, I am one representative and I have lived here for 25 years as an African American who has made a positive contribution, who has worked in a variety of capacities at Princeton University, Princeton Seminary, Corner House where I started the Academic Success Today Program…but, did you know that I have worked here all of that time as an African American gay man? So, that is not up there. There are people of different orientations in this community. I have lived in my house for 25 years and have seen it go through various stages of development, and I have been accepted by my community. They know who I am, I think. I don’t hide the fact that I have been living with my partner for 7 years. When we get into this, it is really deep and it should be sustained over time. I encourage people to do this: To understand that this is a serious conversation that we are in. And that we have to look at it through a variety of lenses. Some of the lenses are mentioned specificall, but not all of them are. Some of them are important because of the diminishing amount of resource that we have. And that particular resource is land…and an opportunity, as many have mentioned, to provide for economic diversity in this community. I have things that I have said before about the distribution of those resources, like the hospital site, like the Merwick site, and other sites….and the opportunity to really focus on how to make this an equitable, just and truly diverse community. Thank you.

Marvin Bressler: Susan?

Susan Hoskins: I am the executive director of the Princeton Senior Resource Center. It serves those in the second half of life. A couple of statistics. I believe that in the 2000 census, 25% of this community is 55 or older. A study done by Mercer County also indicated that there is an expectation that the oldest cohort, those that are over 85, the most frail, will increase by 74% 2010. I came to this community in 1977. My first job here was as a seamstress at McCarter Theater. I then put myself through graduate school and worked as a family therapist in community mental health in this county. Now for 6 years I have been in my current position. One of the things I have been seeing. It is reflected as I look around this room. How many of the people who care and turn out on Saturday morning to think about the future of this community are age 55 and older? We are also this community’s volunteers. One of the new programs is called Engaged Retirement. We want to continue to guide people, as they think about retirement, about their role in civic engagement, giving back to their community. To look at the nonprofits in this community. We are rich in resources. Look at how the non-profit resources are sustained by people who are technically seniors. I know no one likes that term but we haven’t found a better one. The Senior Resource Center has been dedicated to diversity. We were honored by an award by the Senior Services Commission a couple of years ago for our success in that. For me it has been a a daily endeavor to address diversity throughout our programs and services. Economic, ethnic and educational diversity. In this community we need to pay attention to all. Let me make a few observations that are relevant to this discussion which are observations I make from my day-to-day work. We provide exercise programs, educational programs, social programs and a wide array of social services. Case management, counseling, care-giver support etc. So the observations I have made: ONE: MOST ADULTS IN THIS COMMUNITY WANT TO REMAIN IN THEIR OWN HOMES. They want to remain in this community. WHERE IS THE HOUSING TO MOVE TO WHEN YOU WANT TO DOWNSIZE FROM A LARGE HOUSE TO A SMALLER ONE?….and still have enough money left over to pay for the support you need to come into that house.

We know that older adults have been very active in bringing subsidized housing to the community for seniors…Starting groups like Community Without Walls…and in supporting us to support seniors as they try to stay in this community. We are about living life to the fullest. All the way through. We need to find ways to make this active cohort stay in the community.

TWO: HOW MANY OF THE DIRECTORS AND STAFF OF THE NON_PROFITS HERE CAN LIVE IN THE COMMUNITY? The Ys, the Library, Corner House, PSRC, McCarter Theatre, the Arts Council. Most of us can not. If we can’t live in this community, do we have true diversity in the community? Are our children, when they are playing on the street, really playing with a diverse group of people? Are we teaching them civic engagement if they don’t know anyone who does it? I don’t think it is the same kind of example when you ask a child to do 40 hours of community service in a month. What does this do to our faith communities?

THREE: I have gotten to know the older cohort that lives in the Witherspoon Jackson community. Many of them are in their 80’s and 90’s. Some of their children live with them. But the concern I have been thinking about a lot is their children are in their 50’s & 60’s. But their children’s children can’t move into that community. They can’t sustain that community because they can’t afford to live there. I am seeing a rapidly growing increase in the number of Chinese and Russian immigrants in the senior community. They are still a very hidden minority. Some of them are here because their children work for the larger institutions: the Institute, the University, some of the corporations. They have been brought here by their children and then placed in public housing. So, in terms of ethnic diversity, we have a unique opportunity and a unique challenge to meet their needs as well.

So, those are some of my observations. I love what I do. I love this community. What we are trying to do and what Princeton Future is trying to do…I don’t know how many of you watched Carrier this week on Public Television…What we know is that getting a carrier the size of JFK to change course, YOU HAVE TO PLAN PRETTY FAR AHEAD. I think that the same thing is true for some of these issues in this community. We need to look now at what course we are going to take in the future. We need to plan. I applaud you for that.

Marvin Bressler: Thank you very much. Before we go to a general conversation, I wonder whether any of the panelists wish to address each other?

Robert Geddes: One of the heartening ideas here is that conversation helps. It is the essence of the humanistic, liberal arts university to engage in conversation. Whether the conversation is in literature, the arts or the sciences…and it seems to me that we really do have conversations, the conversations can be on both sides of the street and can be continuing. Not cut off…but continuing.

Marvin Reed: I’d like to respond to Hendricks. He used the terms ‘dominant’ and ‘subordinate’ cultures. And I think it is not difficult for us to identify what he might mean by that. Can we consider that we will ever get to the stage where we have coordinate cultures?…and not dominant and subordinate.

Hendricks Davis: So many factors go into that. What I was doing was just presenting a construct that I believe, in effect, is not just for this community. And that it has existed since the beginning of Princeton and since the beginning of the United States. I think we are working towards it. But I think it really does come down to a lot of different factors going into that. It is so complex. It does involve economics. It does involve ethnicity and race. It involves religion. We are a very diverse community religiously...even on this panel, right? I guess what you are asking, is can we see the point where there is a Utopian community? There many examples of people trying to effect that. Some with good result. Some with not good results. I think we need to make the effort. I think we need to make the effort individually. Inside ourselves! That is the primary thing. How is my perspective about me changed by my encounter with you. That is a good thing. That is why the conversation is so important and so deep. It is not the sort of conversation you engage in only for an hour and a half on a Saturday morning. I think Marvin Bressler has been doing this conversation as a sociologist for years.

Marvin Bressler: Before my pacemaker…

Hendricks Davis: It is a good thing. It is a challenging and complex thing.

Marvin Reed: We may not get to the point, ever, where we remove the onus of dominant and subordinate cultures, but if our goal is to get to coordinate cultures, are we attempting to move towards that deliberately? Knowing we may never reach it. Or, are we just being casual about it and say ‘what comes, comes’? For me the question is whether this community moves deliberately towards trying to make the variety of cultures coordinate.

Hendricks Davis: I agree with you 100% there. There is so much that is involved in the distribution of resources. Particularly in this instance: the distribution of the resource of land and the opportunity to live in affordable housing. But I would go further: to OWN affordable housing. Is that still possible in Princeton? I think if we worked at it hard enough, we would find some ways to do it. One of the other points I want to make: There is a lot of diversity already, IN Princeton. A lot more than we see, perhaps. It comes in on the shift hours. And then it leaves. To your point, can we find ways where the line at the bus stop is diminished a little bit by providing housing opportunities for providing housing opportunities to VERY low income workers, who make $20,000 to $30,000 a year at the University and at the Seminary at the Hospital to live in this city?

Marvin Bressler: Now the voice of the people shall be heard in the land!

Bill Moran: I am with the Whole Earth Center. I was very fortunate to have had parents who lived here when I was born in 1939. I’d like to make a very quick, concrete proposal. On page 9 of this really well-produced document. [The Campus Plan]. The mirror campus that was abandoned, I think, for very good reasons. Is approximately the same acreage as the existing campus. Would it not be feasible to form a joint housing council with West Windsor [where the land falls] the University and the Princetons to form some sort of affordable housing situation on that land? With a density of Witherspoon Jackson, it could accommodate 7-8,000 people I would think.

Marvin Bressler: What land is that?

Bill Moran: Trans-Carnegie Marvin Bressler: Do you want to respond to that?

Robert Durkee: No, let’s see who else…

Marvin Bressler: Does anyone want to comment on this line of thought?

Arch Davis: Bob, I can make a comment on that. I have a friend who is making a video game that has a lovely architectural plan that would fit in perfectly on that land. I was actually thinking about that. West Windsor deserves it, after all of those clean rateables they have developed out there. They could well have some more ‘dirty rateables’. You know that ‘dirt’ with the phrase rateables refers to our children. It used to refer to smokestacks. Now it has to do with the cost of running the educational system. I have a thought: this is a unique community. It can’t be duplicated everywhere because of the academics and the other things that are tied into our location between New York & Philadelphia…major employment centers. Diversity is greater…even at other major universities. The internationals here are from a couple of populous countries. That’s it. The diversity of sensible rational people here is also something that is to be appreciated. Finally, I want to tie in a national issue: and, that is the difficulty of finding affordable housing. Because of globalization without tariffs, we are getting a depressing effect on working class wages in this country. To a point, I am saying, where we are headed towards world class wages. World class wages is not a good thing. It means earning under a $1/hour. We are looking at a diversity in this country between those who are very rich and those who are not quite making it. It effects Princeton. While housing values were declining nationally by 25%, Princeton’s housing was gaining 9%. That diversity is a problem. It has been seen in New Orleans, particularly where lots of vintage housing was wiped out by the storm and we can’t rebuild it economically. That is a big problem in this country. Where I grew up down south, we had lean-tos and shanties and everything. That was our affordable housing. Because of our high standards of housing construction and sanitation, those things don’t exist anymore. How we can afford affordable housing is a real challenge.

Helmut Schwab: Regarding the Mirror Campus. There is another very practical solution to that idea: The Merwick Site. It is a wonderful piece of real estate and it is in our town. It can be used for all kinds of housing, including low income. For the elderly, it is within walking distance to the Library, the Arts Center, the movies, the restaurants in town. It is an ideal place. Now the University chose to buy that with their enormous resources. They were able to do it. Nobody can ever outbid them. They have decided to put their faculty and older students there. In other words, they selectively want to use it for their own and NOT for the general purpose of the community. On the other side, that is an area where the university could easily put all of the faculty and all of the students. Many of them are transient. Merwick should be made available for mixed income. I don’t think it is good to all low income people in one place. It can be a place where people from the Western Side of town live next to people from Witherspoon Jackson. For young ones and old ones. It is an ideal opportunity to solve many of the problems we are talking about. I have written this in several letters to the Planning Board and Boro Council. I have received a luke warm response. I challenge Princeton Boro to be more proactive.

George Cody: An added question: WHY NOT DO THAT? After all we have heard, why not do this?

Marvin Bressler: Bob Durkee, do you want to answer that?

Robert Durkee: Let me say a little bit about Merwick. You can not fully divorce Merwick from the earlier conversation that the community had about the much larger hospital site. I think that some of the arguments that are being made about the desirable location apply to the large site as well. Of course the discussion of the larger site went first. We got involved in this because the hospital was proposing to leave Princeton and move to Plainsboro. It was looking for a way to maximize the resources that it could obtain from its property. I don’t know very much about who else they talked with about the Merwick site. But I do know that most developers that would go into that site A] would not be willing to pay very much up front, because they wouldn’t be able to pay until after they developed the property and the hospital was looking for funds up front and the university is prepared to pay for it up front. Of course they can’t develop the site, no one can develop the site, until the hospital moves off of it. So we were in a competitive bidding process with other potential buyers I assume that was something the hospital did. And the hospital accepted the offer that the university made. So why would we be interested in that site? Partly because of something I said earlier: We do want to continue to provide housing in this community for a range of people who are working at the university. They do work at the university. They are also residents of this community. And many of them, many of them stay, Marvin, for decades and many of our staff stay for a very long period of time. They become active members of this community. And the kind of people we can imagine living in the Merwick site, if we are able to develop the site, are the kind of people who currently live in the Stanworth site. And many of them have lived here for a very long time and have become active members of the community. It is a way for us to help provide affordable housing for residents of this community who happen to work for the university. It is a good site for that. It worked well for the hospital as a way for them to accomplish their objectives. And I think it helps an objective that has been a goal of this community for a long time which is to make sure that people who work for us are able to live in the community….but aren’t competing for other housing in the community that may also be affordable. Let me say a word about the other side of the Lake. I have now been in 3 or 4 meetings over the last couple of weeks. One of them proposed developing that as a shopping area. One proposed developing it as a housing area. Another proposed leaving it as green space. And of course I have a long history of the State wanting to run roads through it. So it isn’t as if there aren’t folks who have ideas about what to do about those lands. It is important to remember that those lands are owned by the Trustees of Princeton University. For a very long time. This is an institution that has been here for 260 years. Those lands, over time, are likely to be used to support educational purposes. That is why they were purchased. They are used now for a variety of purposes...Athletic fields… and it is now where our contractors park so that they don’t have to take up all of the spaces in town. It is also where we do a lot of the maintenance for the campus. Over time, I expect those lands will be developed. And some of them, most certainly will be developed for housing. BUT THAT IS A WEST WINDSOR CONVERSATION. Those lands are in West Windsor and we need to have those conversations with West Windsor over time. I have a hope that those lands will also be on the mass transit link. It might be a site for off-site parking. It might be a site for people who can then use mass transit to get into this community. So we think about that land a lot. It is not part of the 10-yr plan. But it is part of a long-range plan to think about this community in a more regional context.

Helmut Schwab: Thank you Mr. Durkee for your answer. It proves the point that who has the most money wins! In this case, it is Merwick. Here in town, settling students and faculty this close to the downtown is not what is needed. It is good for them to walk a mile or a mile and a half to work every morning. But the older ones want to be close. I do not accept your argument. It is not an urgent need for the university to have that piece of property. I still challenge the community here to make it available for the community at large!

Shirley Satterfield: I am a member of Princeton Future. It is good to see our panelists there and Susan. But I’d like to say that I sit back here and look at the back of the heads and I see a lot of white hair. Those of us who are 60 and older, we are talking to the same people all of the time. And if t wasn’t for Reggie, we wouldn’t have any young people here. I think it is important that when we talk about diversity, that we have younger people here in the community. And, also, when we talk about diversity, we need to get people from the Witherspoon Jackson Community, from Westcott, from Library Place to start dialoguing so that we can let them know about what we mean by diversity. Because we just keep talking to the same people all of the time. When Hendricks talked about Witherspoon Jackson, and not the John Witherspoon Community, it is because for those of you who don’t know, there was a Jackson Street. It was where Paul Robeson Place is now. They displaced our homes to make their throughway from Wiggins St to 206. They wanted to move the First Baptist Church. There is a lot of history I can tell you that you need to know about the community. Those of us who have been here…my family has been here for 6 generations. It is important that we keep our history.

Barrie Royce: Can I make a very pessimistic statement? I think part of the problem for a place like Princeton is its structure. People really want to come here. We live in a so-called free society as a consequence of which, we immediately put up the price of real estate and we lose our economic diversity. The case of gentrification that was mentioned by our former Mayor, who is not alone,…these things are going to push our society into changing unless we can find some way to make it a less attractive place to be! Or, to constrain how we use land and put more effort into maintaining diversity in an active way, rather than in a very passive way.

Pam Hersh: I have the unusual perspective of having worked up and down Witherspoon St my entire life!! I ust want to make a couple of comments regarding the hospital and the Merwick situation. As you all know, the hospital is committed to serving every person who walks in no matter what his or her income is. So, that is the ultimate diversity and we serve them very well. You have the same chance to get the best surgeon as if you have a lot of money. Absolutely equal treatment for everyone. Of course this desire for excellence requires us to move because our current site is very inadequate. One of te reasons w could afford to move is, as everyone has said, the real estate in this town is worth a lot of money. Anyone that owns a home here has certainly had a good return on his or her investment. And that return can be leveraged. The healthcare industry is in very bad shape. It is struggling enormously. There have been tremendous cuts from Federal and State governments. On Merwick, we have had a lot of interested buyers. However, no one else was willing to subsidize diverse housing on that site. There were buyers who wanted to put up very expensive homes. Princeton University is probably one of the few developers in NJ that has the ability to subsidize a large amount of moderate priced for its own employees. Nevertheless a lot of people in this neighborhood are employees of this university. We live here. We eat here. We vote here. It has always struck me as a little bizarre to separate this into a wethey situation. Some of my best friends live in Stanworth and they do not have a lot of money. So, our decision to sell to the university was not just an economic one. It was a conscious decision to create a situation that was in the best interests of the community. We are seeing a great failure in the state policy on affordable housing. It was a fabulous court decision, but the implementation over the years has not worked as well as anyone would have wanted. We have a gas tax, we have an open space tax…why don’t we have a dedicated ffordable housing tax. Affordable housing is a policy that is in the best interests of this community. Because this piece of land is not public property. If it is a public need, then there should be a way for someone to purchase it and put up affordable housing without destroying the economic benefit of the property.

Hendricks Davis: I have 2 quick questions. What was the winning bid dollar amount for Merwick?

Pam Hersh: It is complicated because it involves more than one piece of property They also bought the Franklin Lot.

Hendricks Davis: I’d love for this information to be public.

George Cody: I was wondering when Bob Durkee was talking about West Windsor….we are talking about a community called Princeton Boro, Princeton Township, Princeton University and West Windsor. We are crazy to ignore them. We should all be working together. What benefits them should benefit us. What hurts us should hurt them. And that is the spirit we should get to.

Robert Geddes: That is a good closing comment.

Marvin Bressler: We will bring this session to a close with some brief observations. One is: there exists a statistical sheet here that you have if you want. I urge you to ignore it. It is complied on the basis of the 2000 Census. Ii includes University undergraduates as part of the population. It distorts the findings as you can imagine. We have a 67% unemployment rate in this community. Even with the most anti-Bush sentiment, that seems to carry it too far. Two: In response to Hendricks’ comment that this really has to be at a very deep level. That can be fostered by having more information than we have. It is for this reason that Princeton Future is developing an Index of statistical accuracy that will dazzle such that the issues are settled even before the discussion! Third: There is a weak form of diversity and a strong form of diversity. The weak forms are the people that occupy the same geographic area and are permitted to advance their culture. The strong form is when those people interact with each other. The issue is how do we all take advantage of these diverse cultures in which we live, beyond the parochialism of the cultures themselves. Finally: Bertrand Russell once defined ‘a civilized man’ as aperson who burst into tears upon reading a column of statistics. By which he meant that anyone is capable of having some compassion for the child who falls down a well…but tobe able to lose a night’s sleep over a famine in India: That is a high level of civilization! And when we talk about diversity, it means a commitment to an ever-expanding set of concentric circles which ultimately embraces all humanity.

SUSTAINABILITY

Robert Geddes: The panel on sustainability has the advantage of having an extraordinary amount of knowledge about the issues of environmental sustainability. Last week, the United Nations had it its first summit meeting of mayors and officials and architects and planners from all over the world to talk about sustainability in the information age. It is clearly on the top of the agenda in many ways. We, in Princeton, are extremely fortunate that Rob Socolow and his colleagues in the Princeton Environmental Institute are in the forefront of knowledge and that they are willing to talk with us. The panel will be Rob, he and I started in the Goheen era, and Wendy Kaczerski who is the Chair of the Princeton Environmental Commission, appointed by both the mayors of the Township & the Boro. Then there will be the trio of Durkee, Reed and Geddes on the side here.

Robert Socolow: We professors only know one way of talking to a group these days and that is to have powerpoint slides. I often wonder whether it is better than speaking off of the cuff. What is better is that you think more ahead of time.

Sustainable Princeton Toward town targets?
Robert Socolow Princeton University
socolow@princeton.edu
Princeton Future Princeton, NJ
May 3, 2008

Antarctic Ice Core: Antidote to pettiness

Source: Gabrielle Walker, “Frozen time,” Nature; Jun 10, 2004;
429, 6992; Research Library Core, pg. 596

I am a relative newcomer here compared to Marvin Bressler and Robert Geddes. I have only been here 37 years. I have not given anything like this talk before. It is another dimension of the problem. So what I thought I’d start with an antidote to pettiness. This is an ice-core from Antartica. There is probably such a picture of Princeton in Guyot Hall, in the geology building. These ice-cores hold a record of the Earth for 600,000 years. It is conceptually just like a core of a tree. The further in you go in the tree, the further back you are sampling the weather. When you go down into one of these multi-mile thick glaciers in Antartica, the deeper you go, the further you are going into the past, to when the ice was laid down. Ice carries trapped bubbles. They do not move. They give a record of the past, in particular the gas composition of the atmosphere. Now people are looking for ways of going further back in time, as this particular method is limited to 600,000 years. We live on one planet with an extraordinary history. We are learning it in every timescale.

Temperature, CO2, and methane
have tracked each other for four ice ages

Temperature in ice core era: (Antarctic _T)/2; 0 = 1880-1899 mean.
Source: Hansen, Clim. Change, 68, 269, 2005.

This chart is too complicated, except to show you that the blue line is for 400,000 years going back to the left. The troughs are the ice ages. The peaks are coming out of ice ages. We have had an in and out history of about a 100,000 year periods. The observation here is that when Princeton was under ice, there was less CO2 in the atmosphere than when Princeton was not under ice. We did not have certain features of this landscape when we were under ice. We have a wonderful terminal moraine that makes Province Line Road not a continuous road because of that particular pile of rock when the ice retreated is more formidable than some of the other structures we have able to broach through or go around. I thought we would start by giving a sense that we have been around for a while.

Carbon Dioxide is a gas that is very much implicated in climate change and in the last 20 years, all kinds of levels of organization of human life have been the subject of accounting, from the perspective of carbon dioxide. We are digging fossil fuels out of the ground and about 30 billion tons of CO2 are being pulled into the atmosphere every year by the burning of fossil fuels we are pulling out of the ground. So the first level of accounting has been global. It is possible toget good global numbers because the coal and gas industries report to themselves and to governments and for tax purposes roughly how much activity they have in a given year. New Jersey under Governor Corzine has articulated a goal about its own carbon dioxide with some arbitrary but fixed accounting rules about what to count and what not to count. It believes it knows how much CO2 is being emitted into the atmosphere from New Jersey. It has a goal of reducing that quantity by a certain date. The United States is on the verge of having nation level goals. Princeton University as part of its stabilization program has gotten its arms around a goal related to its own CO2 emissions.

Indexing Sustainability
via Carbon Dioxide Emissions

•The world keeps track of its CO2 emissions
•New Jersey keeps track of its CO2 emissions
•Princeton University keeps track of its CO2 emissions.
•Many of you could, and maybe some of you do, keep
track of your CO2 emissions.
Aspen has tried. Berkeley too. But Princeton town
doesn’t try.

And, individuals, using software that is on the web, are figuring out their own carbon footprint. There have been a few towns, two of which are Aspen & Berkeley, have attempted to figure out their own emissions as a town. So, what I thought I’d discuss briefly here, is HOW might we do that? In the process we are focusing on physical resources as opposed to human resources. We are not initially talking about dollars, or diversity of individuals. But of our own footprint. This something I have been personally been interested in. Scientists tend to be interested in physical variables. I remember as a small child one of my favorite books was How the Singing Water Gets into the Tub! Somehow, I was involved from the reservoir to the tub. As a kid that turned me on. I have got to find that book. So here is a picture to go with each of the statements before:

The atmosphere has 3000 billion tons of CO2 in it. We are adding 30 bn tons. 1% per year. About 1/2% percent is the rate that it is growing because there are 2 drains in the tub. One of them is going into the ocean. [Making the ocean more acidic]. And the other, overall, our forests are actually getting bigger [a surprise to many of you]. This is in spite of the fact that we are cutting down forests. Elsewhere they are getting bigger. So we have this number: 30 billion tons of CO2 which we can divide b the world’s population. Which is about 6-7 billion. We end up with 5 tons of CO2 per capita. As our average emission…or ‘our share’ as individuals if you treat us all alike on the planet.

So, our first identity, to use Marvin Bressler’s vocabulary, is as a global citizen, aware of the fact that we don’t want five-six billion people on the planet with these per capita emissions. I have rounded it down to 4 tons of CO2/yr. We are heading to 4 as the population will grow in 25 years. New Jersey emissions. It is hard to find this. Most people don’t know that we have this numerical goal. Governor Corzine has articulated it. NJ emissions are about 120,000,000 tons of CO2/yr as opposed to 30 billion for the planet. 4/10th of one percent. Divide by the NJ population and it is 14 tons of CO2/per capita. THREE TIMES THE GLOBAL AVERAGE.

Princeton University has done its own accounting. Bob, I don’t think that there are too many senior administrators who actually have this number at the tip of their tongue. It is being reported out. It actually applies only to the university’s own energy system that heats and cools the campus buildings, plus its own fleet of vehicles. It has its own gas pump so you can record our own consumption. That divided by 10,000 people gives you 13 tons per capita for the university alone.

You see how accounting can get you amazing comparisons. Individual’s carbon footprints. Somebody is writing software that you then plug numbers into. I don’t know exactly what is included. Conceptually, it is not obvious what you would do. But one item is gasoline for your vehicle. Probably you are asked how many miles you have driven that year…what kind of car you have…some people keep track of how many gallons of gas they buy/yr…3- 400 gallons per year, perhaps. Plane travel. Almost surely, on the questionnaire, electricity at home, natural gas at home. Fuel oil at home.

An individual’s “carbon footprint”

Gasoline
Plane travel
Electricity at home
Natural gas at home
Fuel oil at home

Carbon embedded in purchases of things
Carbon generated by others because you have given them money:

school
church or synagogue or mosque
hospital
shops
bank
insurance company
local, states, and federal governments

Software on the web will find your footprint for you

Probably not carbon embedded in things you buy because it is just hard to do. And probably not carbon generated by others because you have given them money, such as your school. But other groups might take on this project to educate themselves, groups such as churches, synagogues and mosques. Our hospital generates emissions. Our taxes generate emissions by government. We use up our whole ‘global quota’ of 4 tons of CO2 if we drive 10,000 miles per year in a 30 mpg car. Four tons of CO2 comes out of the tailpipe! Americans don’t have a hard time using up their quota. Flying a mile and driving a mile puts roughly the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. Certainly my footprint is dominated by air travel. I took the trouble to take a year of gas bills from my home and added them up. They are an obscure unit that most of you do not know. But the utility could give us a bill which we did understand. It came out to 4 tons of CO2 per capita in sort of an average home in floor area for this town. My wife and I have 4 tons of CO2 between us. So I guess that is about average. We turn to electric appliances and lights. Same. A questionnaire would have to ask ‘where do you live?’ because the carbon intensity of the electricity varies.

In the Northwest, where everything is either hydro power or nuclear powered and very little fossil fuel is burned to Ohio and Indiana where most of the electricity is coming from coal. That matters when computing the size of your carbon footprint. For Princeton, a slide might be shown to show what the problem is.

‘I try to do my part’ says one of the gentlemen in a private jet, as he rolls up some paper from a conversation and throws it into a recycling bin. There is this issue of symbolic action. We have no comparable data or goal for the Princeton community. I learned something this morning from the census information. Aggregate plane travel. Aggregate gasoline. Princeton does not include the plane travel of its faculty and students coming in and out of its campus.

We would make all of these decisions, about what to include, when we put together the questionnaire for Princeton. Standing here, we are within a few feet of one of the substations in town where we might have aggregate meters that might tell us something without having to add every citizen’s totals up. Natural gas likewise. There are stations that send out to a whole community. Fuel oil is also probably pretty easy because there are only a couple of fuel oil companies in this town. I had thought fuel oil and natural gas were in an equal number of homes in Princeton. I was surprised. It is 4 to 1 in favor of natural gas in the Boro and the Township. Interesting stuff: OUR LOCAL CARBON FOOTPRINT.

And then we would have to take on our town institutions, the churches, the hospital, the university, the seminary, the shops, the banks, the insurance companies: that’s the direct expenditures. And, then, our own governments. They are all part of the whole. And we would have a major reduction in emissions when the hospital leaves. We would know what the carbon footprint is of our government. This is not hard to find out.

Once we measure this, what do we want to do about the number? It is not at all clear that we have a single-minded goal of reducing the number. One of the interesting questions would be, what are Berkeley and Aspen doing about it after they come up with the number? The university has committed itself to an extraordinarily difficult program: growing but reducing its emissions by something like 30 to 40% by 2020 relative to where they are heading. I frankly don’t know how they will get that done. We can try. Maybe the town would want to try to set a goal like that too.

I was trying to think of something we have done at the community level that was presumably tough to do at the front end.

Observations

In all likelihood, we will be working at cross-purposes with ourselves. Do we want the index to go up (“growth”) or down?

In days of yore, Princeton instituted town-level recycling? Nearly all of us are glad. How did it happen?

Precedent: Philadelphia mayor asked the town to lose weight.

Town and Gown are in this together.

We did town level recycling. How come? What was the pressure for and against that? That is an achievement we ought to be looking at. I was thinking about another aggregation exercise. The Philadelphia Mayor asked the town to lose weight. You can set goals! For goodness sakes, this cuts across town & gown. Physical empiricals don’t see Nassau St. as a significant feature of the landscape.

Goals for Princeton

Well established and essential to sustain:
• Just, diverse
• Civil, engaged
• Environmentally responsible (woods, gardens)
• Respectful of history (preservation)
• Beautiful (structures, landscapes)

To which we might add:
• Walkable (paths)
• Informed (measurements)
• What else???

We certainly have goals we want to hang onto. We don’t want to jeopardize these goals in the course of getting to more . I did not explicitly mention the overlap between the 2 sessions this morning on diversity and sustainability. The overlap is called ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE. If you are not careful, you are setting diversity goals back as you achieve environmental goals. For example, you decide to collect some waste stream and manage it somewhere. And you decide to manage it in a very poor neighborhood. So, justice, diversity and civility which is impressive here on this occasion. Our engagement. Our environmental responsibility. I was a little surprised that no one asked Bob Durkee to keep the mirror campus from any development for the time being! Let’s hear it for the ducks! I think the green space there…I learned something today…that some people would trade that green space for a compact community of people of any income bracket. I was surprised that it is seen as ‘wasted’ space by many of you with certain sensibilities.

Respectful of history. If we cut everything down we can think of…I have heard of the disrespectful actions leading to the destruction of Jackson Street today. And we have a real commitment to beauty in this town that we ought to acknowledge. But we could act! A walkable town. IT IS AN EXTRAORDINARILY UNWALKABLE TOWN. I get angry at that. I live on Arreton Rd. There 2 ways into town. One down Cherry Hill. One down 206. I’d be nuts to take either one of them after dark. I can not very easily walk during the daytime to get to work. Both could have had corridors for walking and biking. It is a real challenge. About one mile either way.

An informed town is what I have been talking about today. I want you to tell me today what else I should have on my list! Thank you very much! [Applause]. I think the other 3 members of the panel will have some specific things to tell you.

Marvin Reed: You mentioned the mirror campus on the other side of the Lake. You mentioned that it has been mentioned so often because it has suddenly become one of our scarce resources. Anyone can come up with questions for the university: ‘Why don’t you build…on the mirror campus?’ They have a good answer. I want the university to keep that from any kind of development for as long as it can. I don’t think you can predict what you’re going to need that space for. We may need that space in the future simply to plant trees. You may turn it back into a forest because of what we are learning about CO2 emissions. I have heard the CO2 story. It has a lot to do with Al Gore. Let me suggest that this is critical to us here in Princeton. The other factor I’d like to introduce into the discussion is the whole question of VMTs. Vehicle Miles Traveled. As good as it is for Congress to raise the efficiency ratings on the cars GM will have to produce, that is not going t solve our carbon problems. The supply of carbon fuels in the world is on the decline. Gas prices are up astronomically. It has to do with global supply. I don’t think we are going to find very many countries who will be willing to raise the supply of coal and oil in order to satisfy the United States. Many are saving it for themselves. Let me come back to how much our town is oriented to auto-dependent development. That is the key question for the Community Master Plan. Rob you may be able to live out on Arreton, but not too many people will be able to afford to live out there because of the simple cost of coming into town….going to work and going back again. We may have to find other ways for you to get to work….

Rob Socolow: On foot!

Marvin Reed: Bike, jitney…whatever it will be. It can’t be in the future your own private automobile.

Robert Geddes: Where in the Community Master Plan are these issues addressed?

Marvin Reed: Oh, I don’t think that they are addressed very well at all. In the Re- Exam we did give a cross reference to the work of the Environmental Commission [and Princeton Future]! Hoping that we can incorporate its sustainability work into the Community Master Plan. We are looking for much more than simply changing light bulbs.

Robert Durkee: I think there is a dramatic difference on this, therefore, between the Community Master Plan and the University’s Campus Plan. Sustainability is EVERYwhere in the Campus Plan. One of the lessons we have learned is that it makes a tremendous difference, if at every point, you have someone there who is saying “Yes, but how does this work into the sustainability goals?” I every section, there are discussions of how we have thought about sustainability. A lot of the discussion about Landscape is about sustainability A lot of the discussion about Stormwater is about sustainability. Even a lot of the Circulation…something as simple as being able to drive directly from Alexander into the Parking Garage over on that part of the campus turns out to save an awful lot of VMTs because of where the people trying to get that garage come from. Improving walkways and bikeways. Throughout this project, we have though, again and again, how can this contribute to improve sustainability. On a parallel track, we have developed a sustainability plan. We did a brief, front and back, one-pager on our plan for you here today. As Rob said, this is a very aggressive plan. And it is a multifaceted plan. In terms of carbon emissions, we are proposing to go back to where we were in 1990, even though we have already added 1.7million SF since 1990 and this plan anticipates another 2 million SF. What also makes it aggressive is our commitment. We have to figure out how to do it. One of the ways is to continue to be a place where we bring together, Rob included, many of the very faculty in the world working on this with their students figuring out how we get there. What is the technology? What are the strategies? So the very first thing we do is to continue to invest in the teaching and in the research program. We are not going to use offsets to get there, the way many others will. That means others might purchase trees in Malaysia that will offset the emissions. What we have said is that that is not our strategy. Our strategy is to get there by figuring out how to reduce the emissions! We have taken some steps over the years…the co-generation plant is an example….the use of geo-thermal energy at the Lawrence Apartments is another example of something we have done. We need to keep working on how you do this. It will be a combination of technologies and a combination of resources and conservation. Better efficiencies. It is also what are you using when you are maintaining and cleaning that landscape. What is commitment to recycling? What about food? PU is a leader. Most of that is what we do through our dining services. And then there is the Farmers Market…partly about doing something and partly about raising awareness. We have ust announced this week that we have created a new certificate program in sustainable energy so that ore students can be a part of thinking about solutions. We also see going forwards that we see some possibilities to do some experimenting. So my favorite phot in this book is the plan for Butler College Dormitory. What you see in the photo is that half of the roofs are green and half are not. The reason for that is that it is conventional wisdom that green roofs are more environmentally sensitive. But actually, we don’t know. So we will test it on site.

Rob Socolow: Can I just ask whether the other half of the roof is white? It should be, because it reflects incident sunlight, it reduces warming and the air-conditioning requirement…and even cools the planet.

Wendy Kaczerski: I would first like to answer Rob Socolow’s question: What else can we do? I am sure most of the people in this room already know the answers because we have been bombarded with suggestions from a variety of different sources. The biggest thing that people can do, in terms of enrgy efficiency, as I understand it, is INSULATE, INSULATE, INSULATE! It is the same old stuff we have been hearing for decades, but it is true. Seal up your house. We talked about driving less. We talked about more walkable bikeways and walkways. Next week in this plaza there will bean event tp promote walkability. There 4 new bike racks that will be put up. We need a hundred more bike racks. I would like to see corporate sponsorship of bike racks in Princeton. That is being worked on by the pedestrian and bicycle safety committee in town. Buy Local. We have heard that. Those are some of the answers as to what else we can do. The best websites are Environmental Defense and the Union of Concerned Scientists. It has a really great ‘to-do’ list of things you can do. You can print off one page and put it up on your refrigerator door or cupboard and slowly change the way you live. Another thing you can do is not use plastic bags. On the larger context of things, I would like to compliment Princeton University on its sustainability plan. I read through it when it first came out. I was left with one longing, I guess. They have done a lot of work to figure out how to make these things work. But what I would love to see is the synergy between the Boro, the Township and the University. Let’s come together around a table and talk about sustainability and develop an action plan that would include us! You have the science. You have the technology. You have the knowledge. You have the students. We are here. We are available. We can be your learning laboratory. I know the School of Engineering has a couple of programs in place. One is the Green RetroFit Program. One is Engineering EPICS….engineering programs in the community. The latter helped the Stonybrook Millstone do an energy audit which eventually led to the installation of solar voltaic panels on their education center. For 3 years now, we, the Environmental Commission, has been trying to get the Boro, the Township and the School District to do just that. The intentions are good. Maybe you know something we don’t know. We are in our little circle. You are across the street living in your little circle. And the School District is in its own circle. One thing that Sustainable Princeton has succeeded in doing in small ways are the following: number one- two years ago we received a $60,000 grant from the Municipal Land Use Center. That proposal asked for 3 things: 1-to perform an energy audit. It is done. Here the results. This 2-pp summary tells us how much we would save in electric savings, in thermal savings, in water savings and in operation and management savings. The total cost to do this, for the Boro, the Township and the School District to pay for those changes. Then we are told what the payback would be. Then we are told how much we would receive in reductions in CO2. So we have the information. We know how much we could save. We know how long it would take to get a payback. We know how much CO2 would be reduced. This is the easy part. Where do we get the money to make all of these changes? Where is the money going to come from? From taxes? It probably won’t. If we want to go forward…if we want to truly make change, it is going to cost some money up front. Our neighbor to the south Lawrence, last month, the school district has a referendum. The community decided to say ‘yes’. Yes to putting solar voltaic panels on all of their school buildings. I have been in conversations with our school superintendent since 2005, and…her intentions are great. She is really determined, I think, to make something happen. But for financial, and perhaps, other reasons, it hasn’t happened yet. In the meantime, the Princeton School District lost $900,000 in rebates that it could have had to install solar panels on its roofs.

In the earlier session, someone mentioned moving deliberately. You know, given the severity of the climate change issue, given the fact that we know we are running out of time, given the fact that we are running out of fossil fuels, What is a community to do when it is face with knowing what it can do and yet not knowing where the money is going to come from to do it?

Robert Geddes: On the last point that was raised, and something that was raised this morning, There are no plans that start..the plans we have are essentially physical. To a great extent the University has pioneered in making a plan that is also environmental. There no plans that start with a diversity plan or start with a sustainability plan. That would seem to me to be the bedrock on which we take the next step. It would also be a plan without edges. The 18th & 19th c political boundaries have very little to do with what has happened or will happen…both in terms of diversity and sustainability. They need to find their own regions and edges.

Robert Durkee: I was struck by the fact that Wendy used the word ‘yearning’ when she got to the end..what is so interesting to me is the comparable interest in yearning on the part of students to be out in the community, helping. I think that there really is an opportunity for synergy here. And, reinforced, not only by various programs on campus, but by the Community-Based Learning Initiative. Students are able, not only to be engaged, but to do it as part of their academic program. One of the things that ought to come out of this conversation this morning is how we can tap into this desire to be helpful as well as to gain some real life experience.

Marvin Reed: Someone mentioned Buy Local. I want to pick up on that because it is not just a question of buying locally it is a question of producing locally. As we look at our community and our land use plans and so forth. And we look at what is happening with peak oil. Now we are beyond the peak and are in decline which means that oil will become more scarce. More expensive. More a product of international politics. The ability to produce local foods becomes much, much more critical. We have preserved some farms. It is remarkable that a town like Princeton actually has several preserved farms within it. Our challenge is: what do we use those farms to produce? If we ust produce corn in order to put ethanol into our vehicles, we won’t have dealt with the question: people won’t be able to buy local foods at a competitive price vs buying strawberries from California or blueberries from Chile. If you follow the stories about the prices and supplies of wheat and rice in foreign countries…our ability to produce our own food becomes that much more critical.

Wendy Kaczerski: On that note, right now at the middle school, at the high school, there are two groups of people breaking ground to create edible gardens. 4 edible gardens already exist at each of the elementary schools. There is a group called the Princeton School Gardens Cooperative…and along with each school raising its own money to have these gardens function, this cooperative is an umbrella group that helps it to raise money in other ways. This group will become a convener for other municipalities in the region. If I could just say something about synergy. We need to look more regionally…to Plainsboro, Lawrence. It is vital. We should not be developing our own plan in a vacuum. We should be meeting regularly, sharing knowledge and resources with others in the county.

Rob Socolow: I wrote down ‘Mercer Scale’ a minute ago. It really should be that Princeton Town thinks of itself as rich enough to experiment. One of the things I am hearing is that Princeton doesn’t feel rich. If Princeton doesn’t feel rich, who is going to be able to take the lead in this? Something has happened. We voted down our school budget. It was a bit of a shock. We are rich. Even in a downturn, we are rich compared to almost any community around. If Aspen and Berkeley can do it, we can. I mentioned those communities to get your juices going, but I didn’t hear that coming back. Not just rich in dollars but rich in intellectual horse power. We have a role as advocates in both state and national policy domains. The photo voltaic subsidy for schools has come and gone. It was a lousy subsidy. It was too high in the first place. It bankrupted the program and gave windfalls to a few schools. We could have had a better program. I am curious about something else: the multiyear funding. If you have a short payback on the Sustainable Princeton report, you didn’t tell how long the paybacks are, the question is Does the town have the ability to put out the money now and get it back in 5 years? Or is it prohibitive? Very often what constrains government is this one-year-at-time budgeting. Is that an obstacle in Princeton? If it is, how do we get around it? There people who know how to do that. We should be more upbeat about this whole thing! Make it fun.

Marvin Reed: You can bond for Master Plan. ____: I have a question for Bob. What about paper cups for beer? I am worried about the plastic.

Robert Durkee: My understanding is that we are exploring the idea of a corn-based cup.

Barrie Royce: Ah, you can ferment it when you finish it! ____: The other question I have is Why don’t the municipal governments have Prius cars?

Barrie Royce: I want to go home and eat my home-grown salad for lunch. I think one of the things that is problematic is that we don’t really want to face up to the effort, the enormous effort that is required if sustainability is our goal. We are allowed to put one ton of carbon per capita into the air. We are currently doing about 5 times that. That means we have to cut our lifestyle in terms of anthropogenic carbon by 80%. I think that is very difficult to get anyone to take seriously. That is real hardship. There are little things that help and, I think that it must be a multi-faceted approach. We need education. There are various scientific techniques…but by and large it is a very big problem. I believe politicians are just afraid. I don’t think that Al Gore told us how bad the problem is. It is much worse than that. Unless we understand that, all of the goals we set for our own sustainability or the sustainability of the world are not going to work! I am going home to my salad.

George Cody: I was thinking with respect…yes, there are very severe difficulties to overcome. There are very simple things that can be overcome like local public transportation. That would have an enormous impact on our town… I am fascinated by how much the solar cells on the roof cost. We are up to 15¢/kilowatt on delivered electricity. We are getting close to California at 20¢! When you put that in the context of borrowing money and getting a return. It’s a nothing. It takes a little bit to get you started. What you really need is education. Most people don’t know what they are spending because they don’t look at their bills. Most people don’t know that you can buy solar panels and get a payback that pays the whole thing off. It’s upfront. But you don’t buy a house upfront.

Sheldon Sturges: My thought. CBLI. I’d like to have an undergraduate kid come to my house and tell me what my energy bill is. I am too dumb to figure it out. So if every kid that came to the university adopted a home…and came and said to each of us: “This is what you are doing!”

Robert Durkee: We actually have students doing that.

Sheldon Sturges: I know

Robert Durkee: Talk to Kristin and we’ll have a student come over to your house.

Grace Sinden: I’d like to take up the previous speaker’s reference to what happens in the real world of politics. Just as a little background, I served for the last 13 years on the Environmental Commission and the Health Commission here. It has been a very mixed experience. Much more frustration than I should have had in a community like Princeton. There are things happening right now, as we all throw around the word sustainability, that are really unacceptable. Perhaps you read in the newspaper about senior housing. And where it is going to be built will destroy a woodland of almost 20 acres. The Planning Board Thursday night extended the site plan for that development by a vote of 8-3. I was glad