Monday, April 9, 2012

The Trentonian re-imagines the region

The accompanying map traces its roots to July 13, 2010. That’s the date Gov. Chris Christie signed into law a move to lower the ceiling on annual tax increases from 4 percent to 2 percent.


With that signature, the governor began starving towns and schools of revenue. Why would he want to do that? It’s simple: there is too much local government.


Well governor, The Trentonian is here to help.




A team of the newspaper’s editors and reporters met with experts and checked the numbers, and came up with a new Mercer County region. You will see that, among other things, it turns Ewing and Trenton into one small city. More on that later.




The map is something of a thought experiment; we are hoping it will make people think.

And, frankly, residents better start thinking. As The Trentonian’s Joan Galler reports elsewhere in today’s newspaper, there is momentum in the state for consolidation. The governor has pointed to the Princetons as a successful model.

You can laugh or scoff, but there’s evidence that some of you are already thinking about this issue.

2 comments:

  1. I am in favor of ANY consolidation effort, BUT ONLY if it keeps Trenton firmly in the current boundaries, and preserves Ewing as a separate governmental entity or pushes it to another entity (Lawrence, Hamilton, etc.). Trenton is on the verge of a downward spiral where cuts in services and lack of ability to police crime leads to residents and businesses fleeing, which harms the tax base and leads to further cuts. Trenton's economic and crime problems are too big to just blend in with another township and assume everything will be OK. Rather than the other township pulling Trenton up, Trenton will pull the other down.

    Did you hear This American Life's profile of Trenton? http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/459/transcript

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  2. Why couldn't ewing be joined with Lawrence? That would be a much better fit. I know ewing has long been the black sheep of Mercer , just behind trenton. But growing up there and living there still , I know that the last thing ewing needs is for Mercer to give up on us completely. Merge trenton with Hamilton and squish allentown with robbinsville. Ewing only has 5 schools and would be no help in that area. Also with our diminished police force we can't add any to that issue either. Think on it.

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