PRINCETON: Candidate profile – Tim Quinn: Wants to be bridge for town and schools

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Former school board president Tim Quinn is looking to return to public life by winning a seat on the Princeton Council.
The first step on that journey will come June 7 in the Democratic primary, in a year when two seats are available.
“I come to this as someone who knows what it’s like to be an elected official,” Mr. Quinn, 58, said in a recent interview. “When I’m studying an issue, I’m studying it from all sides. I’m listening to all voices before coming up with a well-reasoned decision.”
He touched on the need for the town to work with the school district to save money. Asked for an example where that could occur, he talked of sharing services around maintenance and facilities.
“I’d like to see the town explore with the school district the possibility of whether we can save money on waste removal. Frankly, I think that’s a conversation that we should explore with (Princeton) University, with our neighbors across the street,” he said.
Mr. Quinn said he feels he is “uniquely qualified” to be the bridge between the town and the school district, having served two terms on the board of education beginning in 2008.
“I understand the board governance,” he said. “I understand the culture, I understand the administrators, all of whom I’ve worked with. I strongly suspect, and know, that there are potential savings there that have the potential to limit future tax increases that are a win-win for both the municipality and the board.”
During his tenure on the board, he served some of that time as board president. In reflecting on that leadership role, he said, “I wanted everyone to feel that their service on the board was meaningful.”
“I also told all new members,” he continued, “that they should feel free to bring up a dissenting voice or that not every vote had to be a unanimous vote.”
On the future of the old Valley Road School, he said he hopes there is a decision on what to do with it within the next three years. It was an issue he dealt with on the school board.
“Right now, I think we’re stuck, and it’s not for a lack of leadership and it’s also not for a lack of respect of an asset,” he said. “I’d like to see it resolved, one way or the other.”
In campaigning around town, Mr. Quinn said he hears concerns about the practice of developers buying homes, razing them and constructing new ones that are “sometimes far out of character for the neighborhoods.”
A key issue in the race is the affordability of Princeton, amid concerns that the town is too expensive to live in. Along the lines of creating more affordable housing, he thinks it makes sense to have a “possible expansion” of Princeton Community Village.
He talked of the town working with developers to “maybe” increase the amount of residential units they must set aside for affordable housing.
“It’s also incumbent upon us, as an inclusive community, as a community that does welcome all income levels, to provide opportunities for affordable housing for greater numbers of people,” he said.
On town/gown relations with Princeton University, he said “cooperation” would characterize his approach to dealing with Nassau Hall.
“They’re our neighbors, the town owes a lot of its character and a lot of what makes us Princeton to the fact that we have a world class university as a part of our town,” he said.
Of the effect of the university’s plans to expand enrollment, he said the town has to look at the infrastructure and the services that would have to be provided to accommodate more people. In particular, he pointed to increases of faculty members who might be living in town and more employees commuting into Princeton.
Mr. Quinn, a graduate of The College of New Jersey with a degree in English, is a former journalist, including a stint at the Trenton Times. Married, he has lived in the community for 26 years.
Since October 2000, he has been the marketing and communications director at the Princeton Public Library. The town provides funding to the library budget, so Mr. Quinn said he would recuse himself from that matter if elected to council.
Mr. Quinn’s involvement in the community includes serving on the board of Anchor House, and as a past member of the board of the American Boychoir School from June 2009 to March 2013. His service at the school, which his son had attended, came in the years leading up to the Boychoir filing for bankruptcy protection in 2015.
“We as a board made a decision to move the school to Plainsboro and to sort of change the structure of what we were doing,” he said of his time there. “And that was done with the best intentions and based on financial models that were constructed by people who were very successful in the private sector. So obviously, it didn’t work out the way that it had been planned or hoped.”
Asked if he would be push back against town administration when he disagreed with staff on a financial forecast or the need for a project, Mr. Quinn said he would.
“I’m not a rubber stamp, and I never have been a rubber stamp for anything,” he said. “I believe that when you have an environment of mutual respect, where an administrator knows what your intentions are, knows what your thinking is, knows your passion for an issue, that dissenting voices are a part of reaching consensus.”