To the editor:
We have been Princeton taxpayers for nearly three decades and stand vehemently opposed to the proposed Princeton Public Schools Board of Education referendum.
As retirees on fixed incomes, we are now ruthlessly being driven out of Princeton after nearly 30 years of residence here. Without the sewer fee, the taxes on our very modest, obsolete home are now approaching $14,000 annually, an outrageous sum in exchange for the very poor level of municipal services we receive and a rapidly aging and inadequate infrastructure in comparison to other communities with much, much lower combined taxes.
We have examined the school budgets of a dozen high-performing school districts with similar demographics in the northern half of the state, including neighboring West Windsor-Plainsboro and Montgomery.
Having lived in northern New Jersey for much of our lives, we know for a fact that the cost of living is consistently higher there than in this part of central New Jersey, yet the per pupil cost for Princeton even without any proposed increases far exceeds that of any high-performing district we examined.
The results of our comparative analysis have been widely distributed throughout the community and have been updated earlier this year based on available New Jersey Department of Education data.
We respectfully request that the Princeton Board of Education not increase our already burdensome, if not impossible, property taxes with additional costs that provide no apparent benefit to the public school students of Princeton.
Frank Wiener and Virginia Diaconu
Princeton
