Talk:Borough of Princeton, New Jersey

1813-1838
The borough was created from portions of West Windsor and Montgomery in Middlesex and Somerset counties, respectively, in 1813. Mercer County was created 25 years later in 1838. For those 25 years, in which county was the borough located, Somerset or Middlesex? Or did it actually span two counties? 98.221.141.21 (talk) 22:27, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

When?
When will official consolidation take place? Is the township annexing the borough (or vice versa)?

Whatever the new municipality is called, that should be the name of the new article. Just as municipalities are merging, so too are Wikipedia articles. If the new entity is going to use the "Township" label, then the article name should indeed be "Princeton Township, New Jersey."

Since the borough and township already have a "consolidated" article of sorts, I don't think it's appropriate to have three separate Wikipedia articles post-consolidation. I don't think Hardwick and Pahaquarry ever had a comparable affinity, meaning the article for the defunct township is appropriate, but this practice would be silly in regards to the Princetons. 98.221.128.109 (talk) 04:58, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Consolidation approved
Just need to warn, the consolidation has been approved by voters to consolidate the township and borough of Princeton. (See nj.com article). How should we handle the merge? Leave the borough article, merge it? Write it as defunct? Mitch32(Never support those who think in the box) 02:57, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I would say keep the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey and Princeton Township, New Jersey articles as describing the historical municipalities and turn Princeton, New Jersey into the article describing the consolidated town. Dough 48 72  03:01, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I think it should be merged. A lot of the info here will become obsolete (the government, census info, geography). The schools can just be merged in. --♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 03:06, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Will wonders never cease! Now we'll be down to *only* 565 municipalities. Princeton has always been a challenging issue, because no one ever knew whether a person, place or thing was part of the borough or the township. I think that the article for the consolidated municipality should be the Princeton, New Jersey article, which covers the borough, the township *and* a great deal of history and lists of people that never fit well into one or the other. There was a great deal of confusion on the renaming of West Paterson to Woodland Park, New Jersey, and we should consider the timing of when this will take effect, as I'm sure that there are all sorts of logistics as to things like how will the merged municipality be governed? County, state and federal government was always the same and they already share a school district, which has its own independent article as do all New Jersey school districts. With Census 2010 just starting to provide data, we will have little choice but to present some sort of merged data for the two predecessor municipalities. I think that the borough and township articles should certainly remain, with explicit links to one or the other from outside articles changed to link to the Princeton article. Once the templates are changed, most of the inbound links can be cleaned up using AWB, except for links that reference the soon-to-be-historic predecessors. I will think further on this issue as newspaper reports clarify the situation. Alansohn (talk) 03:45, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Question though stands is should we cover the Princeton Borough article as defunct (and written is past-tense as such?)? It might help however, to at least the get the ball rolling, which is why I started this thread. (Also I love seeing the number at least go down, that in itself is a miracle.) Mitch32(Never support those who think in the box) 03:52, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Living in a county with 70 municipalities and 73 school districts (depending on how you count them), I couldn't be more in favor of pursuing consolidation. Of all the shared named municipalities (Andover Borough/Township, Boonton Town/Township, Burlington City/Township, Chatham Borough/Township, etc., and not to mention all the Washington Townships), Princeton has been the most confusing. It has a huge number of people associated with it, and sources usually just say the person is from "Princeton", without specify borough or township. And the whole "Borough of Princeton, New Jersey" thing never fit any standard naming convention. My major hesitation, as specified in the NJ.com article you linked to, is that the two municipalities have agreed to join together, but its unclear what the effective date is Is it today, tomorrow, January 1, 2012, or some unspecified date in the future once the details are all worked out. Changing a name is one thing, but there is little precedent (unfortunately) for such mergers. The Pahaquarry Township, New Jersey "merger" was really a takeover by Hardwick Township, New Jersey, as Pahaquarry had basically been depopulated. I would leave the two old articles for now, but put in a giant hatnote saying that a merger is forthcoming. Lets keep up discussion on this issue and see how it all plays out. Alansohn (talk) 04:46, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * And this source says that the formal wedding takes place in 2013. I think we have time to figure out the transition. Alansohn (talk) 05:04, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * If necessary, I think the information should be consolidated into one nice article. This was a complete surprise, but it makes sense that the two areas will become one. Similarly, I am near Freehold, and IMO, Freehold Township should mingle with Freehold Borough, even though Boro is where the county seat is.  Tinton5 (talk) 04:33, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Alansohn, the thing with Pahaquarry is not just depopulation, technically they didn't have enough people to run township government (4 of the 6 remaining residents couldn't run for public office, (Don't ask me how the hell Tavistock pulls this off)). Pahaquarry still has its own, rather stubby article (and there's some interesting articles about its lack of population that are fun.) I know we have time to work on this, but some headway never hurts. ) Tinton5, at least you're not sandwich with 14,000 residents between two large townships (Edison & Piscataway) and a city (New Brunswick). That gets annoying when it comes to the merger debate. Mitch32(Never support those who think in the box) 14:11, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think a merger of articles should take place. At the very least not until the towns are actually merged. We don't even know what type of municipality the new town will be, i.e., township, borough, town, or city.Njsustain (talk) 10:42, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Borough of Princeton, New Jersey
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Borough of Princeton, New Jersey's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "CensusArea": <li>From Robbinsville Township, New Jersey: Gazetteer of New Jersey Places, United States Census Bureau. Accessed October 23, 2012.</li> <li>From Ewing Township, New Jersey: Gazetteer of New Jersey Places, United States Census Bureau. Accessed January 17, 2012.</li> <li>From Monmouth Beach, New Jersey: Gazetteer of New Jersey Places, United States Census Bureau. Accessed October 17, 2012.</li> <li>From Somerville, New Jersey: Gazetteer of New Jersey Places, United States Census Bureau. Accessed October 18, 2012.</li> <li>From Hightstown, New Jersey: Gazetteer of New Jersey Places, United States Census Bureau. Accessed October 16, 2012.</li> <li>From East Windsor Township, New Jersey: Gazetteer of New Jersey Places, United States Census Bureau. Accessed July 13, 2012.</li> <li>From Hopewell Township, Mercer County, New Jersey: Gazetteer of New Jersey Places, United States Census Bureau. Accessed September 23, 2012.</li> <li>From West Windsor Township, New Jersey: Gazetteer of New Jersey Places, United States Census Bureau. Accessed October 25, 2014.</li> <li>From Hillsborough Township, New Jersey: Gazetteer of New Jersey Places, United States Census Bureau. Accessed Accessed October 20, 2012.</li> <li>From Robbinsville, New Jersey: Gazetteer of New Jersey Places, United States Census Bureau. Accessed October 21, 2012.</li> <li>From Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey: Gazetteer of New Jersey Places, United States Census Bureau. Accessed March 1, 2012.</li> </ul>

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 21:59, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Who gets to be mayor?
There is a Commentary by Chad Goerner, mayor of Princeton Township, New Jersey, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, December 6, 2012, page A22, explaining how this first large municipal consolidation in more than a century saves a lot of money, and how the New Jersey Local Option Municipal Consolidation Act of 2007 makes mergers possible. What the Commentary does not explain, is who gets to be mayor when previously there were two mayors. More information on this is needed. --DThomsen8 (talk) 20:07, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * They had an election last month in both the borough and the township to elect a new mayor for a post-consolidated Princeton. The winner was Liz Lempert, so after the first of January, neither of the current mayors will still be in power. See here: http://princeton.patch.com/elections-2 98.221.141.21 (talk) 04:26, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Borough no longer exists? Huh?
It looks stupid to say the borough ceased to exist on December 31, 2012 when "Princeton Borough" continues to exist. Princeton Township no longer exists. It sounds more like the borough "expanded" and absorbed all of Princeton Township. Can someone point to a source that specifies something "new" about the new Princeton Borough other than its much larger size? Because otherwise, the beginning of this article needs to be edited to indicate that really, Princeton Borough still exists and just recently absorbed Princeton Township, nothing more. Famartin (talk) 10:46, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The former Princeton borough and the former Princeton township had a true merge, wherein both of their former municipal governments were abolished and superseded by a new consolidated government. If Princeton borough had simply annexed the township, then the township offices would have ceased to exist but the borough offices would continue, now governing the whole territory.  But that's not what happened.  Both former governments (township and borough) were dissolved and the old municipalities ceased to exist, so the new consolidated borough is NOT the same entity as the former borough.


 * That said, I agree the new municipality is still indeed titled a borough and people are dancing around that fact. I think it should be stated that Princeton is a borough that was created after the merger of the former borough and township. However, Famartin, you're incorrect to say the old borough simply "expanded" because the old borough did not absorb the township.  Both municipalities ceased to be and were replaced by this new borough.  98.221.141.21 (talk) 05:44, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Merge into Princeton, New Jersey
Don't see any reason for this to remain a separate article. Time to merge. Who's with me? Famartin (talk) 18:40, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I feel that the two old articles should be kept but they should be gutted and be no more than a paragraph explaining that they ceased to exist Jan 1, 2013, and contain the final census info. That seems to be the protocol with other former municipalities, like Pahaquarry and Island Beach.    98.221.141.21 (talk) 05:55, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

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