For more than 15 years, Princeton voters have allowed the machinery of local government of both Princeton Township and Princeton Borough to operate unchecked, unregulated by any political opposition. These citizens, myself included, are now all paying dearly for that history and long lapse of judgment. What is happening here in the two Princetons may well begin happening in other municipalities across the state of New Jersey.

At the evening meeting of Aug. 9 at the Princeton Township Municipal Complex, seven taxpayers in a row took the floor, revealing one documented tax revaluation disaster after another. Charles Bushnell of Harrison Street owns a modest home on a tiny lot for which the tax assessor's comparable included a $2 million Carnegie Lake front property in Riverside. This is not a random distortion simply caused by the so-called "McMansions," larger new homes built on modest size lots of smaller demolished homes. This pattern recurs across many Princeton neighborhoods. It appears to be calculated to over-assess both land and building values in middle- and lower-middle income housing, whether they be small ranch homes in the Edgerstoune Hun School neighborhood of the township or the older, two-family semi-detached homes in the Jefferson area in a tax map quadrant called "Area 215."

If more than 15 percent of all Princeton assessments are determined to be flawed, the citizens may demand an entirely new revaluation.

Elected Princeton Township committee members failed at that meeting to give a yea or nay answer, by request of the 200 gathered voters, about their accountability as officeholders on this matter: Did they or did they not agree with this assessment they certified? They refused to answer.

Many of us residents are decrying the 2010 Princeton property tax revaluation for what it really is: a flawed, uneven and unfair process. Mounting evidence of malfeasance and demonstrated ineptitude is growing each day. The citizens' group Princeton Fair Tax Alliance is now reviewing assessment records with the help of homeowners, who are collating neighborhood tax data for the majority of neighborhoods; the findings are disturbing.

A second more fundamental problem related to the revaluation is the overall level of municipal spending. The Princetons' elected officials have created a budget with fixed costs that are simply too big -- more than $65 million combined. Does this reflect an absence of fiscal stewardship? Or is the county's flawed tax assessment process and the borough council's or township committee's unrestrained spending over the past decade to blame? Excessive municipal spending can help depress property values. This may be one of the unintended consequences of years of unchecked spending by the Princetons and many other New Jersey communities.

Habitual excessive public spending and high-wage municipal contracts have hamstrung the property-tax base. The post-World War II vision is now crumbling. The range of home values today in the Princetons is narrower than it was four years ago. So, while local governments in the Princetons and elsewhere are battling high fixed costs established in the good years, the larger pool of middle-income homeowners appears set to be disproportionately tapped for badly needed tax revenue to balance swollen budgets.

The property taxes of an elderly widow who attended the Municipal Complex Princeton Fair Tax Alliance meeting late last month have been raised from $6,000 to $11,000; if she cannot win an appeal, she will need to move. This, too, is a problem, because there is no transparency concerning appealed tax bills that are reset by the county tax appeals board. Those in power will silence their sharpest critics, unfortunate taxpayers like this widow, with arbitrary tax resets.

A paradox exists. A flawed Mercer County reassessment approach steeped in the so-called "extraction method" is forcing inflation of middle-income home and land assessments. And the habitual promise of ever greater municipal services that can never be delivered without expanding the tax base shapes the Princetons into an elite, high-tax enclave. If this comes to pass, it will transform the towns' culture and the way of life for many, especially the Princetons' seniors citizens. As the revaluation controversy continues, Princeton governments are busily discussing funding $4 million for "needed" municipal pool upgrades and expansion. They simply do not comprehend the cause and effect.

Upon certification of the property-tax revaluation, Princeton Township Committee officials gave up control and let the consultants at Appraisal Systems, which performed the revaluations, and the career bureaucrats in Mercer County government concoct something not even closely resembling a fair tax policy. The assessment distortions appearing again and again are so blatant that they require suspension of all disbelief.

Balancing the public purse, and doing so without borrowing, as all families try to do, is the real goal. Holding down spending at local and county levels may one day pre-empt the Garden State from its status as the highest property-taxed state in the union. For now, municipal employees' pay and benefits packages need to be carefully monitored and audited. The growing pension obligation of these high-cost contracts will be with us for years to come.

Managing our infrastructure, our water, our sewer, our roads and our property-tax base professionally, and most important, making sure our families and children are safe, all within our collective means, is imperative.

Douglas Miles is a Republican candidate for Princeton Township Committee. Contact him at dougmiles01@gmail.com or Facebook -- "Doug Miles."