Anna Bosted
For 14 years, Trenton resident Brian Hill has been a Christmas Santa, featured in Trenton’s annual Thanksgiving parade. Last year, Trenton’s mayor Tony Mack publicly acknowledged Hill during the parade, saying, according to an article in The Trentonian, “‘Let’s give it up for Santa. We love you. We’ve got a lot of great plans for our city, and we cannot do them without [Santa].’” Less than a year later, Hill was laid off from his job as the director of the Ellarslie city art museum director by the mayor’s office.
In a recent interview with The VOICE Hill explained the situation as he sees it. He said, “From 1989 to fiscal year 2010, the budget of $13,570 [for Ellarslie] never changed. On that budget, [I] raised annual attendance from 4,000 to 21,000, [between 1998 and 2010.] Ellarslie became something wonderful.”
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Solar Field Replaces Corn Field
Long Term Payoff of Mercers Solar Panels Still Unclear
Mercer is set to become the home of the largest solar panel array on a college campus in North America. The energy installation is to be built in one of the corn fields adjacent to the college and is scheduled to be completed by December 2012.
Mercer’s President, Dr. Patricia Donahue, told The VOICE, that the solar project will not cause student tuition to be raised as the funds are coming from a renewable energy initiative at the state and county level.
Donohue believes the project will ultimately save MCCC money. She said, “We have cut an awful lot of our budget lately...part of the savings [on electricity] we hope will help stabilize some of the cutting [of staff] we’ve had to do.” Actual figures on how much the college will save will not be available until the project is complete, but a Mercer press release issued in September estimated the savings at $1 million per year.
Donahue explained that the total combined utility bills for the James Kearney Campus and the West Windsor campus are around $3.4 million and are responsible for roughly 6 percent of the budget. Donohue says the goal is for the solar panels to provide 70 percent of the power usage for the West Windsor campus.
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