Business View Magazine | October 2019

236 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2019 100 YEARS OF PRIDE AND PROGRESS AT A GLANCE PLAINSBORO TOWNSHIP, NEW JERSEY WHAT: 100-year-old Township; population 23,500 WHERE: Middlesex County, New Jersey WEBSITE: www.plainsboronj.com C ongratulations to Plainsboro Township, New Jersey – celebrating its 100th anniversary as a prime example of pride and progress! Originally a part of South Brunswick Township in the late 1700s, the land that is now Plainsboro Township was given to newly formed Cranbury Township in 1872. Plainsboro was established as a farming community with abundant land and water supplies for growing a variety of in-demand crops. Many believe the name of the town, itself, came from the description of the area. In 1918, when the superintendent of public education for Middlesex County reviewed the village schools in Plainsboro, he found one of them to have insufficient fire egress and proclaimed that a new school be built. When Cranbury Township declined to provide the funds for this, the local citizens successfully petitioned the New Jersey legislature to form a new town, and on May 6th, 1919 Plainsboro Township was incorporated. Today, environmental sustainability is a top priority for this future-focused town of 24,000. According to Anthony Cancro, Plainsboro Township Administrator, the Township Committee has pursued many initiatives to promote sustainability. “Plainsboro is actively engaged with Sustainable Jersey, a non-profit organization that has established hundreds of environmental actions. If a town or school undertakes a particular action, they gain points for certification as bronze, then silver, and Plainsboro is on a second round of being certified as a bronze community.” The second area involves electricity services. New Jersey passed a law that allowed municipalities to act as a group and procure electricity in “aggregate” from a third party. The goal is to go out to bid to get better electricity prices. It’s called the Plainsboro Community Energy Aggregation (PCEA) Program. Thus far, the program has been bid twice, saving residents 18% in the first round and 15% in the second round. During the first PCEA round, the third party vendor had a 21 percent renewable energy portfolio