GUEST OPED

Time waits for no one — A look at our first two years in office

Trenton is a tough town. Members of our community waited decades for progress and have every right to hold us accountable if we fail to deliver on securing a better future for our city. However, while I appreciate Irvin Stoolmacher’s “progressive perspective” on our first two years, it’s clear he left a lot out. I’m happy to tell him the rest of the story.

First, for years, Trenton was frozen out of millions of dollars in federal funding because of concerns that the city couldn’t properly manage the funds. Well, we finally put in place the appropriate staff, consultants, and expertise, and we’ve restored that trust.

The result? Freeing up nearly $800,000 in federal monies to close the funding gap for Patriot Village II, which will turn a once vacant lot into 72 affordable homes in North Trenton when it’s completed in October 2021. In addition, unfreezing years of Community Development Block Grants not only allowed us to recoup $1.5 million in federal reimbursements, we’re now able to use another $3.75 million to restore our youth programs, parks, and senior centers. On deck is the ambitious Van Sciver project to transform three vacant buildings into 100 market rate units downtown.

Second, any review of our first two years would be remiss without discussing the unprecedented progress we made on our goal to turn Trenton Water Works (TWW) into a leading public water system in the U.S.

We started by addressing a critical staffing shortage with 70 new hires (over 90 percent of whom are Trenton residents) and implementing corrosioncontrol measures to prevent lead particles from leaching into our drinking water. In addition, TWW launched the first phase of a $150 million program that will replace 4,300 lead services lines by June 2021 and is already halfway done with a $2 million project to replace all 24 filters at the water filtration plant.

We’ll continue to build on these efforts with a $405 million, six-year capital plan to improve drinking water production, storage, and distribution, all while removing remaining lead services from the TWW system. While suburbanites like Irwin and other nearby politicos don’t believe Trenton can maintain its own water system, we’re doing everything we can to preserve the water utility as a critical city asset.

Third, Trenton, at its own expense, opened Mercer County’s first COVID-19 testing site in late March for first responders on the front lines of the pandemic and TWW employees who were needed to avoid an emergency shutdown. We even partnered with Greater Trenton Inc. to start the COVID-19 Business Emergency Loan program, which provides two percent interest loans of up to $20,000. These loans have generous repayment terms and help cover payroll, rent, mortgage payments and utility costs. To date, 17 emergency loans totaling over $331,000 have successfully closed, with another 13 loans totaling over $223,000 in underwriting.

Fourth, we were able to do all this while working with the Murphy administration and our partners in the legislature to reverse the crippling state aid reductions Trenton endured under the Christie Administration. Not only did our combined efforts help restore the Capital City Line Item in the N.J. State Budget, which provided $10 million in funding to Trenton in its first year alone, we also helped increase direct state aid from $9 million in 2018 to $18.25 million by 2020.

Finally, we know all too well the challenges of controlling violent crime, an issue many cities across the country are struggling with as local economies wane from the pandemic. Yet our Police Department, despite being understaffed from years of budget cuts, still took 100 guns off our streets during the last year. Just last week, six of our officers were injured – one critically – while apprehending three armed suspects before they could hurt more Trentonians.

To help deter these crimes in the future, we recently green-lit a $4.5 million real-time crime center that will aid our officers with gunfire detection, video surveillance, and sharing criminal intelligence. Police Director Sheilah Coley and I toured a similar site in Newark last month, and we’re confident our investment will pay off when it goes live later this year.

However, anyone who has been around Trenton long enough will tell you that violence is a symptom – historical neglect is the disease. As such, while we promote development with increased federal funding, state aid, and small business support, we’re also giving residents with a criminal history a second chance. In fact, we’re creating the most extensive reentry program in Trenton history to help folks returning from incarceration find employment, housing, and other support.

The first prospective employer? The City of Trenton. We already changed the city application process to access applicants’

backgrounds on a case-by-case basis rather than a seven-year lookback that would automatically disqualify them for having a criminal record.

This is just a snapshot of the people we help every day. The business owners who are still up and

running due to COVID-19 relief. The Trenton youth who can now enjoy Hetzel Pool for the first time in 10 years because we secured over $2.9 million in hazardous site remediation grants to transform a notorious dumping ground into a world-class recreational

center. The residents who never thought they would get a second chance with the very city in which they committed a crime, rewriting their own history with a career in public service.

We’re not even close to declaring victory at this

point. No one can reverse decades of neglect in just two years and COVID-19 isn’t going away anytime soon. But there’s no doubt we’ve come a long way. It’s not enough for Trenton to simply endure these troubled times: we need to prosper, and

that’s exactly what we are trying to do.

I have no problem updating Irwin or anyone else on our accomplishments and challenges. But at the end of the day, I report to the great people of Trenton. This response is for them.