By: Sue Kramer
An occasional series of chats with local officials.?
LAMBERTVILLE – "Obviously, truck traffic is the thing we’re continuing to work on," Mayor David Del Vecchio said last week as he looked back on his nine years as mayor and his vision for the future.
Mr. Del Vecchio said a state-level bipartisan truck task force he proposed is still in its infancy, but progress is being made.
The topic was truck traffic, an issue that heated up after Joan Eschen, 54, of Delaware Township was killed May 12 after a tractor-trailer crashed into the front of the Lambertville Video Store where she was working.
"The League of Municipalities appointed myself and Ron Sworen, the mayor of Frenchtown, as co-chairs," he said.
The task force has been working with Mason Griffin & Pierson, a law firm in Princeton, on a pro bono basis to file a "friend of the court brief for the legal challenge against the ban."
With the current 102-inch wide truck ban being challenged in court by trucker’s associations, the brief, which contains anecdotal information and truck accident statistics in support of the statewide ban, would ensure the ban won’t be overturned, according to Mr. Del Vecchio.
"We talked about it, and we thought that before we tried to extend the ban, that we do something to keep the current ban in effect," he said. "Once we do everything we can to protect the current ban, then we’ll meet and actually formally form and then go to extend the ban to 96 inches. We’re going to do everything possible to extend the ban to 96-inch trucks. This is a unique community, and I think the question is how to keep it a unique community. "Obviously, one of the things the people of our community are concerned with is not becoming a New Hope," he said.
While Mr. Del Vecchio sees this as a community fear, he said the city’s position on development, the city’s number of homeowners who also own city based businesses and the lack of absentee landlords make Lambertville very different from New Hope, and would prevent this from happening.
Traffic is another community concern Mr. Del Vecchio is working with residents to resolve. While he’s able to install speed bumps and enact legislation to slow traffic, "I will be greatly relieved when PennDOT, and I’ll believe it when I see it, ever fixes the Route 32 bridge," he said.
The bridge, which has been out of service since Hurricane Floyd, is still under construction, enticing many motorists to travel through Lambertville, a route shorter than the Pennsylvania detour, to get to their homes and businesses in Pennsylvania.
"Someone at PennDOT should be shot," he said emphatically. "There’s no question in my mind that while traffic has increased steadily since 1990, that there’s been a dramatic increase since Hurricane Floyd."
Looking back on the past nine years, "There are four things that I’ve been involved with since day one," he said. "One, and a thing I think I’ve done, is stabilize taxes."
Mr. Del Vecchio pointed out real estate prices rose in the late 1980s and with them, home assessments and tax rates also rose.
While some people "cashed in" and moved from the area, many people stayed and endured "the double tax hit."
In the nine years since he’s taken office, the municipal tax rate has increased less than 1 percent a year with the cost of municipal services remaining at the same level over the period.
"Sometimes," he said, "you can solve people’s problems very directly and very easily. One of the things I’ve tried to do for people who’ve lived in town their whole lives and may be on a fixed income, is curb some municipal services, hold the line and stabilize taxes.
"Second," he continued, "we’ve opened up government so that we have people appointed from all portions of town, and I think that’s a healthy thing. Everyone’s involved in government who wants to be."
Mayor Del Vecchio also has tried to "get our fair share of money from the state and federal governments. We just got done working with Sen. (Robert) Torricelli and Congressman (Rush) Holt" to get $20,000 to waterproof the Lambertville Public School. Mr. Del Vecchio also has gotten grants to renovate City Hall, improve drainage and for streets projects.
"We’ve also gotten about $500,000 from different municipalities to renovate homes," he said.
Mr. Del Vecchio explained, "If they don’t want to do additional housing, which has to be low- and moderate-income housing," they can give it to another municipality in exchange for a credit.
"We’ll take it!" he said.
The city has received these funds from Union, Alexandria, Delaware and West Amwell townships. Community Development money has been used to improve and develop properties like the Lambertville House, River Horse Brewery and Cross Currents in La Rochere during Mr. Del Vecchio’s reign.
"The biggest failure in this process has been Raspino’s," Mr. Del Vecchio said, referring to the former Acme site. "We won a judgment against Raspino’s. Will we ever see any money? I’m not sure. I thought, particularly for the state, who gave us the money and for the fact that it was public money, we had to do everything possible to get the money back."
Mr. Del Vecchio said the owner, Kin Properties, is going through the city Planning Board to fix the crumbling parking lot. The building will eventually be rented.
Mr. Del Vecchio looks to the diversity of Lambertville’s residents as the future of the city.
"One of the important things of our community, Mr. Del Vecchio said, "is that we have a diverse population in terms of, while it’s mostly white, we have an Hispanic population, we have a gay/lesbian population, and everyone seems to get along pretty well. We have newcomers, we have old-timers, and I think when we just have new people, I think you lose something.
"I think one of the hardest challenges" is the affordable housing issue, Mr. Del Vecchio said. "There’s a sort of sticker shock with real estate development. We participate in the Council for Affordable Housing programs. One of the reasons we’ve done that is we’re trying to keep it so people who are born and raised here can continue to live here."
The final thing Mr. Del Vecchio wanted to accomplish was the settlement of all police issues.
"While we’re not finished, I think we’ve done a good job with the Police Department," he said. "We still have work to do there, but, considering that, through no fault of anybody’s, when I took over, the prosecutor had taken over the Police Department – the whole department. I think the professionalism, in terms of management, in the department is better."
He added, "We finally got the police station issue under control. The construction is about to go on for that. It’s (Chuck’s Auto Body) has been demolished so it’s just literally the walls."
The construction, he said, will begin "any day now."
"The state can come and arrest me before I’ll pay any fines," he said emphatically, referring to the state’s threat to fine Lambertville for not completing the police station within its timeline. "They can take me and put me in the new police station in the jail before I’ll pay any fines. We tried very hard to solve that problem. We changed the site; that was probably our 14th site.
Mr. Del Vecchio said each time the city chose a site for the department, the residents in the immediate area voiced an objection.
"There was no reason that in doing this, we had to impact a neighborhood," he said. "At the time, we overpaid for it, it was $350,000, but it looks like a pretty good deal now," he said of the purchase of Chuck’s Auto Body on North Main Street.
"What you can do," he continued, "is if they come to arrest me, you can do a community cake and put a saw in it."
The mayor continued, "We’re working with a bunch of Connaught Hill residents to address some of their issues."
Residents in the area locally called The Commons have complained about junk cars and homeless people camping there.
"They have a bunch of legitimate issues they want us to focus on, and the process is taking a little longer than some people would like; but government doesn’t seem to work very quickly even if you push it.
"Generally speaking, when people bring concerns to us that we can address, we try to do it. Community disputes are the hardest part – solving people’s problems."
Some things Mr. Del Vecchio is asked to do are fairly easy to accomplish, though.
"A couple of times," he said, "I’ve helped people with their homestead rebates. That’s not hard for me to do, and that’s a big help for those individuals."
Volunteerism is something Mr. Del Vecchio considers the backbone of Lambertville.
"Even if you get paid $900 like (members of the City) Council, that’s still being a volunteer," he said. "I think the community cannot afford – whether it’s the government, whether it’s the squad or firefighter service – if you had to pay for it, I don’t know what we’d do.
"I’m a volunteer mayor, and I think the people appreciate the volunteers of this community. Obviously, firefighters are more critical to life in what they do, and the people appreciate what they do. I think there’s a general appreciation for people who serve. People come up to me, not every day, but enough, to say ‘Thanks for doing it.’ "
