City protecting
waterfront district
To the editor:
Recent newspaper articles in The Beacon indicate that the owners of Lambertville Station have turned to the Planning Board in their effort to alter the vision the City of Lambertville has put in place over the last few years to protect and enhance the city’s waterfront district between the Delaware River and the Delaware and Raritan Canal.
Guided by the well-informed and thoughtful Master Plan developed by the Planning Board, City Council has adopted ordinances that strike a balance between commercial development and other uses in an effort to ensure the best quality of life for residents and visitors alike. We know those ordinances to be based on sound zoning and planning principles.
We applaud the choices that have been made by the Planning Board, the mayor and City Council, and we urge them to stay true to their vision and resist the Station’s effort to expand the commercial zoning along the waterfront.
In October 1998, consistent with the Master Plan that had been adopted by the Planning Board in November 1997, City Council adopted a zoning ordinance that placed the Ferrellgas site, located in the section of the waterfront south of Swan Creek, in the residential conservation district. The state owns the vast majority of land for active and passive recreation south of Swan Creek. The uses permitted in the R-C district are single-family detached dwellings, parks and recreation, conservation and municipal uses. Commercial uses, including parking lots are prohibited.
In April 2001, consistent with the prohibition in the R-C district, City Council adopted another amendment to its zoning ordinance that prohibits a privately owned parking lot as a primary use on any property in the city.
The Station owners purchased the Ferrellgas property in July 1999 knowing that the city had carefully drawn the boundaries of the commercial district along the waterfront and had placed the Ferrellgas property in the R-C district. Since purchasing the property, however, the owners have sought to utilize the property for a commercial use.
The current proposal is for a parking lot. At one time an office building was also proposed for the site. We view the proposed lot not as additional parking but as replacement parking needed to enable the Station to expand its existing uses or develop new uses on its commercially zoned property fronting on Bridge Street. The Station already has excess parking for its current uses.
In addition, we understand that City Council is actively considering purchasing the former Acme property as a possible site for parking that would serve the downtown business district, presumably eliminating the need for additional parking elsewhere.
The existing R-C zoning for the Ferrellgas site was a considered and prudent choice made by the Planning Board and the City Council, and we support it. The zoning for that parcel is part of a development plan for the entire town. The choice resulted from much deliberation and community input, and it reflects the wishes of the community. The reasons that the city chose the R-C zoning for the site are described in detail in the City’s Master Plan. Those reasons continue to have strong application.
We know of no reason for the Planning Board to alter the Master Plan it has put in place to protect and enhance the city’s waterfront district. We will be at the Planning Board meeting on Sept. 5 to encourage the board to maintain its vision. We hope that through a combination of vision and perseverance, the Ferrellgas site will be put to a use permitted by the existing zoning.
Nick Brady
Lambertville
K-9 needed
in New Hope
To the editor:
I’m a bit perplexed.
I’m wondering how training for a K-9 could be approved by the mayor and council of New Hope, and then after the training is completed, these same leaders are afraid of using the dog?
If there were liability issues they were afraid of, perhaps they should have investigated these issues before they sent Cpl. Frank DeLuca off to school with his dog and saved him a lot of his own precious time and aggravation.
As a former cop, I was a member of an elite tactical unit for three years that was composed of six men and three K-9s. I know first-hand how valuable these dogs can be, and it blows my mind to think that the police union in New Hope could actually be opposed to using the dog. What are they afraid of? You would think that they would love having a K-9 on their force. K-9s would definitely help them perform their jobs better, which is enforcing the law, but, maybe, there’s the rub!
Heroin overdoses and deaths in Hunterdon County are at an all-time high. The county government there is so concerned about drugs coming into their county that they have come out publicly and admitted to the problem and are stepping up their efforts to stop the drug flow. New Hope lies just across the river from Hunterdon County. It would be naive to think that the same problem doesn’t exist here. I personally know several young people from New Hope, who went to New Hope-Solebury High School with my daughter, whose lives have been destroyed by heroin. I was asked to personally intervene in trying to help some of these kids, so I know what some of them went through.
Ecstasy is also a widely used drug in our area, and a number of large drug busts have occurred in Bucks County over the past few months. I am a social worker who has been working with troubled adolescents in Bucks County and New Jersey for the past 20 years, and substance abuse is my specialty. I am not naive and refuse to bury my head in the sand when it comes to recognizing that some of our local youth are experiencing serious life threatening problems with drugs.
The drugs are definitely here. Why not try to stop them from ruining others peoples lives?
I’ve also heard rumors that there are people in high places in New Hope and particularly their backers and cronies who like to dabble in drug use themselves. Might this be where some of the real pressure to not use the drug dog really stems from? Are they personally afraid of what a drug dog might find if allowed to do the job it was trained to do?
It’s also quite clear that the whole issue is really to slam Cpl. DeLuca. I do not know Cpl. DeLuca, but I have come to respect and admire him from afar for not knuckling under the pressure that has been put on him over the past few years. It is very clear to me that there has been a concentrated and definite attempt to harass this man at every turn and, if I was a member of the council, I would be more worried about a future lawsuit stemming from their abuse towards him, which has been documented in the press on quite a few occasions.
New Hope needs a strong police chief as soon as possible to oversee the police force. The police force has been overseen by a mayor and council with no direct experience in law enforcement itself. As long as they continue to dictate and waffle on policies and procedures that affect our local cops and make decisions based on personalities instead of what’s in the best interest of the citizens of New Hope, I predict that we will soon see more lawsuits and more taxpayers’ money going towards defending these decisions.
New Hope

