In the 47 years since Hamilton first moved to the mayor-council form of municipal government, only five people have been elected mayor of the township.
Jeff Martin is the fifth of five, and just the second Democrat to hold the position since John K. Rafferty’s first term in 1976. He is running for a second term this year, and will be hoping to maintain the status quo on Election Day in November, when voters will decide whether Martin or Republican challenger Marty Flynn will lead the township for the next four years.
Flynn, a long-time educator and current athletic director at Trenton Catholic Academy, was prominent on the staff of elected Hamilton mayor number four, Kelly Yaede. The Hamilton Post plans to interview Mr. Flynn in an upcoming issue.
On May 19, the Post sat down with Mayor Martin to discuss his first term, his hopes for a second term, his plans for the future, and more. The following Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
Community News: As we are sitting here on May 19, firefighters are still onsite at the former Goodall Rubber building on Whitehead Road, which caught fire early in the morning of the day before. Tell us about how this catastrophe unfolded from the mayor’s perspective.
Jeff Martin: There’s a funny situation where, whenever our fire chief goes on vacation, we get a major event. Chief Richard Kraemer went on vacation when we had the solar panel fire at Home Depot. Now Chief (Chris) Tozzi went on vacation, and we have this major fire.
I got a call at 1:15 a.m. yesterday from (deputy chief) John Retalis alerting me to the fire. There wasn’t much for me to do at that point. I got on scene probably a little after 7 and got an update from him on what exactly had happened.
From that point forward, my job became a public-facing thing, in addition to providing moral support and ensuring that all our departments were involved if they needed to be. I gave press conferences and stayed in touch with my chief of staff (Bianca Jerez), who is also our chief information officer, so we could get information out to the public, to the media, on what was going on, then worked on coordinating additional resources that we may need.
Later, I went door-to-door near the site, knocking on doors, letting residents know that DEP was on site doing air quality samples. I let them know, if they had any damage, to go through their homeowner or renter’s insurance. I knocked on probably 20 doors, leaving them information.
I’ve been back and forth ever since, getting updates and information so I can communicate it to my staff. We’re blessed here in Hamilton to have great leaders in many departments, so they did a lot without me even being involved. We had 20 some fire trucks out at the scene — they used up a lot of diesel fuel, so we had to have public works bring fuel out from our Public Works yard out to the site so they could keep pumping water, keep their ladders up.
We had our police department out there doing traffic control, had people out there doing barricades and signs. That shows you the coordination of the different departments that had to go on to that kind of scene to make that a success.
Community News: You’ve recently announced that Capt. Kenneth DeBoskey will become the new police chief on June 1. What was your role in selecting Chief DeBoskey?
Jeff Martin: Hamilton is a civil service town. That means there’s a state process for hirings, a state process for promotions. It does allow some wiggle room, but there’s a test has to be taken for the next police chief. Of the three captains who tested, Capt. DeBoskey came out number one.
So I knew then, from an objective standpoint, who was number one. Then I interviewed the three captains and let myself digest that information before making the decision. Chief (James) Stevens had a mandatory retirement, so we knew this was coming, which gave me time to think on it and have us have a smooth transition from Chief Stevens to soon to be Chief DeBoskey.
Community News: You’re running for a second term as mayor this year. Was there any point in the last 3 1/2 years when you thought that you might not run again this year?
Jeff Martin: Oh, there’s great days and there’s bad days. If you’re putting your heart and soul into this job, there’s going to be days when you’re asking yourself, Why am I still pursuing this? I think that’s probably true in many jobs, but especially in this job.
I will tell you that the good days far outweigh the bad days. The good work you are able to do far outweighs some of the challenges. The positive feedback has far outweighed any of the criticisms of the past three years. There are things I still want to accomplish out there, and that made the decision to run an easy one.
Community News: Tell us about those things you still want to accomplish.
Jeff Martin: We’re still in the middle of pushing a transformation of Trenton Water Works. It’s not a one-day, one-month or even a one-year fix to get it on a different path. There needs to really be a systemic and structural transformation of Trenton Water Works. What that means in the end is a moving target a little bit, but we know there’s a lot of work to get it to a place where residents and businesses can trust without hesitation the water they’re getting.
There’s been strides made under Mayor (Reed) Gusciora, but it’s been a little of a roller coaster ride. I think now with help from DEP, uniting the servicing municipalities’ mayors and knowing that we are paying attention and pursuing this to a far greater degree than it has been in the past, I think we are on a way to that transformation.
There is also the (proposed new) municipal complex, which is something I never anticipated doing or being involved in, but that comes with the job in a good way. Working in partnership with the school district and the school board, working in partnership with our council, council working in tandem with the county — we are talking about giving the town first a building that’s functional, but also a building that they can be proud of.
It’s going to sit in the center of the township, and we want people to come there and drive by there and have pride in that building. Those are two major goals to complete.
Third is, we’ve really been doing a good job on getting grants from a variety of sources. We want to pursue new grants and new opportunities, but I’ve been really excited about some of the grants we’ve received.
We’ve received a $75,000 grant to help at HGSA (Hamilton Girls Softball Association). We just received $750,000 in state grants for improvements to our Homedell complex. That’s a 100-year-old complex that houses three area nonprofits that all serve youth in the greater Hamilton area. It’s going to put a new roof on that building that hasn’t had a new roof since the 1980’s, help make structural improvements to help it last another 100 years. It also means we will be able to put in new playground equipment.
We got a $300,000 grant from DEP to make improvements to the ponds at Sayen Gardens. It’s been a number of years since those ponds had big structural maintenance projects, and we want to reinvigorate Sayen Gardens that way. We also got a grant for our first electric garbage truck in town. We want to move toward electrifying our fleet, and this is our first step toward that.
We want to see these projects through to fruition, and see more projects through in the future as well.
Community News: What’s your relationship with the township council like? The mayor and council serve different roles in the management of the township, but what are the most important areas where you work together?
Jeff Martin: First, none of the accomplishments I’ve listed am I able to do by myself. We have a staff of over 700 people who work for the township, and we have a council that has to approve everything we want to do, whether it be the municipal building or pursuing grants.
As we are sitting here, one of the council members just called me. They call me, I call them, they bounce ideas off me, I bounce ideas off them. That’s what leads to a successful partnership. We introduce a budget, and we tell them that they need to do a thorough review of the budget. One, we may have missed something. Two, they have to give their thoughts and ideas on the budget as well.
We’re not put off, we’re not disgruntled if they come with ideas and opinions of their own — we encourage that so we can get to a better place together.
The nice thing about our current council is that they all have different backgrounds. One is a law enforcement officer, one is a public school teacher. One is a union plumber, one is involved in economic development, one brings banking experience and finance experience as well. They all bring their expertise, and that allows them to tackle a variety of issues.
Community News: The Water Works aside, what are you hearing from residents is the most pressing item on your administration’s agenda, and how are you addressing their concerns?
Jeff Martin: I’d say many times the first thing I hear is property taxes, especially in these very challenging times, with high inflation like we haven’t seen since the 80’s. So what I’m proud of is that, three years in a row now, we have adopted a budget that keeps our tax rate flat. What that means for our residents is the municipal portion of their property taxes, which only makes up about a third of their tax bill, they know that will be flat for them, and that allows them to keep more money in their pockets.
Many of our residents need to stretch their dollar further to buy chicken, to fill up their gas tank. We’ve tried not to increase that burden on them. We want them to be able to enter their kids in a Little League or youth soccer program, to get their kids outside, to give them socialization that they didn’t have during Covid. Certainly that’s always a top concern of residents, and we’ve done our best to be fiscally prudent and still provide the services they are expecting from us every day.
Community News: How have you been able to keep the tax rate flat? Is this something that is going to come due down the road?
Jeff Martin: Tax increases are inevitable. For a few years, you can hold the line, and we think we’ve done a good job of it. The budget that just passed, we are ending with a higher surplus than we’ve ever had before. For sure we’ll have more money in surplus than I inherited in 2020. We’ve done it, but we try to look ahead toward the future. Looking ahead 10 years, 20 years, you can’t avoid [a tax increase] eventually, but by watching every dollar, pursuing grants, giving that message to your directors that we want to watch every dollar, all that stuff contributes to what we’ve been able to accomplish now for three years in a row.
Community News: The Covid-19 pandemic, which hit right at the beginning of your term, presented unprecedented challenges for any administration. How do you look back on the way that your administration handled those challenges?
Jeff Martin: Again, I think communication was key. Right at that time, we started communicating with our residents in a number of different ways. At the peak of Covid, we were doing daily emails to let our residents know what was going on. There was so much information coming in that we wanted residents to know on that particular day.
We started a radio show — we know not all residents have the internet or access the internet every day, so in partnership with WBCB radio 1490 AM, I now have a monthly radio show. It’s morphed over time, but the first segment is almost always an update of what’s going on in town. We were communicating with our small businesses on what the rules and regulations were, because they were changing every week. For small businesses we also had a grant program, and helped them get access to those grants.
Those communications early in the pandemic actually allowed us to establish a relationship with our small businesses, and three years later, we are continuing that communication, letting them know about grants that are available now.
I’ve heard stories about some towns experiencing a 30% decline in small businesses, businesses that closed because of the pandemic. Yes, in Hamilton we’ve lost a few, but I think we’ve had more small businesses open than close. That just speaks to our economic development team and the efforts they have made to encourage small businesses to open in this town, and to help our small businesses weather an extremely difficult time as well.
Community News: What are your feelings on how the consolidation of Hamilton’s fire departments has gone, both for the fire division as well as for the residents and businesses of Hamilton?
Jeff Martin: I think certainly for our residents and businesses, it’s been a great success. I think the epitome of that has been the fire we just saw within the last 36 hours. Our firefighters and their leadership are a fantastic group, and kudos to them on the job they have done dealing with this situation.
With any big change (like consolidation of the fire departments), there’s ups and downs. It’s a learning experience for all those involved. I think I was a little naive, originally telling people it was going to be a yearlong process. It’s really a four-five years long process.
I think that because everybody, from fire leadership to the union, went into it with good faith, that it will have a successful end. I’m not going to say there haven’t been challenges, but I think we’ve been able to work through those challenges together.
Community News: You told the Post when you took office that three top issues on your agenda were the Water Works, fire consolidation and the animal shelter. What have you been able to do to improve the situation at the shelter? Is there more work still to be done?
Jeff Martin: There is always work to be done. I’m very proud of where we’ve taken the shelter from where it was when I was on council. While we’ve set goals for the shelter, it’s really been the shelter leadership and shelter staff that have made a lot of the key changes and took to heart the recommendations we made. All three years, we’ve far exceeded a 90% release rate. Compare that to when I was on council, before we launched the investigation, those numbers were in the 70% range.
Shelters are experiencing really challenging times post Covid. We’re at a very high occupancy rate, but our staff is taking on the challenge of making sure we don’t backslide, even as we have a very full shelter. Again, it goes back to a partnership, with council giving our shelter some of the tools and resources they need to be able to accomplish a lot.
Community News: What are some of your key accomplishments in terms of economic development in Hamilton over your first term?
Jeff Martin: We’ve had a number of projects on Route 33. Right where the Shop Rite is, you’re going to see the old gas station turned into a Valvoline car repair service, you’ll see a new Habit Burger next to that on what’s now a gravel lot. What I’m proud of too is, we had a developer approach us about a development further down 33, by the Cross and Shamrock. We didn’t feel like that was a great use of that site. We were able to get it so that the owner of that site donated that property to us, and now we get to preserve a small section of greenery on Route 33 as open space.
It’s not always projects that happen. Sometimes it’s projects that don’t happen that contribute to the town that way.
A fallacy for many people is that I have a magic wand, that I say yes or no to any particular project. We don’t have a monarchy where the mayor gets to dictate everything. We have a planning board, that I think is representative of the town, that does make these decisions. We have people who have lived here all their lives, and people who are new to the township on the planning board.
What we strive to do with these boards is make them representative of our town. Whether residents are in favor of a project or against, they know that the board is made up of their neighbors, is made up of businesspeople in the town who will make decisions that are in the best interest of the town as well.
Community News: Let’s talk about the planned municipal complex, which as proposed will become the new home of both the municipal government and the school district. What is the latest on that front?
Jeff Martin: There are two features that I hope will drive the success of this building. One is communication, and one is transparency. They really go hand in hand. When we acquired this property, we communicated to the community that we had acquired it, but we asked the community: What do you want this to be? Someone suggested a joint municipal complex, and that led us to communicate with the school district, that led us to communicate with council that we thought it was a good idea.
We’ve included the school district in almost every meeting, because we want them to enjoy the building and make sure it is functional for them as well. On Monday, June 12 at our senior center, we will have a public meeting, where community members can communicate not only what they want to see at the site, but also how the site can work better for them.
There’s no design as we sit here today on May 19. So while we’ve worked with the architects to date on how this office needs to function, how many people will be working there, things like that, we’ve intentionally held off on design. We want to get the greatest extent of feedback from our public, because it is the peoples’ building.
It’s where they’re going to be coming to council meetings, to school board meetings, and maybe it’s a place in the future where we can have farmers markets, where we can have outdoor events. But we want to hear from the public, so we can incorporate to the best extent we can some of their ideas.
Community News: Is there anything else you want to tell the readers of the Hamilton Post?
Jeff Martin: I’m really excited to be running. I hope to be re-elected in November, and I’m just so thankful that the residents elected me back in 2019. They gave me an honor of a lifetime, and I really hope they re-elect me in November and give me four more years to continue to serve them.