The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on municipalities over the past two years, and Robbinsville Township is no exception.
Local quality of life, supply chain issues, public safety, revenues and expenditures, and township operations are all areas that have been affected by the pandemic.
The Robbinsville Advance recently sat down with Mayor Dave Fried to talk about these issues and a number of other things going on in Robbinsville Township as we enter the new year.
Below is the first part of a Q&A based on the interview with Fried. It has been edited for length and clarity. The second part will run in next month’s issue.
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Robbinsville Advance: The New York Times recently ran an article talking about the town (“Robbinsville, N.J.: A diverse community at the center of it all”), and basically talking about what the community has to offer. What are your thoughts about the article and the township overall?
Dave Fried: I’d say the thing that I’m most proud about is certainly the diversity and the feeling that our residents have a great place to live. It’s a great community. People are always willing to come out and help one another. It’s an interesting sense of community that we have. I think the article kind of touched on that.
The town has really tried hard to run Robbinsville like a business, and I feel that we’ve really accomplished that starting with the municipal building and making it very customer accessible and easy to do business with us.
We have done a very good job on holding the line on taxes. We have done a very, very good job of increasing property values and for me, I look at property values, very much like if I were running my business.
I look at the share price. Then I look at, how I return shareholder value to our residents, creating a desirable place to live. Increasing their property values is sort of the number one thing that I can do since most people’s home is the biggest investment that they’ve ever made. As long as we’re doing that, I feel like I’m doing my job.
Community policing and public safety
DF: We’re one of the safest places to live, and I believe that’s not by accident. We worked really hard on community policing.
The sort of noise out there of policing right now has been difficult. It’s very difficult to be a police officer in this day and age. I think the police officers are feeling the pressure more than ever before. That sentiment of defunding the police is tough for the police officers to deal with and, frankly, I think it’s completely wrong. No organization on Earth has ever done better by being defunded.
From my perspective, it’s all about training. We want to hire the best people. We want to provide the best equipment and most importantly, we want to provide the best training. It’s still shocking to me to this day.
Robbinsville is one of the few towns that has a training facility that allows police officers to go through advanced training. It allows real scenarios to be recorded while they’re going through the scenarios and, for their superiors, be able to give them feedback.
You’re not only to be training the different scenarios, but they can then see how they did, and the instructors can escalate and de-escalate the situation based on what the officers did. At the end we play it all back for the officers. They can see what they did right and what they did wrong.
To me, the most important thing that every one of us should be doing in policing is making sure that people are trained really well so that we have good outcomes.
Sending people out in the street ill equipped and ill trained and then hoping that we’re going to have good outcomes is a fool’s errand. Unfortunately, some elected officials out there are not speaking with that voice and not educating the community that, “Hey, if we want to have good outcomes, we’ve got to have good training.”
Robbinsville was the first to put cameras on cars, the first to put cameras on police officers for a number of reasons. You want to protect the police officers and also protect the public. Then those of us who are in civilian command can go back and look at what really happened, and it allows me to see whether that is or isn’t the way that we want our officers to be representing themselves in our town.
I think that’s one of the most important things that we’ve done that’s very different than what you’re hearing, but it’s also why we have one of the better and safer communities to live in. We don’t seem to hear a heck of a lot of complaints about policing in Robbinsville Township.
RA: This year there was a change in the leadership in the police department (Michael Polaski was promoted to chief to replace retiring Chief Chris Nitti). I’ve noticed that over the years that the township has chosen a chief from within. Do you think it’s important to maintain a certain type of continuity or philosophy?
DF: I think it is important, but I also think it’s a testament to how well we’ve been able to bring people through the ranks. I have not felt like I needed to go outside.
Doing the interviews (for the new chief) I really felt like I had three lieutenants that all could have done the job. I was really proud of the folks that we have, and it goes back to our training.
We start early with our officers and, as we bring people through the ranks, and we continue to encourage training. The police chief that just retired (Nitti) actually went through the FBI Academy, which is, very difficult thing to do.
We’re constantly encouraging our people to be well-trained and we’ve got another one of our lieutenants who’s trying to get into the FBI Academy as we speak. So, we really do have a very deep pool of talent and that has allowed us not to go outside.
If I felt like that wasn’t happening, I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to have gone outside. I really consider ourselves very lucky, but it wasn’t by accident. This was a long-haul process.
We probably have the highest starting salary for police officers in the area, so that allows us to pick, from a very large talent pool.
It begins with hiring the best people and paying them fairly, and then follows up with training and continues on to the process.
That’s really been our philosophy. And I really think Mike’s going to do a fantastic job and we really been able to transition from the last two chiefs without any real hiccups.
RA: Can you tell me a little more about the training facility?
DF: I will tell you, we had some real detractors when we first started talking about it.
We brought our pastors (from within the community) through the program. We wanted them to be able to kind of speak to it. And we had had some serious police detractors who went through the program, and they ended up shocked.
They really came out raving fans after seeing and going through it themselves. They thought they were going to go in and basically see a shooting range.
They were surprised at how interactive it was. How difficult it was. How we were able to show them the mistakes that they made.
The police/court building project with Hightstown
RA: The township recently made a deal with Hightstown for a new police and court facility that you’re going to be constructing. Can you tell me about the project and why it’s advantageous to the town?
DF: So, this is maybe the first time in Mercer County that two towns are actually going to share a police and court. We’re excited about it. Absolutely will save money by building one building versus two.
We’ve (Robbinsville and Hightstown) been sharing space together for years, so we know that it’s going to work. Obviously our court building is at the end of its life. We are in the finishing touches of putting the building project plan together.
Right now, because the supply chain is so broken, we’re looking at potentially an expansion of about 30% of cost. We may be patient until that supply chain sort of smooth itself out. I don’t really want to spend 30% more of our taxpayers’ money than we need to.
I believe there’s going to be a number of grants coming down the pike, and certainly we want to be in a position to be able to take advantage of those grants when they become available.
Our strategy right now is to be ready to go as soon as the supply chain settles down and we understand what grants are available. If I had to guess, maybe spring of next year we will actually start construction.
RA: Can you explain how the deal works?
DF: They’ll be renting the facility from. They’ll sign a lease under which both of us will pay for the building. We’ll share the cost of construction of the building and then share ongoing costs as well. I believe the split is 62% to Robbinsville and 38% to Hightstown.
The pandemic’s impacts on Robbinsville
RA: You mentioned supply chain issues caused by the pandemic. We’re now going into our third year of dealing with COVID. What are some of the impacts on the town? Can you point out some of the things you thought Robbinsville did particularly well in managing the situation.
DF: The pandemic was obviously very challenging. I think one of the things that we did well was that we were prepared beforehand, and we were buying PPE before anyone else. At some point, little Robbinsville was supplying a good chunk of Mercer County, the hospitals and other towns with PPE.
We’re also in a position to be able to also hand out PPE to our residents, which is something that not every other community was able to do.
I think we also tried to keep a sense of balance and do some things interesting with our videos and chocolate deliveries and the pizza parties—just trying to be a little bit different and keep people spirits up. It was hard. I mean, it was a very difficult time.
We set up a testing facility, and we put it in town center. Some people really appreciated the fact that we did it, and there were people who live nearby and worked nearby who were terrified that we were doing it. It was a definite balance. But it was the right thing to do. We have to be able to take care of our own and be in a position to be responsible.
Something we were responsible for, and unfortunately, we weren’t able to meet it, was my real goal to make sure that we got through pandemic without losing any of our residents. Certainly, my condolences go out to those that we lost.
I feel like everything that we did helped to minimize the loss of life and protected our residences the best that we could, and we were very aggressive on that front.
The 2022 municipal budget
RA: Looking at the upcoming budget year, what do you foresee? Has COVID affected it? Are there other factors or other increased expenses going on? What do you wrestling with as you go into the budget this year?
DF: My goal is to always try. I go into every budget meeting trying to hold the line on taxes.
That’s something everyone knows I’m going to work towards. This year it’s extremely challenging. Our costs have gone up dramatically. Even just talking to a some of our staff earlier today, the cost of ink is up 400% for our printing, for what we do in engineering and construction.
So everything that we’re touching right now is more expensive, which is going to make it more challenging to hold the line on taxes, but we’re certainly going to try. We’ve been very fortunate and blessed to continue to bring in great commercial opportunities, and they’re good commercial tenants and that continues to be strong, so that helps us, but this will be one of our more challenging budget years that we’ve had in a long time.
But I’m going to do everything I can to try and maintain the budget as best as we possibly can.
RA: I think, when people talk about or read about the inflation of that’s going on, they don’t realize that it doesn’t it doesn’t only affect your wallet and your family’s expenses, but it also affects governmental expenses too. So it’s going to hit people in that area as well, in terms of school and municipal residential taxes.
DF: And also being prepared. I will tell you that if the pandemic taught us one thing, it was that we were woefully unprepared in terms of having supplies, in terms of having PPE, in terms of having things on hand.
I mean, I think every single one of us was caught flat-footed. That’s one thing that, from our township’s perspective, will never happen again. We will continue to maintain a large supply of PPE, and we will be ready.
RA: Has the township seen any money out of infrastructure bill that was passed at the federal level last year?
DF: Yeah. We did get some money and some of the things that we’re investing in is making sure that we’re prepared for next time. We purchased a large amount of PPE and we’re purchasing some for it so we can be ready.
We’re also trying to really start thinking through some of our infrastructure. Making sure that we’re covered in areas that, in my mind, keep me up at night.
One is making sure that if power ever went off that our residents should be taken care of, and how we would be able to handle a lengthy power outage.
A second thing that keeps me up at night is ransomware—making sure that the town is protected and that we have really good security and that doesn’t happen.
So, it’s another investment that we’re making to make sure that we can maintain services and we don’t we don’t wind up having that happen to us.
Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried,
