Republican Jack Ball, 71, is seeking to recapture the mayor’s office that he lost to current Mayor Bert Steinmann in 2010.
Ball is the manager of the Trenton Farmers Market and is retired from a 40-year career as a teacher at Trenton Junior High School Number Three. He holds a degree in elementary education from The College of New Jersey.
Ball’s political experience includes serving as a member of Ewing Township Committee from 1991-1993, serving as mayor in 1993. He was a member of Ewing Township Council in 2003 and was mayor from 2007-2010.
Bill Sanservino, Ewing Observer senior community editor, recently interviewed Ball on his candidacy. An edited version of that interview is presented as a Q&A below.
Ewing Observer: Why are you running?
Jack Ball: In 2006, I was astonished to find out that the township government was planning to raise taxes 40 percent. That definitely got my attention. I decided to run for mayor and I did win.
After I left in 2011, they raised taxes 43 percent. As a result, I’m right back where I started from — very much concerned with a tax increase for our residents. These are very difficult economic times and when you keep hitting people with those types of increases, somebody has to stand up.
A second reason is transparency. What I see happening in the last four years is that there’s not a whole lot coming out to the residents to let them know what is taking place in Ewing. When I was mayor, the entire town had my cell phone number. People could call me and they did call me. I did upwards of 1,500 minutes a month on my township phone.
To further talk about transparency, I held monthly (town hall) meetings as the mayor and had different topics at each one of those meetings. I would say we probably did 9 to 10 a year.
When I was at town hall, I had an open door policy so that anybody who wanted to see the mayor could come in and talk to the mayor. I did that for all four years. I also attended every single council meeting. I think over the four years I had a better attendance record than the members of council.
That’s what I mean about transparency. People could always find me, and if they didn’t find me at town hall, they could certainly find me at the Trenton Farmer’s Market, believe me. I just haven’t seen that same kind of transparency in the last four years.
EO: What else are you concerned about?
JB: As I walk through neighborhoods, people are saying that they’re paying these high taxes, but our services aren’t being increased, they’re begin decreased. Trash pickup now is once a week. A lot of people are saying they can live with that, but in the summer time when it’s rather warm and the trash is laying there for a week, those trash cans are just loaded with maggots, and they get very ripe. One of the things I might try to look at is to see if we can do trash pickup twice a week in the heat of the summer.
EO: The difficulty is that residents demand services, but you have to pay for services. How does the town pay for services without raising taxes?
JB: It’s definitely a little bit of a juggling act. What we need to do is look for more ratables in the town each year to help offset those costs. It’s something that I did my very best to do when I was mayor. I think the best example I can give is FMC.
They contacted my office and said they’d like to come to Ewing, but said they needed a guarantee that they could open in one year’s time. We brought them in immediately, sat everyone down and talked and gave them the guarantee that they wanted. They are now are part of Ewing and they did open in one year’s time.
EO: How would you bring in more ratables?
JB: I’ve always been a proponent of having someone in charge of economic development. Somebody that is there full time. You have to have somebody working 24-7 to bring new ratables into the town. We need somebody here who is eyes and ears open, sending out emails and letters and trying to attract businesses to this community.
EO: Speaking of development, you’ve been critical of the amount of housing being built on the GM site as part of the Parkway Town Center project. Can you tell me about your concerns?
JB: We’re looking at putting another 820 homes out at the GM site, I just don’t know what that does in terms of the need to have to build schools. The Ewing schools right now are at 90 percent capacity.
EO: Did you get that number from the district?
JB: It’s a number that I’ve heard, not per se from the district, but in talking to school board members, and I guess in just seeing it myself. The schools are pretty well packed.
If we’re going to have an additional 900 homes at the GM site and each one those homes brings in just one student, you’re definitely looking at building a new school. And it’s not just building a school, because once you build it you need to staff it, supply it with desks and books and computers.
I think our best shot is to look at the GM site and put our direction more in terms of commercial/small manufacturing.
EO: When you come up with a number like one child per house are you guesstimating that number, or are you looking at numbers that are based on studies that report the number of school children generated by certain types of housing?
JB: The Birmingham, right across the street from the Marrazzo’s shopping center that just opened up, they were anticipating 10 students. Well, 39 was the number that I got.
The biggest concern I have is that the school board agrees that they should meet with the mayor and council to discuss this, but that meeting has never taken place yet. And if you’re planning on doing something such as Bert is proposing, one of the first things you need to do is to have some dialogue with the school system. That way both bodies can do whatever studies they can to make it a more exact number.
EO: At this point, I’m not even sure that you can stop the deal there.
JB: Probably not, because I think (Town Center developer) Lennar is already hard at work at it. But it deserves to be watched an monitored every step of the way, and I will do whatever I can do to make sure its the best possible solution for the residents of Ewing Township. I’m looking to save them tax dollars and I kind of feel that if what I’m saying is the truth, whatever benefit might come out of the development here would wind up not saving taxpayers money, but costing them money.
EO: If there was any way you could find a way to change the makeup of the project, would that be something you’d try to put into effect?
JB: Absolutely. I’m sure its a work in progress and it’s going to take some time to really develop that entire tract. I think there’s room to watch and improve and make it the best possible bang for the buck for the residents of the town.
EO: Currently, a deal hasn’t been reached on the other side of the road on the Navy Jet Propulsion site. What would you like to see happen there?
JB: That area would be prime for commercial or small manufacturing. It wasn’t too long ago that there was interest by Lowe’s, but I think that’s gone by the wayside. I would still love to see a box store somewhere in that area. I think it would be great to have Wal Mart, a Kmart, a Kohls, a Target.
EO: Bert has been very critical of your handling of the town’s finances when you were mayor. He says that was one of the reasons for the tax increase when he first became mayor. How would you respond to that?
JB: Did I leave him with a deficit? If I did, then he too has to take part of the blame, because he was a member of the council. I tried to get a budget passed with them for months and months and they just would not work with me. A lot of the things I was suggesting to them to save the town money they wound up doing after I left. In my last year as mayor we had a $2.5 million reduction in state aid. It killed us. I was looking to do everything I could not to raise taxes and I put together a program that unfortunately laid off 21 people.
Once Bert was elected, he contacted me and said don’t lay off those people, because if you lay them off, I’m just going to hire them back. So I got him to send me a letter taking responsibility and I didn’t lay them off. That’s all part of the deficit that they’re talking about.
Another portion of it was with sewer fees. I kept telling them we’re not collecting enough, and so we kept having to take money out of the general budget to pay those fees. I think they wound up doing that after I left office.
Unfortunately, as God as my witness, they (the Democratic majority on council) would rather fight with me than work with me. And it’s a shame. In fact, when I first started attending council meetings, they wouldn’t even let me speak.
EO: So you were working with a council for your full four years that was dominated by a different party?
JB: Yes, and they made that known at every meeting. So, if in fact what they’re saying is true, they certainly contributed to any financial problem that we had.
EO: If you are elected and you are faced with a council that’s 5-0 or 4-1 in favor of the Democrats, how would you go about trying to work with them?
JB: I always try to hand out the olive branch, and I would continue to do that. That’s my nature and my personality. I have to say that I never stopped trying when I was mayor. Maybe one of the advantages is that the players have somewhat changed on the council.
There’s four new people. The only one still there that’s part of the previous council is Kathy Wollert. The others are all new. I’ve actually spoken to many of them, and my hope is that they have the same kind of concern as I do for the good of the entire township.
EO: In one of your recent campaign ads you said that “Ewing is now a breeding ground for criminal activity,” and added that the number of police officers has decreased.
JB: That was information that my people gave to me. People who were working on my campaign who did research to help me. With respect to the police department, I am aware that when I left office there were 78 officers and they’ve been down to as low as 56. I know he (Steinmann) just put on about 15 in the academy, which is good because they’re definitely needed. I think even 78 was a low figure for Ewing at that point.
EO: Your style of governing is different than the way Bert approaches it. Can you comment on why your style is better?
JB: I guess I come from a little different background from Bert. I spent 40 years in the classroom as a teacher and I learned how to talk and work with youngsters and basically try to get the best out of them. I believe more in honey than vinegar.
Bert comes from a different background. I think some of the things that he’s doing don’t show that you have trust and faith in your employees. I know he spent a lot of money on a fingerprint punch-in time clock device for the employees at town hall. Not just that, I think there’s a GPS in many, if not all, of the township vehicles so he can see wherever, whomever and whatever he wants to see as to where those trucks are.
I think you have to have a little trust and faith in your employees that they’re doing the job. Especially when you have supervisors who are there to manage these employees. Employees would rather be stroked than watched with a magnifying glass.
EO: Is there anything we haven’t covered that you’d like to talk about?
JB: I’m hoping I can be reelected and will work tirelessly to make sure this town will run as smoothly as it possibly can without being a
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