Ewing resident Aaron Watson has been appointed business administrator of Ewing Township. Watson, a township native, has been on the job since February, succeeding long-time Business Administrator Jim McManimon, who retired.
Watson most recently served as Mercer County deputy county administrator. In that capacity, he was responsible for oversight of Buildings and Ground, the Trenton-Mercer Airport. He was also the executive director for Mercer County Park Commission.
He was also co-founder of the Outdoor Equity Alliance, a group that “removes barriers and inspires people of all ages, ethnicities, abilities and income levels to enjoy the outdoors and become more involved in the natural world,” says the OEA website.
In what has now become an annual tradition, Ewing Observer editor Bill Sanservino sat down with Mayor Bert Steinmann to talk about the state of the Ewing and current issues impacting township resident. The two were joined by Watson, who spoke on his appointment.
Over the course of the interview, which will be run in multiple sections over the next few months, issues discussed included township finances, the senior center, development, cannabis, the Parkeay Avenue Redevelopment Zone and the Trenton Mercer Airport.
This month’s portion of the interview, which focuses on Watson’s appointment and the 2024 municipal budget, appears in Q&A form below. It has been lightly edited for clarity and style.
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Ewing Observer: One of the biggest changes in Ewing has been the change at business administrator. Bert, do you want to say a little bit about Jim McManaman and his service to the town?
Bert Steinman: Yeah. I think that would be appropriate. Jimmy came with me when I was first elected back in 2010 and started my tenure in 2011, and he’s been with me for the 13 plus years that I’ve been here. He was a real asset to me. I mean, obviously, he knew a lot of people. He had a good temperament about him, and I could always count on Jim to deliver my message if there was a message to be delivered.
We had our differences of opinion from time to time, but we would always discuss it one on one. He always agreed with me out in the public’s eye. I’m very grateful for his service to the town, and I consider Jimmy McManimon a true friend. We still stay in touch. He deserves his time. I know his wife also retired, and he retired about two days later. So I wish them well in their upcoming years.
EO: So tell me a little bit about the process for choosing the new business administrator.
BS: Basically, what had happened was that there was a transition in Mercer County government. (Dane Benson replaced Brian Hughes as county executive). A new county executive was elected back in January. Obviously, there were going to be some changes at the top of the county executive’s office, and so Aaron Watson became available.
Ewing Township is very lucky that he could step in, so that really was a no brainer for me to appoint him as the new business administrator for the town. He has a lot of contacts. As much as Jim and maybe even some more. And because he was fresh from county government, I get the opportunity to learn from that wealth of information and to incorporate it in what we do.
There are some things at the county that we can take advantage of that I really wasn’t aware of. It has now been brought to my attention. We’ll probably be working a little bit closer with the county moving forward. And again, I really appreciated Brian Hughes also in this, because he was also very cooperative with Ewing Township. He did a lot for us, and I think that will be continuing.
EO: Aaron, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Aaron Watson: I’ve lived in this community all my life. 63 years, born and bred. I’m a proud graduate of Ewing High School, a proud graduate of Mercer County Community College, a proud graduate of Thomas Edison State College, and a proud graduate of Rutgers University. This town is near and dear to my heart. I live in the home that I grew up in. So, again, I have never gotten too far. I was fortunate enough to start my career in transportation some 37 years ago, behind bulletproof glass on the corner of Broad Market Street in Newark, New Jersey.
EO: What did you do there?
AW: I was working in customer service for New Jersey Transit. That’s where I began my career, fresh, and then after three years, I relocated to Camden and worked down there for another 12 years. I was with Transit for a total of 15 years. When governor McGreevey came in office, I accepted a position working for then (Transportation) Commissioner Jamie Foxx as his executive director of community outreach.
My job was to interact with the mayors and councils and county executives to make certain that the transition was very smooth with all the work that was being done with the DOT (N.J. Department of Transportation). After two and a half years, County Executive Brian Hughes was elected, and I was asked to join his cabinet. I was very fortunate to be able to do that. I came on as director of transportation and ended my career there as deputy administrator.
EO: You have some connection at the federal level, too. Rell me a little bit about that—you’re related to a federal legislator.
AW: I am. Our family has always been public servants. I remember our father (John Watson) having us around a table some 45 years ago, and he would tell us, “If you don’t get involved, then you forfeit your right to complain.” That public service is a noble cause. You may not get rich, but I tell you what, you can’t put a price on how gratifying the work is.”
So, I really didn’t want to follow my father into politics, but I always knew I wanted to be a public servant along with my siblings. My brother, Jay, ended his career as deputy commissioner for DEP, my brother, Bill, was the chief of staff and the person that helped Doug Palmer become the first African American mayor of the city of Trenton.
My sister, Bonnie, was 30 years in state government before she decided when my father passed that she would pick up the mantle and carry it forward. Now she’s the first female African American representative from the State of New Jersey in Congress. And that is a connection. We’re extremely close. In fact, we share backyards. You know, she’ll tell you that sometimes she’s my sister, and sometimes she’s my mother, because she’s 16 years my senior. But by far, she’s probably one of the most influential people in my life.
EO: The next thing to talk about is this year’s budget. Things are a little bit tough all around you, but at every level—people are governments—are paying more for stuff. Inflation has hit everybody. Can you tell me a little bit about how the budget is coming together.
BS: Yes, we just started the budget process. We’ll be meeting with our directors of the departments starting next week, and we will be working our way through that with our asks and see where we wind up. We’ve been very fortunate with Ewing. We’ve been frugal on how we approach things, and what we do, and it has shown. I make no bones about it, we talk about it every time we talk about the budget, as far as what tax increases look like.
Because of the way we’ve managed our money, we’ve been able to dampen down rate increases, year over year. And I think people are appreciative of that. I’m not like previous administrations before me that would play these games where if you’re in an election year, we’re not raising taxes, and we’re not doing this and we’re not doing that. That’s just a shell game at the end of the day, because in years that you have elections, you still have (expense) increases.
I mean, that happens year after year. So, we’re very cognizant of that. When I talk to my department heads, when I talk to our CFO, I tell them where I would like to land. Now, that may not always be the case, but I like to land around 2, maybe 2.5 cents maximum, and then we work from there. So far over the last 13 going on 14 years, we’ve accomplished that. I don’t see any reasons why we cannot continue to do that. I think we’ll still have a good firm budget without breaking the bank.
EO: And as you know, there’s a state-mandated 2% cap on tax increases where if you go over it, you have to go out to a referendum. Is it a difficult situation where you may have costs out there that are coming in over what that cap is? So, for example, if you’ve got insurance that’s going up 10% or trash collection that’s going up 8%, does that make it hard to make it under that cap, or do you just have to tighten your belt and cut in other areas?
BS: Well, it’s difficult to stay under the cap, but there are exemptions to things like you talked about—garbage and health insurance. Those are outside the cap now. But I take it into consideration, because okay, great, those aren’t part of that cap, but that doesn’t give me carte blanche. I just want to make sure that what we do is done in a fair and equitable way across the table.
EO: Do responsible tax increases year after year. Like you said, I’ve seen governments where they have no increase in an election year and then a big increase during a year where they’re not running for reelection.
BS: Exactly. And that doesn’t make any sense. I think people are very grateful for the approach that we have taken, and I think most people understand that budgets increase. Especially this year. Look at fuel cost. It’s all over the place, and that impacts on us.
The only thing we don’t pay for is taxes on fuel where the general public does, but the price of a gallon still goes up at the at the end of the day. It also reflects on our road paving program with the blacktop. There’s oil base in that and that affects our prices.
EO: What are some of the biggest expenses this year?
BS: Well, the biggest expense is garbage. That went up well over 50% of what we used to pay. We were roughly around $450,000 a year. We’re at $975,000 now. I believe recycling went up almost $400,000 in that same period of time. So that’s a significant nut that we have to crack. Health insurance went through the roof. What I am really upset about is the state program itself. For state workers it only went up 4 or 5%. Ours went up 23%.
EO: And you’re involved in that. You’re enrolled in the state program?
BS: Yeah, exactly. We’re enrolled in the New Jersey State Health Benefits Program. We are looking at other carriers possibly, but when you really drill down into those situations, you’ll find that they have a teaser out there that for a year or so you can get it at this price, but then boom, its back up. That really serves no purpose.
The other thing is people are very protective of their doctors and who they go see. And some other plans may not have their doctors in the network. It’s difficult to change plans, although we are looking at it. We’ll give choices to individuals. But for the most part, I think we’re going to be staying with the current program.
EO: And you may also run into a situation where there’s a health insurance change where there’s a medication that’s covered under a person’s current plan. They switch to a new plan and then those medications—and it could be multiple ones—are not covered any more. Then you’re scrambling to try and find something new. And the replacement isn’t always so great.
BS: Yeah, exactly. With the New Jersey benefits plan, there’s not that many drugs out there that aren’t covered, but there are some. We haven’t run into it as far as I know, because usually somebody will tell me, oh, this wasn’t covered or whatever. I have not heard that.
EO: But they might not be if you switch to another plan.
BS: Exactly. That’s absolutely correct. That could happen.
EO: Right. And that’s something you definitely don’t want.
BS: Correct. People depend on their medications just for daily living and you don’t want to switch and then that medicine is no longer covered. And as you well know, the cost of medicines is outrageous. I mean, you get four pills for 500 bucks, and it doesn’t go a long way. We try to stabilize that so we’re not impacting individuals to where they’re worried about their health.
EO: In terms of income, your biggest revenue-generators is your tax base, especially commercial properties. How is the township doing in terms of its commercial ratables? Post-pandemic there are a number of commercial office buildings where the tenants didn’t renew their leases, because they have a lot of their remote workers.
So vacancy rates went up, which affects the amount of taxes that a commercial owner will pay. How is the township doing in terms of the commercial market and the commercial ratable base?
BS: Well, the commercial market base as far as office spaces and offices are concerned is down, obviously, as you well know. We’ve got buildings right here in Ewing Township that are maybe only 10% occupied. So that is tough. Even businesses like New Jersey Manufacturers, Church and Dwight—the bigger the bigger companies—they have a workforce now that is working from home. More so than they ever did before, and so those buildings are not full.
Again, they haven’t gone anywhere, so we didn’t lose out on that situation. They were very good partners with us, but there are some that have filed tax appeals (to lower their property value assessments and pay less in taxes). We obviously we have to look at that. There are some that have gotten a tax appeal (approved), and then there’s some that haven’t. So overall, I think we’re pretty good. Not as good as I would like to be, obviously. I like to be at the top of the market rather than the lower end, but we’re okay.
EO: I know you just recently finished a township-wide revaluation. So, those valuations were all set before the pandemic. Since then, residential values have skyrocketed. Have you had to adjust residential valuations on people’s homes higher? Because they may have been paying taxes based a $200,000 assessment pre-pandemic, and now it’s worth $500,000.
BS: Yes, we have made those adjustments going forward through our tax assessor’s office. What’s happening today, which we weren’t doing years ago, is that we track our permitting through the construction office. Basically, they’ll see that somebody is renovating a kitchen or bathroom and other major types of stuff.
After that’s completed and they get their final sign-off for their CO (certificate of occupancy), the inspector goes out to the house and then they readjust the value of that house. It’s not a favorable program for individuals, but that keeps us up to where the house should be listed as opposed to getting back into the days where we were undervalued.
EO: So, it’s really all about fairness? To make sure that one homeowner or one neighborhood is not paying more or less than another one, when they when shouldn’t be?
BS: You’re absolutely correct. So that it does adjust the rate.
EO: Is there anything else you want to mention about municipal budgeting?
BS: Like I said, we try to be fair, as to what we need and what our needs are we. I don’t ask for a lot more than what we need day to day. I do sit down with our department heads and ask about their needs.
And then sometimes It’s a want as opposed to more than a need, and we put the wants aside and concentrate on the needs. It’s all about service. We want to try to deliver the best services that we can to our residents, and our residents expect a lot, to be quite honest with you.
Sometimes we can accommodate them and sometimes we can’t, but we try to hit every group of individuals and try to address their needs. I think we’ve been very successful with that.
Ewing Business Administrator Aaron Watson.,
