It’s been more than two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and communities continue to move towards a return to normalcy. For Ewing Township, that means the reestablishment of community programs and capital improvements.
Ewing Observer editor Bill Sanservino recently spoke with Mayor Bert Steinmann about a number of issues facing the township.
In question-and-answer articles published by the Observer over the past few months, Steinmann talked about township revenues and expenditures, development, the Ewing Town Center, and retail cannabis shops in town.
He also talked about the effects of the pandemic on the commercial real estate market and its impact on the township’s tax base, revenues and property valuations.
Those articles can be read on the Observer’s website at communitynews.org.
In this month’s article, the last in the series, Steinmann answers questions about the state of the township’s recreational sports programs, Trenton Water Works and road improvements.
An edited version of the interview runs in the Q&A below.
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Ewing Observer: Can you tell me about some of the things going on in town this year that might be of interest to residents?
Bert Steinmann: We are going to have a fireworks display on July 1 on Green Lane at the College of New Jersey.
We’re trying to get back to normal as best as we possibly can. We’re going to hold Community Fest on Sept. 24 this year (See ad on Page 3 for more information).
We’re starting to open up the town, especially the community centers, a little bit more. We are trying to relieve some of the restrictions that we have there. Hopefully we can get back to normal and, knock on wood, we don’t have the COVID situation come back again, although I don’t have a lot of faith in it, but we’ll see how that works out.
EO: Well, hopefully we are reaching the endemic phase of this thing.
BS: You know, it’s interesting when you look at the numbers. Almost 100% of our seniors got all the shots. The group that was the challenge was 19 to 24 consistently. But the ones who are 19 to 24 who are here for seven or eight months a year (to go to college), if they get the shots or they get COVID, it’s their home town that gets notified, not us.
But we got aggressive with clinics. We’re working with The College of New Jersey, with Mercer County and Penn Medicine. We had the child’s clinic last night, with parents bringing the kids. That’s kind of an ongoing thing. We actually ordered vaccines for five and under. So we’re going to offer that also.
The nurses in our health department are doing a bang-up job. They put in a lot of hours and reaching out to lot of people. Anyone who’s experienced COVID appreciates the people that are there help them out.
Our reverse call notification system (Swift911 Community Notification System) has been helpful in informing residents. I actually put an ad in the newspaper to get more people to participate. I encourage people to sign up for that, because we do put out a lot of information over the phone. Any time I talk to people, they love it.
EO: How does somebody sign up for it?
BS: They can go to our website (ewingnj.org/swift911). It has on there exactly what you have to do to sign up. Or you can call the township (609-883-2900), and we’ll register you right away for that.
I think over the years we’ve gotten a little bit more refined with the system. When we first started out, I think we called every phone line that New Jersey Manufacturer had and the state police. Eventually we were able to isolate it to like one or two phones. We try to do our best. Residents can get a lot of information through the program and they get it almost immediately.
EO: Yeah, I’ve never heard anybody say a bad thing about that program.
BS: Sometimes people will say, “You’re doing this thing and you didn’t call us,” or “I don’t want to know about sports and recreation. I just want to know about emergencies,” But we can’t separate that out. But for the most part they like the phone calls.
As far as our recreational programs, they are starting to come back. They were really lagging with the number of kids. I still don’t think the numbers are great. They have increased a little bit. People are still a little bit of afraid of COVID.
Kids used to do a lot of outdoor recreational things, whether it was soccer or football. Now they’re playing games on the computer. So that that has shifted.
Personally, I think it’s better for young women and young men to be out there in a setting amongst his or her peers and playing some sort of sport or something that’s more recreational than sitting on a computer. But that’s just my old-fashioned way of thinking.
EO: Are you going to have the Moody Park Basketball League this year?
BS: Yes. We had it last year. We met with Ted Forst (the township director of community affairs) recently because we are doing the full summer camp program this year, and basketball was probably the one summer thing that everyone kept coming out for. They were outdoors, so they won’t worry about catching anything.
EO: And at that point last summer the numbers were really going down because due to vaccinations. It was before the Delta and Omicron variants and break-through infections.
BS: Exactly. So that program was good. Baseball has suffered a little bit. I don’t think it’s directly related to COVID. It’s just that over a period of time those numbers have dwindled anyway. It’s the same thing with the soccer program.
West End Soccer, at one point, when I was president there, we had thousands of kids playing basically at every age level. When I left it started to wane and it got down to like, I don’t know, 100 or 110 kids. They couldn’t support a lot of teams, so that the innovation was that we played short-sighted and things like that. And so that worked.
Then they merged with the girls’ association. Their numbers are up a little bit and they have a very decent program, but the numbers aren’t back to where the numbers were before.
I don’t know if that that will change. I hope it will. Not that I don’t like baseball or the other sports, but I love soccer. So, I hope that that comes back.
Our football program is doing well. Although there’s a number of kids that have dropped off, but it’s still pretty good. They have pretty good numbers.
We try to accommodate all those groups with the facilities that we have. We certainly try to keep it up. I mean, there’s some maintenance that we have to do to our buildings, but again, we’ll do that during the course of the year.
Overall, I think recreation-wise and otherwise, that we’re doing fairly well. Can things be better? Absolutely everything can be better, but it’s certainly not for lack of trying on our part. And we have a receptive ear for ideas that we can try to implement.
I think for some people, they come up with ideas, and they think that that’s like some kind of easy fix. And when you talk about it, it is an easy fix. But to get to that fix, there are a lot of steps that you have to take.
That’s the thing that people really don’t understand. How you arrive at something. What you have got to do to get there and what the cost is to get there.
Because they’re always talking about, “Well you’re raising my taxes and you’re not doing anything for me.” But that’s not true. We try to implement whatever we possibly can. We try to get as many grants and seek out opportunities where we can get money for free–whether it’s the federal government or from the state government or the county–to offset costs.
But there’s so many programs and so many things that people want, but then they don’t realize what it takes to get to that point. And that’s frustrating. Trust me, when people call us, we try every possible way to try to satisfy that situation, and sometimes we have to say, “No, it’s not going to work, I’m sorry.”
Trenton Water Works
EO: I know Trenton Water Works has said that they’re installing a bunch of lines in Ewing Township this year. How does that impact the township’s road improvement plan?
BS: We’ve got a number of road improvements that we’re going to make this year. We’ve got one area of town where there’s going to be about 8 or 10 streets that are going to be completely repaved.
The main reason is because there was a lot of work that was being done there. For example, gas lines were replaced and water lines were replaced. Although the minimum requirement is that they patch and fix, it’s never good.
When a utility company comes in and digs up a road to make an installation, depending how far it is, you either have to repave half the road or the whole road.
Usually, it’s at least half of the road that they have to repave. When that happens, we’re going to talk to the utility about paving the whole road, and we’ll pick up the cost for the other half.
We tried the half road stuff, and it’s great, but then with the other half we get complaints. People ask, “Well you paid for their side of the street, why aren’t you paying for our side of the street?”
EO: Will you have an opportunity to work Trenton Water Works on the roads where they are doing water line replacements?
BS: Well, the roads that that we put on last year’s capital improvement program are where Trenton Water Works went first and did the water lines.
Whatever we might put in this year’s plan probably won’t get done until next year. Some of the roads we’re looking at are long roads, and we’re looking at the price of black top. If Trenton Water’s contractor can do their half and we do half, it’s a good deal of money.
We had good deals with PSE&G when they dug up the roads for gas lines. They did one whole neighborhood curb to curb. I’ve been disappointed with–not Trenton Water Works per se, although that’s frustrating at best—but some of the contractors that they hired have been less than helpful.
EO: I know there’s been difficulty with getting some of the council members in Trenton to approve capital improvements or spend money on the towns outside of Trenton when it comes to water infrastructure improvements. (Trenton Water Works is owned and run by the City of Trenton). How is Ewing’s relationship going with them? Are you happy with what they’re doing?
BS: Well, I wasn’t happy with what they were doing at the time, and I’m still disappointed in a lot of things, but after arguing back and forth for months, they’re going to start replacing the whole water line on Olden Avenue.
Over a period of about a year and a half, we had six major breaks in that line. It disrupted the traffic flow on Olden Avenue. Some of it was maybe just a couple of hours and some of it was days.
I did talk with the mayor (Reed Gusciora), who really helped. He was going to float a $4 million bond to replace that line from Parkway Avenue all the way to Princeton Avenue.
The Trenton Council voted it down. Then I got our township attorney, Maeve Cannon, to tell them that I’m suing them. It was ridiculous.
So anyway, then they came up with the money. They put money aside that the federal government gave them–$4 million from that money.
I don’t care where the money comes from, I just want that water line replaced. They’re supposed to be starting that hopefully later on in this spring or early summer. It’s about a good mile-and-a-half to two miles.
EO: Yeah. I know that was a problem, particularly along that stretch.
BS: Meanwhile, they have been upgrading the system over time. But again, you just basically have to threaten them to get anything done. That’s because a lot of things have to go from Trenton Water to Trenton City Council to get approved, and that’s where the challenge is.
Some of the members of Trenton City Council don’t trust the Trenton Water folks to tell them the financial facts, so there’s that debate there. With the federal money we’re able to get something done.
In the meantime, our fire hydrants are being tracked by our volunteer and career firefighters. If there are issues, then they get on Trenton Water.
They have a great chief engineer that responds to us. I won’t say his name, but he’s a really good guy.
So, it’s not the best situation with them, but the situation has improved.
EO: Especially within Water Works itself, right?
BS: Yes, we’re not getting as many water quality notices.
EO: What about other road work? What’s the status of the Sylvia Street extension?
BS: The whole new road and the roundabout from the tracks on down is done, and then the rest going to the bottom of the hill is going to be repaved and striped. That’s being paid for with a state grant.
EO: That’s going to happen this year?
BS: That’s this year. The money has been approved it will be done in the spring.
Dahvae’ Edwards-Chew jumps to make a shot during a Moody Park League game in 2018. The league will return once again this summer. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.),
