When John Ricci announced his retirement as Hamilton’s business administrator Nov. 30, it wasn’t just the end of Ricci’s career. It was also the end of an era.
Ricci, 67, had worked in Hamilton for parts of five decades, and had served as business administrator for Jack Rafferty, John Bencivengo and Kelly Yaede. He has been replaced by Dave Kenny, whose third term on council ended this year.
A lifelong Hamiltonian, Ricci graduated from Hamilton High School West and Trenton State College, where majored in political science. His first job was with the State of New Jersey as a buyer, but he quickly jumped to employment with Hamilton Township. He took a few detours with Mercer County and in private industry, but Ricci spent 20 years of his career with the township as its business administrator.
Hamilton Post editor Rob Anthes spoke with Ricci via phone Jan. 4, when the former official was enjoying his first major snowstorm in retirement. The following is an abridged transcript:
When did you decide you wanted to retire?
I think I’ve been thinking about it for awhile, and I told the mayor earlier in 2017 that it was probably going to be my last year. I turned 67 in October, and to me that sounded kind of old. So I figured it was time to pack it in, take a break, and get away from all this work.
What are your plans now?
Between the holidays, we went out to California to visit our daughter who’s living out there now. Hopefully, we’ll do some more of that as the years go on since she seems to be pretty ensconced in the area just north of Los Angeles. She went to graduate school there, and she’s teaching out there now. It doesn’t seem like she’ll be coming back home any time soon. We’ll be travelling out there again.
I enjoy reading and playing golf and spending time with friends, and we’ll be able to do some more of that.
You’ll remain in Hamilton, though?
Yes, my wife is still working. Our son, whose 21, is in college at The College of New Jersey, so we’re not going anywhere any time soon.
Switching gears, you’ve been involved in Hamilton Township government since Jack Rafferty was mayor. How did you start out here?
Well, my career in government actually started in the early ’70s with the State of New Jersey as a buyer in the purchase bureau. After a few years there, Jack Rafferty got elected mayor, and I became the first purchasing agent in Hamilton Township when he first took office in 1976. I stayed with him for a few years, moving up to budget officer in addition to purchasing agent. Then, went to Mercer County in 1980 with Bill Mathesius as deputy administrator. Then, I came back in ‘82 as the business administrator under Rafferty. I stayed there for 10 years, and then went to the county with Bob Prunetti for 12, and then retired in 2003 after his third term. I did some consulting work and labor arbitration work. I came back into government again in Hamilton in 2008 with Bencivengo.
My original plan was to just stay for the first term of [John] Bencivengo’s. Things got a little crazy with John, so I stuck around a bit longer.
On that subject, going back five years ago to the Bencivengo trial, you got caught up in the aftermath. When Bencivengo resigned, council president Kevin Meara by state law became acting mayor. And one of the first things Meara did was to fire you, saying the township needed to clean house to earn back the trust of the residents. Kelly Yeade hired you back when she was appointed mayor just days later, noting you had not been accused of anything during the trial. What was your reaction to all the turmoil?
I didn’t quite understand what Kevin was attempting to do. I was the only one he decided to let go, and I think a lot of that was a personal issue between Kevin and myself, going back to when he was a Democrat on Hamilton council and thought I didn’t allow him to do some of the things he wanted to do. When he became mayor for what amounted to just a few days, I guess he thought it was time to gain his retribution.
One of the conditions of a Faulkner Act form of government, like Hamilton has, is if a mayor is going to fire a director or business administration, we have the right to appeal it to council, which I did. Before I could even have a hearing before council, Kelly Yaede was appointed mayor, and almost immediately sent me a letter saying my firing had been rescinded. I went back to work for her; of course, I was very grateful to her for doing that. I don’t really think I had done anything wrong to warrant termination, and I guess she didn’t nor did the rest of council.
Considering that you had thought about retiring at that point anyway, did you have any second thoughts about accepting Mayor Yaede’s offer? Any hesitation about coming back?
No, there was no hesitation to come back. Not at all. I looked forward to assisting the new mayor as she began her efforts to restore the public’s faith in Hamilton Township government.
You have worked for all but one of the elected mayors in township history. How has the municipal government changed over those years?
Government and all business has changed from back in those days. Most communication was by telephone or some written form. Now, everything’s emails or texts, and the public reaches out directly to us all the time. I would get emails all sorts of times—holidays, weekends, evenings—with a problem. They expected an answer in a fairly short amount of time, and with the communications we have, we were able to do that. Back in the beginning, direct contact with citizens was rare, especially outside of the office. That communications aspect is a good thing. It’s opened government up. But it’s made the life of a public official much more open, and makes us more available to citizens.
Hamilton has certainly has grown over that period of time. A considerable amount of development has taken place. I marvel at the fact that back in the day, we were anxious to get a hotel, and we just couldn’t seem to break through and get a hotel. Now, we have three already built, another one approved, and as I left, discussions with one or two more.
But has the role of business administrator changed?
I don’t really think it’s changed, just maybe the way we perform the job has changed. The role is the same: to assist the mayor and council in carrying out their mission with the rest of the township departments.
Is it harder now to make a budget? There are only so many things you can cut, and you have fixed costs that increase every year.
I don’t know about harder because, as you said, there are all these fixed costs, and you have to budget for them and you have to plan for them. You don’t have a whole lot of flexibility, and it’s difficult to create new programs now. I can remember back during the Rafferty administration when we had continuing increases in the energy receipts revenue, and it was pretty easy to put a budget together, keep taxes low and still have new efforts like Veterans Park. There’s not a lot of flexibility these days, and in a certain sense, it’s almost easier to put a budget together these days because it almost puts itself together. But if you want to do something new and innovative, it’s more difficult.
What we’ve found we’ve had to do is—and this is an old cliche— do more with less. People get assigned more duties, and we just get things done. If you look at our police department, when we came in there was a chief, a deputy chief, five captains and so on. We cut those things back. We civilianized positions to cut cost. We didn’t reduce patrol or detectives, so the main task of the police department is still getting done.
You have a lot of experience, not just in the recent past but from decades ago with people like Jack Rafferty and Bob Prunetti. What did you take from those years?
With Jack, it was really one of my first positions of substance. With the state, there’s probably 20 or 30 buyers with the state purchase bureau. I was one of many. In Hamilton, you’re one of one. There’s much more access to the higher levels of the administration. Jack always preached the team concept. We do things together as a team, and the team makes for a better government, a better political organization. I learned that from him.
With Bob, I had been administrator for awhile in Hamilton. Certainly, the county is a much broader organization. At the time, we had a hospital, we had libraries, we had correction centers, courthouses, an airport. And Bob wasn’t one to sit around a bide his time. He was constantly doing things, such as building a baseball stadium and an arena. I was always involved in those projects. That was some interesting times, especially with the baseball stadium.
What made Waterfront Park so interesting?
We had been approached by two gentlemen, Sam Plumeri, Sr. and Jim Maloney, about siting a baseball stadium somewhere in Mercer County. They thought they could acquire a minor league team. They really were interested in putting it by the airport because of the access from the interstate highways. Bob insisted it had to be somewhere in Trenton. We came up with the site at Waterfront Park, and we had a very limited amount of time to deal with it because we had to get an approval from the freeholders, we had to get an approval from the team they were buying and moving — it was located in Canada at the time — and also we had to get approvals from Major League Baseball. All of this was new to us. We did a lot of research along with the team owners, and we were able to pull it all off.
Unfortunately the winter we were building the stadium was similar to the one we’re starting to have now — it was very cold, a lot of storms. Construction got a bit behind schedule, and the team had to open on the road for the first few weeks. Then, we had some issues with the field, which it turned out had to be redone after the first season.
Of course, we had to convince the public it was a good idea because a lot of folks were skeptical it was going to work, particularly in Trenton. As it’s turned out, it has worked very well. Waterfront Park has consistently been one of the top draws in the minor leagues, no matter what organization they were with.
If someone told you that you would spend nearly your whole career in local government, would you have believed it?
Yeah, I would have believed it because after I got out of college that was my goal to move into local government administration and eventually become an administrator or manager. That was my goal. As soon as I had the opportunity to make the move to local government, I did.
Why?
State government’s a rather big bureaucracy, and you don’t seem to accomplish much. You just do the same thing every day—buying a certain kind of commodity. In local government, you’re closer to residents, you have a greater opportunity to move up and better yourself and you’re not constantly buying the same thing. My area at the state was technical equipment: radios, computers, things of that sort. That’s all I bought. In local government, you’re one person, and you’re buying everything, from police cars to snow fence, whatever the town needs. You learn a lot.
To go back to something you said, you noted that Jack Rafferty stressed the importance of teamwork in a political organization. Since the 1970s, you’ve been part of an incredibly successful political organization in the Hamilton Republicans. In the 44 years between 1976 and 2020, barring something unforseen, Hamilton will have had a Republican mayor 75 percent of the time. It’s so hard at most levels for one party to keep control for that long, particularly in a diverse and politically independent town like Hamilton. So, why have the Republicans been successful here?
I think part of it is the tradition of Jack Rafferty. Jack was a very, very popular mayor. That popularity flowed down to candidates running for council and other Republicans running in Hamilton Township. The team concept, that carried over to Goodwin, Kenny and Pone when they broke through in 2005, and regained control of the council.
Then, Bencivengo was elected, along with Kevin Meara and Kelly Yaede. Even after the problems Bencivengo had, Kelly was elected mayor. Most people thought the Republicans were finished because of Bencivengo and there was no possible way a Republican could be elected. Kelly proved them wrong. Certainly, that can be attributed to her popularity. She works very hard at being mayor.
The local Republicans just hit a bump in November, losing three seats—and the majority—on the council. That’s been attributed to voter dissatisfaction with Gov. Chris Christie, and the numbers could be used to argue that case. But the mayor and the two remaining Republicans on council will still have to govern with Democrats for the first time. Do you have any thoughts on where the Republicans go the next few years?
They have to keep moving ahead with good government, as they have in the past, and I’m sure Mayor Yaede and the members of council will continue doing just that. I think this year was an abberation year, if you will. The top of the ticket was almost a foregone conclusion from the beginning, that the Democratic candidate would be elected. It was a landslide all the way done the ticket. There wasn’t an impact just here in Hamilton, but all around the state.
Hamilton Township Municipal Building,
