Mayor David Del Vecchio
State of the City Address
January 1, 2012
Good morning, and may I wish each of you an your families a happy and healthy new year.
I for one, am glad to see 2011 quietly fade into the background, as opposed to either being buried in two feet of snow, or washed away in a flood.
Those images are what most of us will remember from 2011.
But in between, we accomplished many things that will benefit our city for years to come, and for which we should be very proud.
Lambertville, despite its size, is a true leader in promoting progressive and responsible municipal governance – not just in our county or our region, but in our state.
For the past year, I have had the privilege of serving as president of the New Jersey Conference of Mayors.
From the governor to state legislators to my fellow mayors and council-members, what we do here in our small city is watched throughout New Jersey.
Getting those things done is a very tough job, and I am proud to have an engaged team on the City Council to work with.
I am incredibly lucky to have Council President Stegman, Councilman Sanders, and Councilwomen Asaro and Warner sitting up here. Individually, they bring differing perspectives and fresh ways of looking at every issue before us. Together, we are a strong voice that stands up for our community’s values. I thank them for their service over the past year, and look forward to continuing our work together over the coming months. And we will have plenty to discuss, as we have plenty of work ahead of us.
Once again, keeping our city’s finances within the state-mandated limits while delivering the quality of services our residents demand and deserve will be our top priority. The city will continue to seek every avenue for saving taxpayers’ money – and when we do invest it, we will ensure that the return will far outweigh the cost.
We put that mantra into action in 2011, when we upgraded both City Hall and the Free Public Library to natural gas heat, moving away from the costlier fuel oil and electric systems that had been in place. And we continued our partnership in the South Hunterdon Renewable Energy Cooperative, which is moving closer to breaking ground in West Amwell for a solar field that will power the high school – providing savings to Lambertville taxpayers – and which is also delivering much-needed direct aid to the city that is being reinvested in energy audits and efficiency projects to lower our operating costs. This year, I am excited about our prospects for seeing our electric power delivered by a third-party, at a savings of 10 to 20 percent over what we currently pay. We do have to keep the lights on at City Hall – we just don’t want to have to pay dearly to do it.
And, speaking of lights, we will look to convert our downtown street lights to high-efficiency LED bulbs. While more expensive that conventional lighting, LED bulbs will use a fraction of the electricity while lasting exponentially longer – giving us two ways to save. But we shouldn’t just think of saving money when we think of the word “efficiency.” Sometimes we just need to look at how we do things, and implement ideas that just make common sense.
One of those new ideas starts this week. No longer will you have to count the number of weeks in a month to figure out when to put out your recycling. Starting this week, the city will embark on a program of weekly recycling, the same day as your regular trash pickup. It is our hope that this will not only make it easier for residents to remember when to put out their recycling, but will just make it easier to recycle, and increase our overall recycling rates. Trash removal costs tens of thousands of dollars annually, while we make back money the more we recycle. Hopefully, as the weeks go by, we will see less and less put into the trash stream, and more and more put into recycling. I thank Acting Public Works Director Lester Myers for putting together this plan, and for his commitment to not only keeping our city clean, but ensuring that it remains green, as well. The efficient delivery of essential services is just one thing that increases our quality of life.
Another is preservation of our natural resources. And so, too, is the maintenance of our infrastructure. In 2011, we enacted a new city ordinance to more closely regulate construction and disturbances on our steep slopes. This ensure that our hills remain a beautiful vista for the city. One of those vistas, the hill directly behind Ely Field, will be one of our top land preservation projects in 2012. Our work there will guarantee that the lights of the field will only reflect off of leaves for years to come.
And, this year, we will also undertake much-needed upgrades to Cavallo Park. When coupled with the recent upgrades to the MUA’s sewage facility, the south end of the city will not only have a gathering place for friends and families, but it will have cleaner air, too. Of course, to enjoy our parks and open space, you need to be able to get there.
I am pleased with the work recently completed on the reconstruction of the upper stretch of North Union Street, and especially with the agreement reached that will finally see the completion of the roads in the Lambert’s Hill neighborhood. With these projects, our streets will not only be better, but they will be safer, as well.
And, finally, for our out-of-town friends, we successfully replaced all of our outdated parking meters in the Central Business District with digital models that can handle any coin. It’s a relatively small thing, but anything we can do to make someone’s first visit to Lambertville that much easier means they will be more likely to come back and visit us again and again.
One thing that we don’t want to have visit us again, though, are the flood waters that did so much damage to the homes of our friends and neighbors.
But it’s amazing at how when we see the worst of Mother Nature, we so often see the best in our community. Whether it was pitching in to help a friend clean their basement, neighbors sharing a generator to power a pump or recharge a cellphone, or offering a hot shower to someone without hot water, our community’s response to September’s storm showed the very best of Lambertville’s spirit. From the city’s perspective, while we worked hard to help the cleanup, we also know there are things we can do better.
At the top of that list is how we communicate to you. A small dry-erase board outside City Hall is of little help to someone working hard in their flooded basement to save their belongings. And a photocopied piece of paper is only good if we can get it to you while it’s still warm, before things change. This year, the city will be implementing a reverse-911 call system that can be activated in the event of an emergency. This will allow us to reach every telephone in the city with timely updates. For houses with landlines, these calls would be automatic. But for our increasing number of residents who only have cell phones, we will ensure our system will allow you to have your number registered, as well. Even when the power was out, so much information was being found via smartphones. As a city, we need to modernize our emergency communications systems so that we never lose touch with residents. That includes the use of Twitter, Facebook and email. I hope that we will never have to go through the type of events that we saw in September. But, if we do, I pledge that even if the power is out, you won’t be left in the dark.
In the days after Hurricane Irene, I toured the city with Senator Shirley Turner, Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman and Assemblyman Reed Gusciora. Thanks to the work of the state’s Legislative Redistricting Commission, as of next Tuesday we will officially be part of the 15th Legislative District. Shirley, Bonnie and Reed have always been good friends to Lambertville, but now they will no longer just be visitors, but our voices in Trenton. And I, for one, couldn’t be happier. Our community will finally have voices that closely mirror our own values. Over the past several months, many of our friends have welcomed our new legislative team into their homes to meet us and get to know the issues that matter to Lambertville. I look forward to welcoming Shirley, Bonnie and Reed back to Lambertville in the weeks, months and years to come. And, I know they will come to know the Lambertville we all know – a close community, a walkable community. A community that cherishes the arts as much as it cherishes its own diversity.
We are a model community for our state. I could never be prouder of all we have achieved, nor more optimistic for the year ahead.