Clinton Township Newsletter

3 J a n u a r y 2 0 1 7 Call Susan Hall– Your Kind of Agent! Clinton Township – Your Kind of Town! 908.735.8080 Office 908.310.7226 Cell susanjhall1030@gmail.com Susan Hall CRS, GRI, SRES ® , ASP ™ Agent/Sales Associate 186 Center Street Suite 150 Clinton, NJ 08809 Carol Beder's C e le brating 40 Y ear s! With thanks to Julie and Ruth for allowing me to write to you here in the CTNL in January, I am happy to report that the Township remains in good financial health. In addition, I'd like to take this opportunity to share news of recent projects and future initiatives with you: • First and foremost on everyone's mind are taxes and the state of our finances. I'm pleased to inform you that Clinton Township's finances remain in fine shape. Moody's recently awarded us an overall rating of Aa2 which the Township has held since at least 2011 and is slightly better than the Aa3 average rating for cities nationwide. Our debt remains at about 1 /3 of the State maximum and just at the nationwide median for debt as a percentage of assessed property value. The Council and I have worked hard to keep taxes down while still providing the services you expect and need. • The Council and I have spent a lot of time over the past year on our affordable housing compliance. As you know, this is constitutional mandate by the state and therefore the Township is required to provide a certain number of affordable housing units. Our future obligations remain to be determined in the courts, where we are a founding member of a consortium of more than 200 towns working to ensure that a fair obligation is determined. At the same time, to satisfy past obligations, we approved a 100% affordable housing community on the old Beaver Brook Homestead site. This project will retain the historic elements of the Homestead and add 66 units comprised of one, two and three bedroom rentals in six buildings on the property. The Planning Board held numerous public hearings to ensure this project will not cause traffic or planning issues. Estimated construction start if all continues to go well is in the Spring of 2018. • We are also negotiating with a developer on the redevelopment of the Old Municipal site on East Street into 10-12 apartments, one or two of which will be affordable housing unit(s). We have engaged our Historic Consultant to ensure the overall project reflects the historic character of Annandale Village and complies with conditions imposed on the site by the State. If these negotiations are successful, this project should start in late 2017. • A significant ExxonMobil facility expansion was approved by the Planning Board in November to add several new operations at their premier worldwide research center in the Township. Employment will increase by about 300 people, to approximately 1,200. These are good jobs - engineers & scientists - as ExxonMobil will consolidate research operations from south Jersey to Annandale. This is the only domestic non-production facility outside Texas and one of two worldwide R&D facilities for Exxon. Lengthy Planning Board hearings were held to ensure that the new operations have minimal impact on the surrounding community. ExxonMobil has been an excellent corporate neighbor and we look forward to their expanded presence in our community. Along these lines, we plan to work with Exxon and North Hunterdon/Voorhees High School personnel to develop a program which would provide students interested in STEM careers an opportunity to visit their world class facilities and interact with their scientists and engineers (as they already do in the Clinton Township Schools). Other new approvals and economic developments: • On Beaver Avenue, to the west of Hesco in the old PNC bank, local resident Josh DeChellis and his wife Jenni are redoing the bank building as a new restaurant, which was approved by the Planning Board in June. It's great having one of our residents come back and bring his world honed culinary skills to Clinton Township. We look forward to their opening in the February/March time frame! • The former Ol' West BBQ is finally finishing up a complete septic replacement and parking lot improvements. They are tying up some loose ends and should be re-opening soon as a new restaurant. Mayor's Column continued on page 5 ... Happy 2017!

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