The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
The first special assessment in 10 years of commercial property owners in the Hamilton Street Special Improvement District was approved May 27 by the Township Council.
The total assessment for the year was $34,268, and is apportioned based on the assessed value of each of the 102 commercial properties in the Improvement District. The assessment does not apply to residential property owners.
Assessments range from $5.73 for an empty lot on Field Street to $4,208.40 for the Hamilton Commons mixed-use building on Hamilton Street.
The District roughly runs the length of Hamilton Street from Franklin Boulevard to the New Brunswick border, and encompasses properties one block in on either side of Hamilton Street.
Several District property owners showed up to the meeting, asserting that they haven’t seen much progress for the money they’ve been assessed in the past.
John Baptist, who owns a commercial building on Hamilton Street, was one of the dissatisfied property owners.
“This is the third time I’ve gone through this process,” he said. “The first time they were planting some cherry trees, which the cars came along and knocked down.”
“The second time I got assessed, for thousands of dollars, we got some benches, we got some flags which fell down and the wind tore up, we got some garbage cans which never got emptied,” he said. “And that’s all we got. Now here we go again.”
“What’s this money to be used for?” Baptist asked. “More garbage cans? More flags? More trees?”
The majority of the money is spent on marketing, said Vince Dominach, the Hamilton Street Advisory Board’s executive director.
“We hold events on Juneteenth, Week of the People, and for Halloween,” he said. “That’s where most of the money is spent.”
“In the past, we’ve spent money on various studies,” he said. “We spent about a half a million dollars in the last 10 years doing infrastructure improvements, which included sidewalk and curbing and the tree removal and the tree plantings, and several hundred thousand dollars on other types of improvements. Most of that, the majority of that, is not through the special assessment.”
Township Manager Robert Vornlocker said those projects were paid for from Community Development Block Grant money, or the Shade Tree Commission’s budget.
Councilman Alex Kharazi said the the purpose of the marketing that Dominach mentioned was to “attract people to come to that part of the town.”
“So it’s going to be benefit the businesses,” he said. “That’s the purpose. And I’ll be hoping that people from across town will come and do shopping, do some other activities and so forth in the Hamilton Street area.”
Vornlocker also noted that prior to the Council taking control of the Hamilton Street Advisory Board in 2014, safety measures such as extra police patrols were paid for by the Special Improvement District.
“The commitment that council has made since then has created a Community Relations Bureau manned on Hamilton Street,” he said.
“And so they’ve installed cameras at eight different locations that are monitored by the police department 24-7,” he said. “Those were things that were done after council took over. And so now police officers patrol Hamilton Street, not at the cost of the business owners, but at the cost of the township. And there are officers dedicated to the Hamilton Street area as part of the Community Relations Bureau. So there have been a number of commitments that have allowed us, Vince and I, to keep it to where we didn’t need to do an assessment until now.”
The property owners also expressed concern about the handful of cannabis dispensaries that have opened up on Hamilton Street over the last few years.
There are currently 11 cannabis businesses operating throughout the township, with 12 more licensed operators in the pipeline.
The Council in November of 2024 capped the number of allowed cannabis businesses at 18, but grandfathered those who have received state approval but have not yet opened.
Township Councilman Carl Wright said at the May 27 meeting that he would take the blame for the number of cannabis retailers on Hamilton Street, and said he’s waiting for attrition to weed them out.
“Somebody’s got to go,” he said. “So I’ve got to put myself in that position of just waiting for that to happen.”
