This January I had the pleasure to interview the Mayor of Cherry Hill, Chuck Cahn. We talked about his goals and plans for Cherry Hill, and discussed what he felt he has accomplished during his first year in office.
The mayor has focused his work on streamlining operations, looking at budgets by doing a line by line item review for opportunities to save money, and consolidation with some departments through better financing and better purchasing. He and his team formed a council made up of business representatives from all over town. They formed the citizen’s cabinet which was made up of residents from all over the community, who worked on adopting the first year’s budget that belonged to their administration which was effective July 1, 2012. The result was a zero percent tax increase.  Mayor Cahn and his team looked for numerous grant opportunities and submitted for many of them. They received about a million dollars in grant money to help directly off set taxpayer money.
The team also worked to launch the Mayor’s Wellness Campaign, a state wide campaign that he is looking to get Cherry Hill deemed a healthy town. Restaurants are working on increasing awareness of individual wellness and the effort is going extremely well. They are already on to the next stage.  Cahn does a “Walk with the Mayor” program every month, he meets with partners from the Jewish Community Center, which is involved heavily in the wellness effort, and consults with hospitals and doctors to promote wellness. It is a big campaign and this was a big part of the first year.  The Mayor’s other tasks include running the local government, meeting with groups, religious leaders, and   residents every day to address their concerns.   There has been a tax reevaluation for the entire township. “That was the first month,” the Mayor said jokingly. It is an ongoing process and they still have plenty more to do.
Mayor Cahn was a businessman before he was elected, “I was never involved in politics in my life, but I was involved in community service. To me it is not a political job, it is a community service job. Politics plays a minor role in being Mayor of a town, I think it is more about running a good business and balancing residents (tax payers’ interest). Providing services, for example, police, fire, schools, and of course, public works. Not all of those things fall under my purview, but it is all about the township. I think I used my business skills throughout the past year to try to make a difference and run more efficient government, and we have been successful.”
The success has garnered a very positive response, and the beginning of Mayor Cahn’s first term is going better than he ever imagined. He enjoys working with dedicated people in the local government and wants to make the town the best town it can be. The fact that they are doing so many things and are making a difference is really beyond his expectations. “There have been many,” he said about his greatest accomplishments as mayor, “I think it is the willingness to listen to people and take the time to understand people’s concerns and issues and have a direct impact on somebody’s life.”  He went on to say that    on the other hand, he has not had any considerable disappointments.
Not everyone is as supportive as I though. Mayor Cahn explained how he just passed a “no smoking” ordinance.  However, despite the consensus of the passage being a communal success, there are plenty of people who view it was a negative contribution. So he said it is not a disappointment, it is just that some people are very focused and have a predetermined view on what they want society to be, so it is impossible to please everyone.
Finally we discussed the state of the community’s swim clubs. The clubs are a huge way of bringing the community together and giving children a place to bond during the summer, but it seems that recently all of the local swim clubs are facing financial difficulty. Can the 13 pools survive in today’s market? “I would encourage them to use the purchasing power we have given them…I believe a fair reevaluation for their taxes and have lowered all their taxes so that helps them economically. We have offered people from our recreation department to help meet with them and use our townships purchasing ability to combine all of their purchases so we can help them get better prices.  Those are just a few suggestions. There is more, there are some rental opportunities we were talking about, some of their grounds, some of the pools were talking about selling off some of their grounds for development if possible. I do not know if that is going to come to fruition or not, but we are open to any ideas that the pools have.”  Mayor Cahn swam for the Haddontowne Swim Club for many years and knows how important the pools are to our neighborhoods. He encourages the clubs to combine their purchasing power and set some consistent guidelines where they can share their own services rather than doing everything individually, which makes the most economic sense. The people and communities around Cherry Hill love their swim clubs, so for them to combine and go somewhere else is not very appealing to them. The goal would be to keep the status quo and help the pools, offering additional services to them along the way.
We finished with the former businessman revealing that he really has no future political ambitions. It is a four year term, and he will just see where the job takes him. “I think that is the mark of somebody who really loves their community. You do it for the right reasons and not for the pay.”