Yesterday, the NJ published a lengthy article where Wilmington’s business community officially went on the record to voice their disapproval of the Williams’ Administration’s approach to managing crime in the city. While news and complaints about the crime problem are not new, the fact that portions of Wilmington’s business community is willing to talk to journalists about their concerns is new and huge, I think. Previously, they could just reach out to the 9th floor and they usually had not just a sympathetic ear, but also an administration that at least tried to address their concerns. Not, the problem (while admittedly not that much bigger than before) is exacerbated by both the glib promises made by the Mayor and his people as well as an administration that is utterly MIA on this issue. It isn’t just that no one from the Administration will speak or even be seen to be proactive on safety issues (even the perception of safety issues), Wilmington’s business community has met with the Administration multiple times asking how they can help AND communicating that they can be counted on to support solutions. This effort has been met with silence. The Mayor and his people responded to the effort to deal with panhandlers downtown by assigning a round the clock (although I don’t think that they are so round the clock now) Community Policing Unit. This is the same kind of Community Policing that neighborhoods have been asking for over the last six years or so.
Government must seriously address the problem or risk losing the companies that employ office workers fueling commerce in Delaware’s largest city, business leaders and landlords say.
Some of these companies would leave now if they did not have tax credit or other supports that mean that they are committed for awhile. And I think it would be fair to say that some of the frustration with these business leaders is that they don’t think that the Mayor cares about the problem or is willing to step up to help deal with it. The fact that neither the Mayor or his Chief-of-Staff could rouse themselves to speak to a reporter, while The Governor and the new AG clearly thought that this was important to discuss adds to the sense of overall abandonment. I’m in touch with one firm whose employees are pressuring them to get out of the city and here’s been little to no triage by anyone from the Administration.
That said, this article contains multiple anecdotes of individual issues downtown, with no accompanying statistics for the area. And they exist. Showing these and comparing them with other areas of the city would have been useful and responsible, and I’d guess that they would show that effort needs to be in the high crime areas to further minimize issues downtown. But since the NJ is dealing in anecdotes here, I’ll note again that I live in West Center City and regularly walk to venues downtown and at the Riverfront. My neighbor and I have walked the Riverfront as early as 5AM. None of us have been accosted, either. But it is well past time for folks to stop believing that their workplace is going to be more crime free than where they live.
Even so, it is difficult to read where places like Camden, NJ; Philadelphia, PA; Baltimore, MD had reductions in most crime categories — certainly all of these places still have major challenges, but they are at least working hard on it. It is routine to hear officials from Philadelphia and Trenton on WHYY discussing this issue and communicating how seriously they take it, not so with the Williams Administration.
And while businesses are just now going on record, neighborhoods like Trinity, Cool Springs/Tilton and Quaker Hill (where I live) are being undermined by the lack of action on safety. It would be tragic for businesses to continue an exodus from the city, but homeowners leaving would be the nail in the coffin. Because there won’t be more homeowners, there will be tax-subsidized rentals. You don’t have to go far in Wilmington to see what that does to a neighborhood. But the issues with neighborhoods and homeowners is not new, either — unfortunately no one from the NJ will document how unhappy they are with the decreasing value of their homes and even the lack of enforcement of basic L&I laws.
Still, Matt Denn is a ray of hope here. He seems serious about addressing the crime in Wilmington and I hope that he has a partner for that in the Williams Administration. In the meantime, the conversation over the 2016 Mayoral race has started and so far I can’t find anyone who would vote for Dennis Williams again.