Perth Amboy residents have voiced concerns about quality of life for many years. In 2021 Perth Amboy commissioned a performance review from the firm Government Strategy Group who are consults to local governments on improving local government performance. The performance review assessed Perth Amboy’s departments and agencies and made recommendations for needed changes. The report is called Management Enhancement Review for the City of Perth Amboy. It is a great report, and one which can be used to evaluate the city leadership and if they are addressing issues outlined in the report. The performance review report lists the number one issue facing Perth Amboy as quality of life. The government experts said a solution for addressing our issues is a Quality of Life Task Force to address, develop and monitor solutions to this important issue.

The Perth Amboy performance review also said Redevelopment should engage the community, through visioning sessions, to provide input on their ideas, thoughts and suggestions for how to improve and redevelop the City. That citizen engagement and input can be very supportive for transformational change. And they should study and monitor traffic impacts resulting from redevelopment – not only in the immediate vicinity of redevelopment projects but also as they may impact other areas of the community.

The review said Code Enforcement is deficient in many areas and needs improvements.

The review says the Police Dept deployment model has been in place for many years and should be reviewed to see if a new deployment model should be used. And that the Police Department should consider “civilianizing” positions wherever possible, which can result in considerable cost savings from the differences between salaries and compensation for uniformed personnel and civilian personnel. It says GIS should be employed for crime mapping and for use in intelligent policing for predictive modeling.

It also says the city’s strategic plan should take a community based approach.