Committee Candidate: Tracy Tobin

On Nov. 8, Washington Township residents will vote for either Tracy Tobin (R) or Joseph Keyes (D) to fill a Township Committee seat being vacated by Vice Mayor James Harmon. Tobin , and Keyes .

Long Valley Patch asked each candidate to fill out the questionnaire below. Here are Tracy Tobin's responses. Also see Joseph Keyes' responses here.

Age: 72
How long a Washington Township Resident? 37 Years
Occupation:  Retired in 1999. Last position held was Director of Global Computer and Communications Services for a multi-national manufacturing company based in NJ.

Elected Positions:
Washington Township Committeeman 1979–1988
Washington Township Committeeman 1991–2009

Served four one-year terms as Mayor and eight one-year terms as Vice Mayor. Appointed to positions as Police Commissioner, Fire and First Aid Commissioner and DPW Commissioner. Served as liaison to all municipal departments at various times over 27 years of service. Liaison to Washington Township K-8 and West Morris Regional Boards of Education.

Appointed Positions:
Chairperson Washington Township Green Team Ad Hoc Committee
Representative to the Warren/Morris Counties Shared Services Council
Mayor’s Designee to the Washington Township Library Board of Trustees
Representative to the Morris County League of Municipalities
Local Legislative Aide to Former State Senators Walter Foran, Dick Zimmer and Robert Littell. Liaison to Legislative District 24 municipal Advisory Council.

Other Community Associations:
Washington Township Planning Board 1976-1977
Washington Township Land Trust
Washington Township Municipal Alliance
Washington Township Historic Society
Friends of the Washington Township Public Library
Washington Township Veterans Association
Honorary Member of the Long Valley First Aid Squad
Member of Nature Conservancy
Member of Audubon Society

Most Pressing Issues Facing Washington Township:
Keeping the Township Affordable for Residents of all Generations. Our Township, like all others in NJ, is struggling with reduced revenues and increased costs. We have to look to increase shared services with other Municipalities, Schools, and Counties as well as opportunities for consolidation of municipal functions.

Seeking grants to improve energy and workforce efficiency, purchase equipment and refurbish facilities to extend their useful life. Seek opportunities for regional cooperation with nearby towns and Counties regionally such as Police Services. Making the town attractive to Senior Citizens rewards members of the community who have helped build our town, and reduces pressure for services on our town and schools. 

Continuing the cooperative efforts with our local and regional schools of the past two years that have shown that there are opportunities to save tax dollars by sharing ideas, facilities and services. The schools have been ahead of the town in terms of energy saving projects and efficiencies.

The town has equipment, facilities and trained personnel that can potentially help the schools reduce infrastructure costs. Municipalities and schools have to eliminate the sometimes adversarial relationships of the past and work to eliminate obstacles to better cooperation. Some of those obstacles are at the State legislation level prohibiting sharing of resources

Developing a long term financial and infrastructure plan to maintain our municipal road system. Our municipal road maintenance programs have suffered due to reduced funding resulting from the bad economy, State debt and reduced State Aid. While reduced municipal funding for roads was a necessary step in controlling overall costs, in the long term it is building up a potential travel nightmare for the town. We only have to look at the State’s deplorable diversion of tax revenues supposedly dedicated to maintaining roads and bridges, to see that continued under funding of road projects will ultimately lead to more expensive rebuilding of local roads. Significant increases in State Aid for municipal roads are unlikely for the foreseeable future. It is more likely that another State budget crisis will result in a further reduction in State Aid. The cost of road maintenance and repair materials is not going to go down. 

Unknown Personal Fact:
My military specialty was a Helicopter Anti-Submarine Sonar Operator 3rd Class