Letter to the Editor: Tobin Champions Experience

My name is Tracy Tobin and I am running for Township Committee in the Tuesday June 7 Republican Primary Election.

My family and I moved here in 1974, living in Washington Township for 37 years, and raised our four children here. I am retired now, and my wife Dottie and I plan to remain in town for the rest of our lives.

My wife Dottie was approached a few years after we moved to town, by a school nurse who was concerned that needy school children in town would not have gifts at Christmas. Their families could not afford gifts or holiday meals for a variety of reasons. My wife started calling friends and neighbors and quickly put together holiday packages for the families. That program was run out of our home for years, until it outgrew all the available space. Dottie continues her involvement through our parish, St. Luke’s Church on West Mill Road, as a member of Human Concerns and working with ICOWTA.

During my 41 year business career I worked for major companies in the airline, stock brokerage, banking and manufacturing industries. When I retired in 1999, I was the Director for Global Computer and Communications support for a multi-national manufacturing company. College was not an option as my parents were blue collar workers who had lived through the Depression and World Wars I and II. College grants and subsidized student loans were not on the horizon when I graduated high school. I earned my college degree by working all day and going to school at night. I finally graduated Cum Laude from Fairleigh Dickinson University with a degree in Business Administration and a minor in Computer Science.

I was appointed to the Town Planning Board in 1977, and also started attending Township Committee meetings to learn more about municipal government as practiced in New Jersey. It was an eye opening experience, and after two years I was elected to my first term on the Township Committee in 1979. I served three terms of three years each, stepping down due to a very demanding international business travel schedule. During those 9 years, I served as Police Commissioner, Fire and First Aid Commissioner, DPW Commissioner, and liaison to Recreation, Health, Planning Board, Administration and Finance. I was also called on to participate in court trials as a witness for the town, defending our Zoning and Planning ordinances that were challenged when we tried to slow down residential development.

I returned to the Township Committee after my international travel schedule slowed down. I spent a year attending township budget, work and public sessions before deciding to run for office again. I spent 18 more years on the Township Committee, serving our residents in a variety of positions including Mayor and Vice Mayor. I stepped down in September 2009, after my 38 year old son was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. My wife and I moved to his home in Pennsylvania to care for him while he underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. All the medical treatments were in vain, and he died in hospice on Thanksgiving morning 2009.

I had no intention of returning to elected office after my son’s death. I did accept appointments to the Township Library Board of Directors, Chairmanship of the town’s Ad-hoc Green Team/Sustainable Energy team and Legislative Shared Senior Citizen Services team. I did start attending Budget, Work, Public and Special meetings of the Township Committee a year after my son’s death. As the Committee members can attest, I spoke out frequently at these meetings, with comments, questions, suggestions and criticisms. One topic I challenged the Committee on early this year was the topic of moving Police Dispatch Services to the County Dispatch System. I had heard rumors in town that the Committee did not want to move to the County system for selfish reasons. The Committee had looked at making that move in 2008-09, but decided against it. The reason was the bottom line cost was higher than continuing to operate our existing dispatch system that went into service in 1999, as part of the new Police headquarters building. The County wanted our Town to absorb infrastructure costs and fees based on population instead of basing the fees on how many dispatch calls originated in our town. The Mayor went back to the County to question what if anything had changed between 2009 and 2011. He was told that the County had restructured the dispatch operation and cost structure, eliminated the population fee and had separate funding for infrastructure costs. The cost of moving our town to the County Dispatch system had dropped by over half a million dollars! After verifying the costs and services the Committee voted to move to the County Dispatch in September 2011.

Information distributed mid-day today by my opponent in tomorrow’s election, erroneously credited one of his supporters for restarting the investigation of the cost to move to the County Dispatch system. I restarted the process in a public meeting, on record, earlier this year and pursued the topic in public meetings for over four months until a decision was reached. Due to the way the wording of my opponent’s announcement was put together, it was made to appear that I voted to build a new town dispatch center in 2009. That is totally incorrect! I voted against moving to the County system when it would have cost our town more money than continuing to operate our existing system.”

I made the decision to run for election this year when the Committeeman whose term in office ends in December announced four days before the filing deadline that he would not seek reelection in order to have more time with his family. I can understand that, having served our town for over 30 years. With no other announced candidate from any political party, I stepped up as I have done throughout the years, and filed for election.

 My main goals are relatively simple:

1) Continue to seek and work on opportunities for sharing services with other towns. This reduces our cost and provides good services to our residents. We have had programs in place all the years I have been in office, starting with Police Dispatch, and added more agreements while I was on the Committee.

2) Explore the possibility of consolidating with other nearby towns. A joint Municipal and School forum with the Chesters and Mendhams has been scheduled for June 14 to try and find common ground on this topic.

3) Research sustainable energy technologies, including solar energy, as well as programs available from utility companies to reduce the current electric costs for the municipality and residents. In the six short months I have been chairperson, the Green Team has researched and joined a municipal energy consortium to reduce costs, won grants to put energy efficient solutions in place in municipal facilities and had three successful recycling events for our residents at no charge.

4) Work with both the K-8 and Regional High school districts to expand the cooperative approach to cost sharing that has started to develop over the past two years.

This has been a long letter but there are a lot of tangible results from all the years I have served our town. 30 years of actual experience in municipal government covers a lot of ground and shows practical results. This is and has been a great town to raise our families. I want to keep it that way. I have been in the trenches doing battle with State mandates and programs, court decisions, and litigation that worked against the interests of our residents and increased our costs. EXPERIENCE COUNTS IN ANY JOB YOU ARE SEEKING. The question is does the person seeking the job have the experience to do the job?

Please VOTE for me in the Republican Primary on Tuesday June 7. Thank you.

Tracy Tobin