Councilwoman-Elect Looking to be ‘Successful Together’

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By John Burton
RED BANK – It’s still a little unreal but it’s all starting to take hold, said Republican Linda Schwabenbauer, as she prepares to take her seat as the newest member of the six-member borough council.
“It’s a very strange thing; it’s very weird,” that she won what she thought was going to be a long shot at best and has been giving her new role lots of thought.
“You look at the town differently,” she said. “You see litter on street, you want to pick it up.
“I know it’s corny, but you realize it’s the whole town you’re representing.”
Schwabenbauer, 49, Leroy Place, wound being the top vote-getter on Election Day among the four candidates seeking the two available three-year seats on the six-member council. She was something of an 11th-hour replacement for a declared candidate who wound up dropping out of the race due to work conflicts. It was her first run for elected office.
Winning kind of caught her off guard, she said. “I was surprised because nobody knew me” during the early stages of the race.
She was approached by Councilwoman Cindy Burnham, a Republican who won last year’s race and who is someone Schwabenbauer has known casually for a number of years, about taking a place on the ticket. Burnham encouraged Schwabenbauer for the last few years to run for the office with Schwabenbauer continuing to beg off. But this year, “I just decided to give it a shot,” she said.
She figured she would follow the example of state Sen. Jennifer Beck, R-Monmouth, who lost in her first run for the Red Bank Borough Council in 1998 and went on to win the following year.
After announcing her candidacy, Schwabenbauer said she began being approached by residents. They told her, “We like what you had to say,” about such things as the borough’s finances, she said. She attributed that to that she “was talking about the things they were talking about.”
Schwabenbauer believes that sentiment tipped the scales for her in the Nov. 4 election.
The councilwoman-elect, who will be the second Republican on the Democratic-controlled council when she’s sworn in on Jan. 1, is a vice president of accounting and taxes for the Prudential insurance company.
“I think things have been run OK” by the municipal government during the 10 years she’s lived in the borough. But, “obviously, there are things that I question,” she said, especially with borough priorities and finances.
“I think it comes down to how we’re spending our money and managing the financial side of things,” she said.
Given her background, she is hoping to serve on the finance committee, which drafts the annual municipal budget.
One of the things she is questioning and looks to investigate further is whether the council should privatize its water and sewer utilities as a cost saving measure. She also wants to make a comprehensive review of the municipal budget to see where savings can be achieved.
While she would “really like to see a park on the west side,” she questions the use of limited resources to construct the recreation area containing a spray park under consideration for the Locust Avenue, west of Shrewsbury Avenue. She also questions why potential business owners complain that it’s so difficult to open new businesses here, a complaint she has heard from them.
“I not pushing any of it,” at this point, “but everything is on the table until we discuss it,” she said.
There will be a learning curve, naturally, Schwabenbauer said, and she sees that like pulling a loose thread, as she learns more and more. “I can’t wait to see where those threads lead me.” In the meantime, she plans to take the advice of her father, Arthur, who told his daughter early in her professional career: “Listen more than you speak, especially in the first 90 days.
“We do have to work together,” he noted. “So let’s find out how to be successful together.”