By Sunayana Prabhu
SEA BRIGHT – In the upcoming Nov. 5 general election, residents of Sea Bright have a choice among four candidates vying for two borough council seats. The two incumbent council members, William J. Keeler (R) and Erwin Bieber (R), are running for reelection at the end of their third terms. They are challenged by Susana Markson (D) and Tammy Kaiser (Sea Bright Independent).
Sea Bright follows a borough form of government with a mayor and six council members elected at large. The council members serve three-year terms and the mayor serves a four-year term. On each reorganization day in January, the council selects a council president from its members to serve a one-year term. Keeler is currently serving his third term as council president.
The Two River Times invited all four candidates to answer a set of questions to provide voters with their perspectives on good governance and Sea Bright’s pressing issues.
Editor’s note: Kaiser was unreachable by press time. Candidates’ answers have been edited for style and length; they are listed in alphabetical order.
The Two River Times: Kindly share your background and what motivated you to run for election/reelection?
Erwin Bieber (R): My wife Jody and I have been in Sea Bright for 25 years and we love to share our beautiful town with family, friends and neighbors. I have recently retired from a 43-year career as an engineer and business executive. I was raised to believe that community service is an important thing and we should give back when we have the opportunity. I have been on the Sea Bright Council for the last three years and am seeking re-election for two simple reasons. First is my love of our town and the second is to serve the interests of our residents where I take a listen, prioritize and then act approach. Sea Bright is truly unique and we want to maintain its uniqueness as we continue to thrive.
William Keeler (R): I am originally from Jersey City. We as a family came down to the Jersey Shore during the summer, and then in the late ’50s, we as a family left Jersey City and moved to Sea Bright. I left Sea Bright myself to attend college and later to serve in the Navy during the Vietnam War, after my naval service I returned to Sea Bright and have lived here ever since.
Firstly, I love the town. I really do, truly enjoy living here. Secondly, I want to help preserve the physical and social environment here in Sea Bright by preventing over-development. We need more frequent sand replenishment. And the third, I want to help maintain our financial viability by transitioning Sea Bright into a new school district. Those are three major reasons I’m running.
Susana Markson (D): I moved to Sea Bright in 1997, about a year after I graduated from college, and I started working at Donovan’s (Reef), where I worked for the next 17 years until 2012. While working there, I was actually appointed to both the planning board and council for a year after a woman I ran with, Maria Fernandes, became mayor. I ran after that and didn’t win, so I mostly have been volunteering in town since then. I’m on the library committee and any committee you could think of. Sea Bright is deep in my heart, and I love anything I can do to serve the town like I have been for many years now.
The community of Sea Bright is very, very important to me, and I feel tremendously lucky that I have been able to live there for the last 27 years.
TRT: What do you think are the most pressing issues in the borough where you would like to see a change?
Bieber: There is much to love about Sea Bright, and I don’t feel that there are major problems or issues that require change. Having said that, I am passionate about two particular items which I believe deserve to be prioritized. The first is to make every effort to protect the town from future flooding due to rising tides and storms. While we are bordered by the Shrewsbury River and the Atlantic Ocean, there are remaining steps we can take to improve our flood protection and resilience which I am leading. Secondly, we need to protect the town from overdevelopment which we see happening in many towns around us.
Keeler: Sea Bright is a rather unique town. It’s very small, only 1,500 people, but it’s also a very narrow, three-and-a-half-mile long peninsula, with the Atlantic Ocean all along one side and the tidal affected deep-water Shrewsbury River running all along the other side, and there are three related issues that affect everything we do in Sea Bright. There is only one roadway running through Sea Bright. Every day, we have over 15,000 vehicles traveling through Sea Bright. The overwhelming majority of those vehicles are from out-of-town passing through. That’s a major factor we have to work around.
The second major factor is at the end of Sea Bright, you have Sandy Hook National Park and they’re up to now about a million visitors every year, and all of those visitors enter into an exit from the north end of Sea Bright. Sometimes, when the park is really crowded, they close it, and then all the people trying to get into the park end up driving through Sea Bright to find someplace else they can go.
And the third major physical factor is, Ocean Avenue is a major transportation route. We actually have a morning and evening rush hour and… it’s only a two-lane road.
(Other major issues are) beach erosion, school financing, the river bulkhead, bike safety and parking in the summer.
We’re working with the state and federal agencies to have more frequent sand replenishment. The current seven-to-eight-year cycle is too long.
We pay currently over $140,000 a year for each student, and it’s going up to well over $200,000 so we want to leave Shore Regional school district and join the new K through 12 district at Henry Hudson that involves Sea Bright, Highlands and Atlantic Highlands.
There is a constant need for river bulkhead repair and replacement. It’s a very expensive project. We’re working with the federal and state (agencies) for financial assistance in doing that.
Bike riding has become a tremendous activity (but)it’s not safe for most people. They don’t appreciate the danger involved, especially we have a lot of young people. They come over from Rumson riding their bikes, and they’re not properly instructed, or they’re not aware of the hazard. We’re going to try additional signage and police enforcement of our rules and regulations, and we’re going to try talking to the school districts to give a training session on bike riding, just so they’re more aware.
In the summer, parking is very difficult for residents in the downtown area. A lot of homes have been lifted, elevated, and they have parking underneath their homes, but that means they have a driveway, and that reduces street parking. If you don’t have a private driveway, people are finding it more and more difficult in the summer to find places to park, so we have to work on that. That’s a situation we’re trying to address right now (to) prepare for this next coming summer.
Markson: We have the same issues that we have always had in Sea Bright.They are exacerbated now because Sea Bright is more popular than it’s ever been. My most important issue is taking care of the people that actually live in town.
Downtown has a lot of problems with parking and flooding. The council, I think, it was two years ago now, they passed the law that for the Airbnbs, you have to stay a minimum of, I believe it’s seven days, might be five days, but so you can’t just kind of rent a house for a night or a weekend, because the town was running into problems with that. The residents were renting party houses that were trashing the town. And residents were really feeling the brunt of that, especially downtown, at the North Beach. I would work with the council to just make sure that the residents are taken care of before anybody else.
There’s huge building projects going in downtown… (like) Riverwalk and lots of new houses and apartments. I care about making sure that goes smoothly and does not take away too much from the character of the town that I fell in love with. It’s a different town that we live in, and it’s a different community. A lot of people have moved out, but I certainly don’t want to lose what makes Sea Bright so special because, as Dina Long said all those years ago, after Sandy, it’s not just the beach, it’s the people. We are Sea Bright.
TRT: What would you like to shield from budget cuts in the borough?
Bieber: Virtually all New Jersey towns are struggling with property taxes and Sea Bright is no different. We have seen significant increases due to home selling prices and assessed values. Our municipal budget only makes up 40% of the overall property tax bill. County and school taxes, which we have very little control over, make up the other 60%. We need to control what we can and I am proud that during my three years on council we have seen only 3.8%, 2.8%, and 1.9% annual increases, respectively, which shows that we have been good stewards of our resident and business tax dollars. In addition to protecting our community from future tax increases, I believe we also have to protect funding for our Police Department which does an outstanding job all year long.
Keeler: We’re so small and we have such major issues, we have to work with the federal, state and the county governments to maintain their budgets for Sea Bright. We can’t afford to cut our budget, but they can’t afford to cut the budgets dedicated to Sea Bright because they have major responsibilities. The sea wall on the beach is controlled by the Army Corps and the DEP (Department of Environmental Protection). The highway is controlled by the DOT, so, we’re working on our budget. We certainly don’t want to cut any of the allocation for beach nourishment, for seawall maintenance, highway maintenance, and also, working with the utility companies, want to make sure that they maintain water, gas, electric and sewer lines… We’re working constantly with these other institutions. And we also work with our senior elected officials in Trenton and our Congressman Frank Pallone to, at minimum, maintain but quite possiblyincrease budget allocations for Sea Bright.
Markson: I think it’s really important for our first responders in town, that’d be our police, EMTs and fire department, to get all of the funding and help that they need… I help on the beach in the summer and what happens, especially the amount of people we get now, we rely on the police, EMT and fire guys to really take care of the emergencies that crop up. And I mean rarely, rarely, a few days go by without emergency calls in town, especially in the summer… Also obviously we need better flood plans… and day-to-day quality-of-life issues that I would not want to give up.
TRT: What do you like about living in Sea Bright?
Bieber: There is so much to love about living in Sea Bright, ranging from our beautiful beaches and rivers to our small-town community feel, and the services provided by an excellent collection of restaurants and shops. We are provided outstanding leadership by our municipal team and protection by our police, fire and emergency medical services. We are also fortunate to be in close proximity to major New Jersey venues as well as New York City using the ferry. What I love most of all about living in Sea Bright is how our family and friends simply cannot wait to get here and spend time together. They too appreciate all of the amazing things our beautiful town has to offer.
Keeler: I would say two things: the physical environment – I really love living here, the closeness to nature, the river, the ocean, the open skies, the bird life, the fish life walking the beach gives me a great lift, you just walk out the door and in two minutes, you’re on the beach. That’s such a wonderful environment. That’s why I love living here.
Second reason is the people. I like the fellow residents. They’re open, hospitable. You can talk to them as an elected official. There’s no problems knocking on doors and talking to people and getting their input.
Markson: I like almost everything about living in Sea Bright. I like the community around me and the people. Obviously, the beach and the river. You can’t beat it. I can watch the sunrise every morning over the ocean, and there’s not too many places in the world that you can do that. I like the fact that I can walk or ride my bike pretty much anywhere to get anything I need. I like Angelica’s. I like Donovan’s. I like Woody’s. I like all of it. What we say in Sea Bright is, once the sand gets in your shoes, you don’t leave.
The article originally appeared in the October 24 – October 30, 2024 print edition of The Two River Times.
