OCEANPORT – A campaign to change the borough’s form of government is underway.
Mayor Jay Coffey and council candidates Meghan Walker and Tom Tvrdik, all three of whom are running for election in November on an independent ticket, are leading an effort to collect signatures from more than 75 percent of Oceanport’s registered voters.
Coffey said the group is about “three quarters of the way done” and, if their push is successful, it will clear a path for a special election asking to transform the town’s system of government from its current borough form to that of a small municipality, an alternative for towns with a population of 12,000 or less.
The small municipality form of government was created with the adoption of the Optional Municipal Charter Law of 1950, also known as the Faulkner Act. Under it, communities can, by way of referendum, alter optional aspects of their government operations, including the size of the council, staggered or concurrent terms for elected officials, the use of runoff elections, the method of mayoral selection or the implementation of partisan or nonpartisan elections.
Coffey said it is the partisan election process that drives this initiative.
“There’s no Republican or Democratic way to fix a pothole, make sure the park’s maintained or that the garbage is collected on time. In Oceanport, we have 49 percent of our voters registered as independent, 28.2 percent Republican and 21.8 percent Democrat. We don’t have a party-leaning in this town, so why should our elections be structured that way?” Coffey asked.
Coffey first discussed the possibility of altering the borough’s form of government in April when, during an interview with The Two River Times, the Democrat mayor said he was “discouraged” and would not seek a second term due to limited powers and opposing viewpoints of the all-Republican council.
The borough form of government was adopted in the late 1800s and only allows the mayor a vote during the legislative process to break a tie.
This past year the council voted in lockstep to close the borough’s former recycling center, as well as convert the borough’s environmental commission to a committee. It also cited security concerns, safety issues and tax increases for its opposition of the development of a large-scale Jersey City University satellite campus at Fort Monmouth.
These are decisions, the mayor said, they failed to see eye to eye on.
Coffey used his mayoral veto power for the first time in April when the council unanimously adopted an ordinance to transition the environmental commission to a committee, but that veto was undone by a two-thirds council vote.
Council member and Republican mayoral candidate Robert Proto said the petition is just another method local Democrats are using to fool voters.
“This petition is being pushed by Democrats, including Meghan Walker, who is the former vice chair of the Oceanport Democrats, and Jay Coffey, who was elected as a Democrat four years ago. Now they’re running as independents, and it’s such an attempt to fool the voters,” Proto said.
“This is nothing more than an attempt by Democrats running as so-called independents looking to change the form of government to nonpartisan in a town that leans Republican. This is a blatant attempt by Democrats to hide who they are and it needs to get out there,” Proto added.
The small municipality form of government includes an elected council and a mayor, who is afforded a vote during the legislative process, but no veto power. The mayor may be elected directly by the voters or may be selected by the council from among its own members. Elections may be partisan, with primaries in the spring and the general election in November, or nonpartisan, with a municipal election in May or November.
“This initiative is about nonpartisan elections. No party lines, just people’s names on a ballot and let the people choose. Can anyone run right now as an independent? Yes, but they’re also boxed out by party candidates,” Coffey said. “We’re not the first town to look into this, and a change in form of government won’t really change much. But it does give the mayor a little more leeway.”
In January 2018, two former Republican council members in Red Bank, Mark Taylor and Michael Whelan, sought a similar change, but the notion was ultimately defeated when they could not collect the requisite signatures.
Neither Taylor nor Whelan pursued reelection in 2019 and Red Bank’s current governing body is now entirely Democrat following the victories of Kate L. Triggiano and Hazim Yassin.
Proto called the petition campaign a “long shot,” and said it bothers him that Coffey, Walker and Tvrdik, a registered Republican, are “trying to fool voters.”
“Be who you are. People may not like my style. I can be a little ‘in your face’ sometimes. But that’s because I’m passionate, just like my fellow Oceanport residents are. But you always know where I stand, what I believe and who I represent. What’s being done here is an insult to our intelligence,” Proto said.
Coffey said if the petition is successful, a special election can be held at any point. The topic does not have to be included on the November election ballot and could certainly be conducted post-election.
“It’s all dependent on when we finalize the signatures,” Coffey said.
