MANCHESTER – A Republican, an independent and a Democrat are seeking the mayor’s chair in the November 3 election. Each of them spoke with The Manchester Times about their candidacy and issues of the community.
The township’s form of government does not have primaries for municipal races but instead has a petition system requiring candidates to sign up to support their person on the ballot. Therefore, even though the candidates are affiliated with political parties, their parties won’t be on the ballots.
Current Republican Mayor Joseph Hankins is seeking re-election and is facing independent Mariah Prokop and Democrat Ken Seda on the ballot. Each were asked the same questions about their background, reasons for running and what they felt the critical issues of the township were and how they would address them.
Hankins said he wants to continue on as mayor because “there are projects we’ve started and I hope to be able to see them through. The water project is one of the bigger ones that we are working on and we are trying to save the residents some money. We know some of the contamination from the east end is coming from the (Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst) base and I am working with Congressman Chris Smith to try and get that funded.”
“The filtration of that system is funded through the federal government and so far they are paying for the temporary filtration and we fully expect them to take on full funding of the filtration,” Hankins added.
He said the main issue facing Manchester “is trying to control development. The Heritage Minerals project is still being pushed through by the builder and the owner of the property and we need to see what we can do there to not have too many units built out in Whiting. But with that project seeing its completion there is a good possibility that we can join the East End Water and West End Water (utilities) together and have one water system that is beneficial.”
“The township infrastructure does need some work. People say overdevelopment but if a developer or a person owns a piece of property who wants to build on it there is not a lot the township can do to stop that other than purchase that property from them,” the candidate added.
As to the urging of a health care village coming into the community as both a service and an attractive ratable and a source for employment, commented on by Council Vice President James Vaccaro at each council meeting and the building of a senior and youth community center, the candidate said, “more commercial is something we are working very hard on with the state to accomplish. There is something called the centers designation and Route 70 and sections of Route 37 were not originally put on that centers’ designation.”
He explained “with that it allows a developer to have more parking spaces which is what you are going to want if you build commercial. We are hoping to get that center designation. We have had meetings with the state of New Jersey and Senator (Carmen) Amato and Assemblyman (Brian) Rumpf and Assemblyman (Gregory) Myhre and really assisted us.”
Looking at how candidates are running their campaigns in the era of social media, artificial intelligence and other challenges, Hankins said, “Manchester is kind of unique because the villages don’t want you to speak on politics in their communities but you can speak on things that you are doing and if they ask questions, you answer the questions,” Hankins said.
The mayor also noted seeing some material saying that the township government hasn’t been transparent enough. “I would dispute that every day of the week. We are very transparent. Anybody can ask a question and we’ll certainly answer it to the best of our ability.”
He has lived in Manchester since 1969. “I grew up here. At 16 years old I tried to join the fire department but they didn’t have junior members at that time so I joined at 18. I had a good time with it. I’ve been a volunteer fireman for over 40 years, police officer for 25 years and retired in 2018. I certainly know the town. I enjoy doing things and try making the town better.”
Hankins is running as a Republican and is backed by the township’s GOP club in the non-partisan community of Manchester. “I am a Republican and I primarily vote Republican but there have been times that I have voted for the person who I feel is the better candidate. To run as a Republican in Ocean County I think that is a strong position to hold but sometimes that doesn’t help us with state aid so we have to be able to work with our Democratic party friends and get Manchester some of the funds back that tend to get collected as tax.”
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