Take Five: Chatham Borough Mayoral Candidate Thad Kobylarz

CHATHAM, NJ - There are seats opening up on the Chatham governing body and Patch caught up with the candidates ahead of the general election this November.

Questionnaires were sent out out to all candidates registered with the County Clerk's Office in the 2019 general election using the email addresses they went on file with. The responses will be posted on the site by those who submitted in the order in which they were received. They will also be included in an election preview wrap.

This Take Five features Chatham Borough mayoral candidate Thad Kobylarz. His responses to the questions are below and unedited.

1. Why are you running for office?

I love Chatham, and I want our beautiful town to thrive. Right now we face some looming issues: rising costs with a flat revenue stream, persistently empty storefronts and offices downtown, and frustrating traffic. I see a way to take on these challenges, and create a more robust and vibrant Borough for the long term. As a Borough Council member, I have already begun bringing innovation economy businesses to town to bolster our tax base without burdening our infrastructure, and to bring weekday patrons to our shops and restaurants. I have brought energetic and committed citizen volunteers onto committees to study our options for burying our power lines and to come up with new ways to help our downtown businesses succeed. As mayor, I can do more. I want to build on my success to revitalize our downtown and our River Road industrial area; cooperate with neighboring communities to commission a traffic study and create a comprehensive plan to re-route and tame Chatham traffic; and make Chatham a hospitable place for our seniors, for example by facilitating connections between student volunteers and seniors in need of occasional assistance with heavy work such as snow shoveling. I see so much potential for Chatham as a lively, intergenerational community with a robust local economy, and I see how we can get there.

2. What is the biggest challenge you see facing your community and how will you address it?

Chatham faces several interconnected challenges, and they need to be addressed together. We have flat tax revenues and rising costs, and a stagnant business sector. We have increasingly frustrating traffic issues as surrounding communities build housing without adequate traffic planning and without integration into the local economy. And seniors find it difficult to stay in their homes on a fixed income, as taxes go up and the local businesses cannot comprehensively support their needs. I believe we need to have a vision for Chatham in which we attract businesses from a growing sector of the economy – innovation-oriented businesses – to bolster our tax base and bring daytime customers to our restaurants and boutiques.

As a member of Borough Council, I have gained the partnership of the Morris County Economic Development Corporation to make the Borough the centerpiece of a larger, countywide program to attract technology and innovation companies to the region. You may have already seen the yellow banners along Fairmount Avenue and Main Street with the inscriptions “Startup/Moveup Chatham” and “Destination: Innovation” on them; these are the product of this growing marketing program.

To anchor the innovation economy in Chatham, I facilitated the Borough’s partnership with the Garibaldi Group to create an innovation-oriented coworking space (“The Station”) at 14 Fairmount Avenue. The Station officially opened in July of this year and already boasts its first permanent innovation economy resident (Boxcar, an app-driven parking and transportation service) as well as over 70% of its offices leased. As more people work in Chatham at The Station and other currently empty office space, they will enrich our downtown restaurants and boutiques with their weekday purchases.

In addition to strengthening our local economy, we need to address traffic congestion and safety issues. I plan to bring in a traffic engineering team to analyze the Borough’s system of streets holistically and propose solutions, potentially in coordination with surrounding communities, rather than playing whack-a-mole with each problematic intersection; push Trenton hard for another ramp onto route 24 and for “smart traffic lights” along Main Street and Watchung Avenue; and insist that the State make permanent the electric signs providing drive times to Route 287 that were placed temporarily along Route 24 last year, resulting in some measure of traffic reduction along Main Street.

Finally, I want to make Chatham a place to thrive at all stages of life. We serve families well, especially with our fantastic schools. Chatham should also be a great place to retire. I propose that we create a Senior Advisory Committee to apprise the Mayor and Council of issues important to Chatham’s senior residents; connect seniors in need of occasional or periodic assistance (with everything from home maintenance to food shopping to shoveling snow) to a volunteer group of capable helpers; institute a phone line with daily updates on Chatham activities and meetings; and provide a shuttle that circulates along Main Street and around the Borough to convey non-driving seniors to shops, restaurants, appointments, and the Chatham Senior Center.

3. What makes you the right person to vote for as opposed to the other candidate(s)?

As mayor, I will be able to build upon my success as a Council member, and implement my vision more effectively. As a Council member, I have built relationships with state senators; as mayor, I will be part of the NJ Conference of Mayors, and I will have more clout to put pressure on Trenton to address our region’s traffic issues. The mayor’s seat will also be a more prominent bully pulpit from which to market Chatham’s currently empty office space to technology and information economy firms.

In my work in finance and technology over the past 20 years, I have honed the necessary skills for building consensus within our community, and for representing Chatham to the world. It is important to me to give all our residents a seat at the table, and build consensus. At the same time, when it comes time to make a decision, I am comfortable taking the lead and making tough choices.

4. What will you do to facilitate communication with the community?

The most fundamental part of the mayor’s job is listening to the needs, desires, and ideas of the Borough’s residents. In preparation for joining Borough Council, I knocked on more than 2500 doors on a listening tour to learn what is important to our residents. I am doing the same this year as I run for mayor. Most people won’t make it to a Council meeting, so getting out in the community to hear from people is crucial. As a Council member I instituted regular office hours, which was a new practice in the Borough. As Mayor I will hold office hours every week on a rotating schedule to fit everyone’s calendars. I regularly give out my email and phone number to my constituents, and I will continue to do so as mayor.

It is also important that the mayor and Council share what is going on in our community and at Borough Hall. I will work with Council to make sure the Borough website is up to date with events and other plans, and I will institute a call-in line with the calendar of events for those who do not use the internet. I plan to record it myself daily, to ensure that we are all on the same page as a community.

5. What inspires you?

I am inspired by confronting a challenge that appears so complex that people say, “nah, it can’t be done,” and thinking outside the box to find a way to solve it. And I am inspired by the incredible potential I see in our community – the caring, talented residents, and the beautiful, green neighborhoods with their rich history. I can see an amazing future for Chatham, and I believe that with a clear vision and a practical plan, we can get there.

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