Support George Ervin, Michelle Paz and Rob Hermansen For Council

On November 6th you have an opportunity to elect a Mayor and five Council members. I ask that I be one of those Council members. For the last five years I have served this town as a Councilman. The last two years I served as the Council President. My wife and I, our four children, and three dogs love this town. Mahwah is a special place with great people. We have dedicated volunteers who help keep us safe and make our civic and sports programs the best in Bergen County. Because I love this town, I have worked tirelessly to do what is right ever since I became a Councilman. It has been a privilege to serve you, and I look forward to your continued support on November 6th. I value the integrity of our township. I believe in keeping Mahwah looking like Mahwah, and not turning the post office and our DPW building into high rises. Over these last two years, no one could have imagined some of the things this town has gone through. The Council kept working through these things—we worked tirelessly for you, the great people in Mahwah. We continued to work together to keep your taxes down, take care of our volunteers, our seniors, our kids, and our police department.

We have been able to accomplish a great amount of things during this time. We signed a Well Head Protection Ordinance to help protect our drinking water. We signed the ordinance against the Pilgrim Pipeline again to help protect our water supply and our environment. We worked with the Board of Ed and added a Student Resource Officer( SRO) to our high school. Even though I know our schools are already extremely safe, this adds another layer to that safety. We were able to use the money that we received from our new Cablevision deal to now televise all our Council Meetings, Planning Board and Board of Adjustment meetings. So if you do not want to leave your own home, you do not have to. We also archive these meetings so that you can view them when it is convenient for you. We were able to get a new scoreboard for Continental Soldiers Field by having it donated by a corporate sponsor at no cost to the taxpayer.

The Council and I have done many good things for our town, and with your support we will be able to do more. When I served under Mayor Martel the Council and Mayor got along. There was no animosity—we worked together. Currently, we have a Mayor who does not want to work with your elected Council. No matter what happens in this election, at least five of the current Council members will be back to serve you, the people. This means if the current Mayor wins again you will again have a situation of him serving two more years with a Council that he does not like. I believe this makes no sense. We ended up spending money unnecessarily due to the Mayor not supplying the Council with emails that were sent to him by our Chief of Police who told him to disseminate them as he saw fit. The Council never got them. The rest, as they say, is history. The mayor and Council need to be transparent to each other as well as cohesive. When one party does not want to work with the other, we end up with issues. When one party stops going to Council meetings he is failing the people and the Council. In fact, the Mayor did not show up for work at the last five Council work sessions.

There is still much to do. We need to find solutions for our town such as the lack of cell service in many areas of our town. In today’s day and age and with all the new technologies out there I do not believe placing a cell tower in the backyard of a neighbor should be our 1st option. It should be our last option after all sites and other potential solutions are explored. We need to and we will get this problem solved. We need to fix our DPW building and Center. Administration has known about this problem for years. Selling the land to a developer is a bad choice; a worse one is doing it in such a way that 4 to 5 story buildings get built with none of the tax money going to the Board of Education for the next 30 years as was proposed by our Mayor. We will be installing a new turf field at Continental Soldiers Park. This park is the envy of all surrounding communities. It is used almost every day of the year by one of our sports teams. We need to keep our parks updated along with our pool for all our residents to enjoy.

I ask that you support our current Council who are running for re-election, especially George Ervin and myself for 4 year terms and Councilwoman Michelle Paz for the 2 year term. We do and will continue to work together; we do get things done. We have worked hard for you, the people in Mahwah under very trying circumstances. I am looking forward to a new Mayor, one who wants to work with our Council. On November 6th I ask for you to support me by voting Robert Hermansen for Council Column 2

Robert Hermansen

Mahwah NJ 07430