Election 2023: Republican Debbie Verwoerd For Newtown Twp. Supervisor

Candidates running in the Nov. 7 general election are providing background about themselves and their positions on the issues to voters in these profiles, which will run in Patch individually for each candidate.

NEWTOWN TOWNSHIP, PA — Republican Debbie Verwoerd is seeking a six-year term on the Newtown Township Board of Supervisors. Four candidates are vying for two open seats on the board of supervisors in the General Election. They are Democrats Elen Snyder and Phil Calabro and Republicans Andrea Ahern and Debbie Verwoerd.

Biographical Information

Name: Debbie Verwoerd

Age: 49

Town of residence: Newtown Township

Position sought: Supervisor

Are you an incumbent? No

Party affiliation: Republican

Family: Married, 2 children ages 15 and 20, 2 dogs

Education: BA, Economics and Statistics, Rutgers University

Occupation: Vice President, MetLife

Questions

Why are you running?

Newtown is heading in the wrong direction. Taxes have tripled in less than a decade. Traffic and
development have increased to the point that they negatively impact the daily lives of residents. And the politically divisive climate that infects our nation has been allowed to creep into our local government. All of this has happened while the current board majority offers no new solutions or innovation, but only returns to the oldest, simplest solutions: spend more, raise taxes, continue to bicker. Andrea Ahern and I want to refocus the supervisors on the issues they can truly impact. We want to use our decades of business and community experience to bring new ideas and approaches to local government. We desperately want to bring people together again too meet our common goals by listening and being transparent. And we want to focus on the future by planning ahead instead of simply reacting to what’s in front of us.

What are the top issues facing the township and how do you plan to address them?

Managing our finances, addressing traffic and development, ensuring public safety, and ending the political divisiveness that has infected our community. To better manage the people’s money and control taxes, we will bring real-world financial management tools and practices to government to find cost savings and seek out alternative revenue sources. To address traffic and development, we will leave nothing on the table – from working to have the state provide more latitude in the municipal planning code for townships to decide their future to revisiting our master plan. To ensure public safety, we will ensure our police, fire and EMS are fully funded and work to support policies that help prevent crime in the first place. Ending political divisiveness starts with refusing to play political games and focusing only on the issues that supervisors can actually impact; it continues with ensuring the opportunity for all voices to be heard.

What would you work to accomplish over the six years?

Returning the Board of Supervisors to ALL residents by taking politics out of the equation and focusing on Newtown’s priorities: our fiscal solidity, our safety, protecting the character of our community, and our future. To do this means bringing more transparency and communication to the Board, along with new approaches to the challenges we face. Whether it is finding cost savings or alternative funding streams to protect taxpayers, fighting the state to change the planning code so we can better manage growth and development, or simply making more information available to residents, we need to change how we have always done things to do them better. As business people and community leaders, we have seen the failure of “doing things how we always have” and will use our professional skills to bring a new direction to township government.

What is your position on a new sewage treatment plant in the township?

Our position on a new treatment plant is much different than our opponents who have already seemed to make up their minds. Remember, Ms. Snyder sits on the Sewer Board that is proposing taking the land on the bypass to build a new treatment plant, and Mr. Calabro indicated at a supervisor meeting that he is in favor of a new plant. They are, quite simply, “all-in” on spending the more than $100 million minimum it would cost to undertake this project. We believe in taking a deeper look at the proposal and listening to residents. As supervisors, we will always ask: which services need to be provided by Newtown Township and which are residents better served receiving in another manner? In this case, Newtown is served by an authority that takes sewage from our township to a regional treatment site. We must be concerned about the costs and inefficiencies that duplicating these services could cause, as well as the negative impact on our residents’ quality-of-life, including odors and runoff into a nearby reservoir. There are also serious cost issues to look at. Before even beginning construction of a new treatment plan, the Township would need to pay off its share of $200 Million in debt obligations to the infrastructure currently serving our community that we would no longer utilize. And, yes, while the costs to pump into the Neshaminy Interceptor have risen over the past few years, so have the construction, materials, and labor costs that would be necessary to build and run our own plant. Finally, and most important, is this: what do the residents truly want? Ten years ago, when this same proposal was raised, Newtown’s residents fought against – and defeated – it. We would make certain residents are fully informed of all options and their costs so they could tell us what they truly desire.