Roth, Gennaro hoping to keep Dems in charge

BY DAVE BENJAMIN
Staff Writer

Michelle Roth Editor’s note: The candidates who are running for seats on the Manalapan Township Committee were invited to the News Transcript office for interviews with the managing editor and the reporter who covers Manalapan. Questions were not provided to the candidates prior to the interview. The Democratic candidates accepted the invitation. The Republican candidates declined the invitation, and that is why their views are not included here.

MANALAPAN — Control of the Township Committee will be at stake on Election Day, Nov. 8, when residents head to the polls to elect two people to the governing body.

Anthony Gennaro Democrats have a 3-2 majority on the committee now with Bill Scherer, Drew Shapiro and Rebecca Aaronson. Republicans Joseph Locricchio and Andrew Lucas joined the governing body in January to begin serving three-year terms. At times during the year Scherer has voted with Lucas and Locricchio so the Democratic majority has not been etched in stone.

Scherer and Aaronson are not running for re-election.

The election pits Democrats Michelle Roth and Anthony Gennaro against Republicans Peter Hall and Miracle Torregrossa.

Roth was appointed to the Township Committee in 2004 to complete an unexpired term and served for the year. She ran for a three-year term in November 2004, but did not win election.

Gennaro, Hall and Torregrossa are making their first bids for public office.

If Roth and Gennaro are elected, they will join Shapiro to retain a 3-2 Democratic majority. If Hall and Torregrossa are elected, the Republicans will gain a 4-1 majority.

Roth is a former member of the Zoning Board of Adjustment and the Planning Board. She has operated her own investor relations consulting firm in Manalapan since 1987.

“My experiences volunteering on the Zoning and Planning boards have given me the necessary background to understand the complex issues and challenges that Manalapan faces today,” she said.

Gennaro is a licensed professional engineer specializing in structural design. He joined the Planning Board in 2002 and continues to serve on the panel.

“I consider it an honor and duty to serve Manalapan as I continue to share my professional and personal experience with the community,” he said. “I will contribute unique skills to the Township Committee if I am elected.”

The candidates were asked what initiatives they would bring to the governing body.

Roth said she would like to start with what she called “Club Manalapan.”

“I think there are ways to streamline town hall,” the candidate said. “We did that last year when we took away cars. Unfortunately, the Republicans gave that back this year.”

Roth said she and Gennaro both run their own businesses and have learned how to make a dollar stretch as far as possible.

“I would continue working with the county and Green Acres to put more farmland into farmland preservation,” said Roth. “For some reason it has stalled this year. There’s $2.6 million available to the town and they’re not moving the process forward.”

Gennaro said the committee members have to look at open space with some thought and planning as to how it will be used.

“The Township Committee should take a broad view, a forward look, and offer those guidelines down the line” to other municipal bodies. “The committee has to take a leadership role ... and help other boards see the future.”

Developer Richard Brunelli has proposed building The Village at Manalapan at the intersection of Route 33 and Millhurst Road. He has asked the Township Committee to consider rezoning the 135-acre property to permit several uses that are not permitted now. These proposed uses include a hotel, a multiplex cinema and residential units over retail stores.

The committee has not acted on his request this year. The candidates were asked how they would respond to Brunelli if he asks them to consider these changes when they are on the committee.

Roth said the property in question was zoned for neighborhood shopping to satisfy a need for the community, specifically the housing developments being built in the area near Route 33, Millhurst Road and Woodward Road.

Brunelli has a plan for a scaled-down version of The Village pending before the Planning Board.

“With the Freehold Raceway Mall, movie theaters and the Freehold Gardens hotel a short distance away, I have not heard a case made to justify building out to the envelope on that (Route 33) property,” Roth said. “Until a case is made, how can I made a decision?”

Roth said officials put zoning in place to separate commercial, residential and industrial uses in order to get a nice layout in the community.

“You create buffers so that one doesn’t impinge on the other and it works together as a community,” she said. “That [Route 33] property was originally zoned for office space. It was rezoned to accommodate limited shopping in 2000.”

On the issue of The Village, Gennaro said, “The answer lies in the quality of life. If the quality of life will be improved, it has to be considered, but the applicant has to make their case and satisfy all of the questions that the residents’ quality of life will be improved by their proposal.”

Gennaro said that as a member of the Planning Board he tries to ask questions that help him determine if an applicant is presenting information that is true or just a sales pitch.

The News Transcript asked the candidates to comment on Republican campaign literature which states that last year the township surplus was wiped out and the town was headed toward insolvency.

“We were not insolvent and we were never going insolvent,” Roth said. “If we were teetering on the brink of insolvency how would you give back money [by lowering taxes]? That makes no sense.”

The Township Committee lowered the municipal tax rate this year from 47.9 to 47.4 cents per $100 of assessed valuation in a municipal budget that totals $27.96 million. The owner of a home assessed at $400,000 would see a reduction in the municipal portion of his property tax bill from $1,916 to $1,896, a decrease of $20.

“I think it’s appalling that [the Republicans] have been and continue to be so reckless with their language, which will eventually hurt the township’s reputation and will eventually hurt people’s property values. This was never an issue,” Roth said, adding that the fund balance at the end of 2004 [$7.4 million] was up from 2003 [$7.3 million]. “We went up, not down.”

As to this year’s budget, Roth said, “They were desperate to get a headline that said ‘We’ve cut your taxes.’ They were reckless when they constructed this year’s budget. They’ve pushed it to the max and were counting on revenue that might not appear. What happens if something doesn’t come through? What if [we have] a winter where there are about 30 snowstorms and our expenses go up? It’s all smoke and mirrors.”

Gennaro said, “What we do is public service. Everything we do we back with fact and with law. We don’t dip below the line and we trust the public to determine the sensationalism and what affects their quality of life.”

The candidates were asked to respond to Republican campaign literature that states, “Warning! Don’t Trust Any Politician!”

Roth said, “In 2003 Mr. Locricchio said [Manalapan High School] had the worst drug problem on the planet. Last year Mr. Locricchio and Mr. Lucas were screaming we were insolvent.”

Gennaro said everything he and Roth have done has been in public.

“We’ve never met with anyone privately on anything,” he said. “Everything is open to public inspection. We can’t say that is true for some of the people who are in office right now. In their own words, from their own mouths, they’ve said that they had meetings apart from Township Committee members’ knowledge and had taken rogue actions.”

Roth has lived in Manalapan for 20 years. She and her husband, Larry, have three daughters.

Gennaro has lived in Manalapan for 18 years. He and his wife, Emy, have two daughters.