The best local politicians do it for love of their towns
GREG BEAN Coda
I've often wondered since I moved to New Jersey why any sane individual would run for most elected offices here.

Most of the offices are not full-time positions, so office holders usually have to work a real full-time job in addition to put bread on their family's table. They are lowpay, high-stress positions that must be done in the officials' "spare time."

You've got to question their motivation for wanting to get elected in the first place.

In this state, local politics is often vicious, petty and contentious. In that respect, holding local political office here is a lot like being in the newspaper business.

There is absolutely nothing you can do that will please everyone, and even the best ideas and intentions will have critics coming out of the woodwork to tell you- often on television or another public forumlike a letter to the editor - what a dope you are and how a run-of-the-mill baboon could do things better and more efficiently.

When I talk to elected office holders and candidates, I always ask them the same questions. "Why do you want to run for local political office here? It's a thankless and tiring job, and everyone will always be mad at you. Are you crazy?"

I've gotten a lot of answers to those questions over the years. The slick politicians and people who are doing it for their own ego or possible financial advantage always have a jazzy answer that sounds like it was written by a lawyer or public relations flack.

The good ones look me right in the eye and say they're doing it because they truly believe it's their duty to give something back to their communities. They're the ones who say it's not enough to criticize the work of others from the peanut gallery. If you truly love your community, they say, you have to roll up your sleeves and get busy doing things to make it better.

I had that very conversation with Bill Neary, who has been themayor ofmy home community in East Brunswick nearly as long as I've been the executive editor of these papers. He came to my office to visit when he was first running for mayor about 12 years ago, and when I asked him the big question, he gave it serious thought.

I'm working from memory here, but what he said is that his son had actually challenged him to run. A local business owner (he owned a Dairy Queen), Neary said he often complained about the way the town was run, and the lastmayor had been particularly divisive and controversial.His son finally said that if he thought he would be a better mayor, he ought to run for the job, and put his effort where hismouth was.

That's what he did, and Neary has been mayor in East Brunswick for a long time- three terms. But you can't be the mayor in a community like East Brunswick for that many years without making a lot of enemies and critics, and Neary certainly has his share of both. I get the sense it finally wore him out.

Recently, he stunned some people when he announced that instead of fighting a battle in the Democratic primary against Councilman David Stahl, he would bow out and give people with new ideas a chance. I respect Bill Neary for that decision. I think he might have won the primary had he entered it, but it would not have been a cakewalk. In the last few weeks, I've talked to several people around town who aren't normally involved in local politics but said they had become active in Stahl's campaign.

In that case, even if he would have won, his party would have been divided, and he'd spend his whole next term fighting them, the Republicans in the community and the gadflies who criticize everybody.

Neary decided it was time to move on.

I haven't agreed with everything Bill Neary did while he's been mayor in East Brunswick, and I've written about some of those areas of disagreement, like the East Brunswick Quarterly, the newspaper the town helps underwrite and Neary supports.

But as I look back on what he and his administrations have accomplished, I have to point out that he has been a good mayor and has done a great deal of important work in my town.

I think his work on open space preservation has been exemplary, for example, as has his work on parks and roads. He's always been available, and accessible. He returns phone calls, he answers questions candidly. He shows up at community events like high school graduations, not because he's politicking, but because he thinks it's his responsibility to be there.

But it has been his continued commitment to improving the retail corridor on Route 18 that I think will be his most enduring legacy.

In our first conversations 12 years ago, I noted that the retail community on Route 18 was looking a little down at the heels, and asked what he believed his administration could do about it. His answer was simple. He said he'd do everything in his power to get rid of old and unsightly pockets, like the old Meyer's Plaza, and attract new ratables.

I know that his administration can't take all the credit for the changes to the Route 18 business corridor over the last 12 years, but many positive things have happened. There's been a major renovation at the Brunswick Square Mall, ground was broken last month for the new Meyer's shopping center, now called Summerhill Square, and there are dozens of new businesses operating, and mostly surviving in a tough economy.

Then, of course, there's the Golden Triangle development and parking deck, which has been controversial and contentious at every stage of its birthing and will continue to be so in the coming years.

If that project has the positive impact on the community that Neary always believed it would, then he will be remembered as a visionary, a local politician who took the tough road, and led his community into a prosperous future. If it does not have that positive impact, Neary will be remembered in a less flattering light.

I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know how that will all turn out.What I do know is this: People can criticize Bill Neary all they want, but I defy anyone in East Brunswick to say that our mayor for the last 12 years ever came to work in the morning with anything but the good of the community on his mind, or in his heart.

For that we owe him, and all of the other local politicians in this state who serve with altruistic motives, a debt of thanks. His political opponents think they can do a better job, and maybe they can- but I suspect they'll find it isn't as easy as they imagine.

We'll certainly be watching as they try.

Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at gbean@gmnews.com.