Mayor's Corner

January 5, 2026

I have been living in Readington for 35 years. I have been chair of the Open Space Advisory Board for the past 10 years and on the Township Committee for the past eight years, previously serving as both Deputy Mayor and Mayor. It is my honor to serve our residents.

As Mayor this year, my main focus will be two things, to protect and preserve.

Public safety is paramount, we need to have protection for all our citizens. In the eight years I have been on the Township Committee, I believe we now have the most capable police staff and administrative staff we have ever had.

Preservation is near and dear to my heart. In 2018, I helped draft language to increase the protection of this Township. At that time, we had 30% of our land area preserved, either farmland or open space. I set a goal in our Open Space Element of the Master Plan to increase that by 3,000 acres, another 10%, so 40% of Readington would be preserved. With the assumption that we have some private landowners that are going to maintain their properties in that same natural state, that would bring us to 50% of the Township preserved. That is the goal.

Going forward, we will be looking to utilize more federal grants, in addition to getting help at the local and state level to help with land preservation. In 2026, we are going to be looking for help on the federal side. We are in the Federal Highlands now so we can aspire and request grants from federal sources. We are going to continue to pay for land with money reimbursed from county, state and federal entities. We are also working on stewardship of our lands with Raritan Valley Community College Environmental Center and their team of interns. We are trying to not only save land, but we are actively working to steward it so we are recovering from some of the loss of trees. We are also improving the habitat and creating wildlife corridors. In the past seven years, we have been able to preserve 526 acres including two dam sites, two farms and over twenty open space parcels. In the future we will target approximately 150 acres per year assuming both funding and willing landowners.

We are on track and I am hopeful the consensus will be to continue doing exactly what we are doing and maybe increase the preservation goals a little bit because we are all familiar with looking east and south at development. We want Readington to be unique in that we want to get ahead of that development curve.

In closing, I want to thank my Township Committee members for the opportunity and hope we can work together on positive results for the Township.