Oceanport clerk to retire after 30 years of service Borough’s first clerk will be succeeded by deputy clerk BY CHRISTINE VARNO Staff Writer Oceanport Borough Clerk Patty Varca discusses borough business with Mayor Maria Gatta. OCEANPORT — After serving Oceanport for 30 years, the borough clerk said that when she retires at the end of this month, she will not only be leaving her position, but with it, a community of friends. “The individualism of our community is something I think you do not find everywhere,” Patricia L. Varca, whose retirement becomes effective March 31, said in an interview last week. “I will miss the people I have worked with, the mayors, the council members and the friends I have made. There are very strong ties here.” Varca will be succeeded by Kim Jungfer, currently deputy clerk, who will be sworn in to office at the March 17 council meeting. Varca moved to Oceanport in 1974 and, shortly after, heard there was an opening in the borough’s community development office. She began her career as an employee of Oceanport in January 1975. By November, Varca was transferred from the community development office to the municipal offices and became Oceanport’s first borough clerk. “There was no clerk at that time,” she said. “Oceanport had a clerk administrator who was leaving, and there was repositioning going on. I came to the office, and the rest is history.” The clerk’s main responsibility is to act as a liaison between the mayor and council members, Varca said. “It is a very challenging and different job,” she said. “I am in contact with different people all the time. Every day you experience something new.” Today, in order to hold the position of a clerk, an individual must be certified and licensed by the state and attend 20 hours of educational seminars every two years. Although Varca was grandfathered to be exempt from this ruling, she went ahead and took the test to receive her license. “I did not have to take the exam, but I did anyway,” she said. “I thought it would be a good thing for me to do.” After retiring, Varca said she is going to relax. “My husband has been retired for over two years and has been very happy,” she said. “Thirty years is a long time. We want to travel and not have to be on a schedule. “It is just time, and I am looking forward to it.” Varca said her 30-year run with the borough has been a real learning experience. “I have been able to watch a community pull together every day,” she said. When homes in the borough were destroyed in a storm in 1992 and electricity was lost in parts of the town in a storm in 2002, she said she saw the community work together “like you would not see anywhere else.” “People were stretching extension chords across their yards so that neighbors who had no electricity could have electricity,” she said. “Some of the neighbors did not even know each other.” Mayor Maria Gatta said it will be sad to see such a valuable employee leave the borough. “Patty has served this borough extremely well,” she said, “She is so knowledgeable about the borough and has a history of Oceanport that most people do not have. “She has always worked very hard for the borough.” “I feel blessed and lucky to have worked in Oceanport,” Varca said.