Szostak will run for second term as mayor
Halfacre will be GOP challenger, cites taxes, lack of leadership
BY LIZ SHEEHAN
Staff Writer

Fair Haven Mayor Joseph Szostak will be going door to door beginning this week to ask residents to vote for him.

And he will continue the visits until Election Day, Nov. 7, Szostak said.

The mayor, who is 70, is seeking his second four-year term in the mayor's office.

In 2002 he defeated incumbent William Leonard, a Republican, as are all the members of the Borough Council. Szostak ran as an independent, as he will do in this election.

He is running against William Halfacre, a Republican.

Szostak said Monday that he is seeking the office again because he wants to continue the programs that he started since 2002, including community projects, the Be a Good Neighbor program, and school-related programs.

He said the community programs included working for the completion of the town's 9/11 memorial. The Be a Good Neighbor group, Szostak said, provided such services as snow shoveling for seniors by the seventh-and eighth-graders in the borough schools.

In another program he began, the art works of students are displayed in the halls of Borough Hall, he said.

Szostak said that his main concern as mayor has been to be an ombudsman and a receiver of questions and complaints from residents.

He said he has office hours for two hours Monday through Thursday, when residents who need help can walk in to talk to him.

"I have a good working relationship with the present council" and "a pretty good groundswell of support" for re-election," he said.

A small group of supporters have helped him with preparing a flier that went to everyone in town to support his re-election bid, Szostak said.

The mayor, a Willow Drive resident, has lived in the borough for 34 years and raised his family here. Before retiring, he was at Brookdale Community College for 25 years, where he created the music curriculum and taught and conducted 25 operas, operettas and musicals.

The mayor has carried his music career into office and opens each Borough Council meeting with a song which he plays on the piano as those attending sing from lyrics printed on the meeting agenda. The songs range from "God Bless America" to "This Land Is Your Land."

Halfacre, 40, said he is a lifelong resident of Fair Haven. He is an attorney with offices in Little Silver, and he and his wife have three children.

He said he has talked "to a lot of people [in the borough], and a lot of people are unhappy and don't like the direction the town is taking in the last few years."

The mayor, he said, was very good at community projects but "there really isn't any real leadership" in the borough.

In addition, taxes are increasing at a faster rate and there is very little to show for the increase, Halfacre said.

He said Szostak, in his campaign for mayor in 2002, said he would lower taxes; instead, taxes have increased to three times the prior rate.

The power of a mayor to lower taxes is very limited, Halfacre said, so when Szostak made that promise he either was naive or didn't "want to be truthful."

"I choose to think he is naive," he said.

Halfacre said that even with the higher taxes, conditions in the playing fields for sports are poor and the fields need repair, while the downtown area is in need of renovation, and public space is "dreary."

He said he has had to bring a shovel to fill holes in a soccer field because of the poor conditions there.

Halfacre said the borough "sends millions of dollars to Trenton" but gets "virtually nothing back. ..."

The town needs leaders who will petition the county and the state and bring some funding in, he said.

"Leadership starts at the mayor's office," he said.

Halfacre also said that volunteers in the town, who do so much for Fair Haven, have not been valued enough. One group founded to upgrade the parks is in danger of disbanding because of the lack of response from the borough, he said.