Election Profile: Tara Corcoran-Clark For Hazlet Twp Committee

HAZLET, NJ — Two seats are open on the Hazlet township committee and four candidates are running in the upcoming Nov. 2 election.

Incumbent Republicans Tara Corcoran-Clark and James "Skip" McKay are being challenged by Democrats David Personette and Carrie Virgilio.

Corcoran-Clark, 55, is the current mayor of Hazlet and has served on the township committee since 2019. She is a former CPA and CMA who currently serves as an elementary school teacher at East Brunswick Public Schools. She holds a Master's Degree in elementary education from Monmouth University and a Bachelor's Degree in accounting from St. John's University.

Corcoran-Clark has been a resident of Hazlet for 31 years with her husband Walter. She is also a proud mom to three daughters.

READ MORE: Hazlet 2021 Election: Who's Running, All The Ways To Vote

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Why are you seeking elective office?

It has been an honor to serve on the Hazlet Township Committee as committeewoman, deputy mayor and presently as mayor. I believe I have made a substantial difference during my current term in office and I would be honored to be given the opportunity to serve our town for another three-year term.

Serving on the Township Committee has certainly been challenging, yet the rewards have been immeasurable. During the day, I work full-time as a third-grade teacher in the East Brunswick Public School system. I have been an educator for 24 years. Immediately after school and on the weekends, I focus on township business and work diligently to help residents on a wide variety of issues. I particularly enjoy visiting residents’ homes or neighborhoods, which I do quite often. Talking one-on-one with residents and seeing their issues first-hand provides me with valuable information to make better, timely decisions.

Prior to becoming an educator, I had a successful career in public and private industry as a CPA/CMA. My accounting and auditing experience has proven invaluable in my role as mayor. I do a considerable amount of research on best practices and decisions are always data-driven.

In addition to being Mayor, I currently serve on Hazlet’s Land Use Board, Recreation Advisory Committee, Environmental Commission, Finance Committee, and Library Commission. I oversee the Hazlet Swim & Tennis Club utility to ensure the club is financially viable and a welcoming place for our patrons. I also work closely with our Public Information Officer to encourage and promote community engagement.

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What is your vision for Hazlet in 2022 and beyond?

As mayor, I am strongly committed to restoring Hazlet’s roads and infrastructure and in the past three years the Township Committee has made substantial progress.

Hazlet Township has 77 miles of road. 67.2 miles are municipal roads. From 2019 to 2021, 15.9 miles (23.6 percent) of municipal roads have been restored. Instead of focusing on fixing individual roads, as our Democratic predecessors did, the current Township Committee has developed an extensive road master plan based on an in-depth, town-wide, engineering evaluation of road conditions. 100 percent of our roads are evaluated every year. We believe in a “whole neighborhood” approach to road renovation, taking advantage of economies of scale, low-interest rates, and our town’s excellent municipal credit rating.

In the springtime, the Township Committee and I hired a new recreation director to run our Recreation Department. He has done an outstanding job providing exciting, family-oriented events for our residents.

My plan to re-envision and expand Hazlet’s recreation program is currently underway. For example, instead of offering programs exclusively in Veterans Park, as has been done in the past, we have fresh, creative plans to roll out recreational activities in all our parks. This year we offered concerts and movies in neighborhood parks. Committeeman Skip McKay collaborated with Ray LaHaye, Raritan High School’s award-winning band director, to create a brand-new community band called Hazlet Pops. The goal was to promote music and community-based concerts. It was a huge success and we plan to expand this initiative. Going forward we will develop new programs and events based on recreational trends and resident input using surveys and social media.

I am currently collaborating with Hazlet’s Open Space Advisory Council and our Environmental Commission to roll out initiatives outlined in Hazlet’s 2030 Vision Plan, to improve our parks and increase interconnectivity between them.

The most exciting initiative I am leading is the plan to renovate Hazlet’s 8th Street Community Park. In May, I met with enthusiastic West Keansburg residents. We created a focus group to brainstorm a plan to completely renovate the park. Working together with engineers, members of the Open Space Advisory Council, and other key stakeholders, I wrote grant applications totaling $1 million, to pay for the proposed $1.3 million renovation. These exciting plans can be reviewed on our township’s website. We hope to hear the outcome of these grants in the next two months.

In April, we opened our long-planned Environmental Center at Natco Park. We plan to offer educational programs and activities there in 2022. I also promoted the critical need for an Environmental Resource Inventory of our 260+ acre Natco Park. Environmental engineers started a comprehensive evaluation of the park in the springtime, progress is underway, and the inventory is expected to be completed by the end of 2021. Recommendations will be made that will enable the Township Committee and the Environmental Commission to improve our largest park’s trails and ecosystem beginning in the spring of 2022.

The single most pressing issue facing our community is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it:

Property taxes are the most critical issue facing Hazlet’s residents. I am acutely aware of the burden on taxpayers. The Township Committee put considerable effort into developing the 2021 budget and monitors ongoing expenses while maintaining a high level of service. This has been particularly challenging under COVID conditions. The 2021 municipal tax rate remained flat despite COVID-19 revenue losses.

In addition to my CPA, CMA background, I am extremely fortunate to work with Committee members who have extensive financial experience. My running mate, Committeeman Skip McKay, is currently the CEO of a commercial lending business and he had a long career as a senior executive at GE Capital.

Committeeman Glackin is the Controller / Financial Officer for a Real Estate Investment company in Red Bank. Our combined financial experience allows us to find operational efficiencies and cost savings. We will continue to research ways to avail of shared service opportunities

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

I commend any candidate who is willing to run for elected office. It is a huge undertaking, involving a considerable time commitment every week.

I do not know either of my challengers since they do not serve on any Hazlet Township Committees or Commissions. I have not noticed an effort on their behalf to attend Township Committee meetings on a regular basis.

Starting in 2016, I volunteered 2,000 hours over a two-year period, serving on the legal team of Residents Against Giant Electric (RAGE), a grassroots community group that successfully defeated a monster powerline project proposed by JCP&L. After RAGE won its legal case, I decided to get involved in local government and run for office. I joined the Library Commission and attended every Township Committee workshop and regular meeting to better understand issues facing our town. I evaluated the annual budget, asked questions of elected representatives, and researched solutions that I was able to start implementing immediately after being elected to the Township Committee.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

I have served on the Hazlet Township Committee since January 2019 and I am currently Hazlet’s mayor. When I ran for election in 2018, I knocked on over 1,800 residents’ doors in town. The overwhelming message I heard was the need to improve our communications outreach. Having an excellent website and social media presence is crucial. Communications play an integral role in community building.

Within one year of being elected, we rolled out a state-of-the-art municipal website, hired a Public Information Officer (PIO), successfully expanded our social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and launched a new emergency communications system: CivicReady.

Our PIO recently started the Hazlet Citizen News Weekly Newsletter. I recommend that residents subscribe to this newsletter to find out news and events in our community. A highlight for me was when our Public Information Office won the award for best web and social media in the state in the Municipal Public Information Contest.

As I knock on doors during this election cycle, the feedback from residents has been overwhelmingly positive: They are pleased with the considerable improvements that have been made over the past three years, especially the huge improvement in our communication outreach.

Having an excellent website platform has enabled us to improve services in many ways. In addition to providing timely news, we are now able to create online forms to allow residents to easily register for events, report issues, and to complete surveys. We recently pushed out a municipal garbage collection survey to evaluate if there is interest in moving to municipal garbage collection with bulk pickup. The community response to this survey, which will conclude on October 22, has been extraordinary. We will use the survey results to provide data to our residents and to determine the next steps. We will continue to use surveys to increase community engagement in 2022.

The best advice ever shared with me:

My dad died of cancer when I was 17. I think of him often whenever challenges come my way, but I most remember this advice: “If a great opportunity comes your way, take it, even if you don’t know exactly at the time what to do. Make things happen.”

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

I believe strongly in the importance of volunteering and I have instilled the importance of volunteerism in my three children; my daughter Meghan currently serves as an EMT on the Hazlet First Aid Squad, while attending college.

At our highly successful Hazlet Day event, I handed out T-Shirts to residents with quotes from my favorite President in American History, Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln had many quotes on volunteerism, but this one stands out: “Leave nothing for tomorrow, which can be done today.” I asked residents on Hazlet Day to commit to giving just one hour, at one event, this year. I said that if everyone in town agreed to give back to our community such a small gift of one hour of their time, at just one event, those small acts of service would have a ripple effect across our town of 20,000.

I ask that the people of Hazlet consider me once again for the Hazlet Township Committee and to allow me to continue to give back to our wonderful town.

Additional reporting by Nicole Rosenthal