New finance director, Kathleen Kovach, begins work for East Windsor Township.
By: Marisa Maldonado
EAST WINDSOR After working for many years in corporate accounting, Kathleen Kovach decided she needed a change. So she left her job and began doing the same thing she had done before only working for municipalities instead.
The latest stop on her journey is East Windsor, where she started as finance director last month. Former director William B. Crelin retired at the end of February after two years of working for the township.
"The fact that (municipalities) are not for profit, it’s a different way of thinking," said the 48-year-old Monroe resident. "I’m here to service the people of the township and make sure their tax dollars are spent wisely."
Ms. Kovach handles all the financial aspects of the town, including tax collections, payroll and the accounts payable department.
"I’m kind of an internal auditor," said Ms. Kovach, who has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Kean University.
The learning curve has been steep, she said, and she has had to jump in during the 2005 budgeting process.
Ms. Kovach said she does not expect too much to change about this budget. Preliminarily, the township is eyeing a municipal tax rate increase of 4 cents to 44.6 cents per $100 of assessed property value. But council has yet to formally introduce the spending plan.
"(The Township Council) does a great job here," Ms. Kovach said. "They’re very conscious and involved."
An involved community is one reason Ms. Kovach decided to apply for the position of finance director, a position she held for four years in Cranbury Township. The larger size of East Windsor also appealed to her.
East Windsor has almost 25,000 residents as opposed to Cranbury’s population of 3,227, according to the 2000 Census.
But the townships still face many of the same issues, such as securing funds for open space, she said.
"To find something totally different, I’d have to leave central New Jersey," she said.
But she started working at Cranbury because she wanted to stay near home to be close to her two children, who now are 20 and 17. Working closer to Monroe her old job was a 45-minute drive to Woodbridge meant she could attend her son’s football games and her daughter’s theater events.
"If they needed me, I was right here," she said. "You like to be lurking about when they’re teenagers."
Right now her job priorities, besides filling several open positions, are still up in the air. Ms. Kovach said she has a lot of reading and learning to do before setting a direction for the township’s finances.
"This is continuous," she said. "I have to jump in and see where they were in the projects."