Steven Cioffi WEST LONG BRANCH – Borough Council candidate Steven Cioffi says he hopes that someday soon the town’s residents will be glad to tell others where they live.
“Let’s get the town back to where, whenever you say you live in West Long Branch, you can be proud of it,” said Cioffi, a Republican and lifelong resident.
Presently chairman of the borough’s environmental commission and a planning board member, Cioffi was nominated by the local GOP organization in late August to seek one of two council seats up for grabs.
He filed the paperwork for his candidacy with the Monmouth County Board of Elections in September.
“I don’t get involved in anything if I can’t give it 110 percent,” he said.
Though the borough sustained emotional injury after two elected officials were arrested and charged in the FBI’s Operation Bid Rig in February 2005, Cioffi says the sitting GOP-controlled council has helped the town recover.
“Let’s move on,” Cioffi said. “I’m running because I respect the current council. I see things that have to be done.”
To deal with property taxes, the council needs to more carefully regulate municipal budgets to see exactly where taxpayer money goes, said Cioffi, an Oceanport police sergeant who also serves as the public information officer for that neighboring borough’s force.
However, shared services, an idea now being floated in several municipalities, would “benefit the town only to a point,” he said.
“Shared services agreements look good on paper,” Cioffi said. “But in reality they don’t work.”
Before borough officials jump on a proposal to share municipal court services with Ocean Township, they should discuss the idea with court administrators in both municipalities to ensure that it would be convenient and cost-effective to do so, he said.
Cioffi supports construction of a new police station that would not only relieve those department employees of working in a waterlogged structure, but offer the technology and facilities needed for law enforcement.
“If getting [the police] a new building is the way to go, then we need to do it,” Cioffi said. “They can’t keep working in the conditions they’ve been in.”
Having purchased his parents’ former home near Franklin Lake Park, Cioffi says he is in West Long Branch to stay.
If elected, Cioffi pledges to get back to residents who ask questions, even when he does not know the answer immediately, within a reasonable time period.
As he has done with the planning board, Cioffi says he will not always approve everything he is asked to.
“My answer is not always going to be yes,” he said. “I will say no when it is for the right reason.”
Editor’s note: The Atlanticville was notified about Cioffi’s candidacy after the deadline for the Oct. 12 issue in which West Long Branch Borough Council candidates were profiled.

