BY CLARE MARIE CELANO
Staff Writer
Mike Wilson FREEHOLD – Mayor Michael Wilson has plans to extend his own record as the top elected official in Freehold Borough.
In a prepared speech he delivered during the Borough Council’s March 30 meeting, Wilson, 56, announced that he has decided to run for re-election this year in a bid to continue serving in the position he has held since May 9, 1985.
Wilson said he will run on the Democratic ticket with council President Kevin Kane and Councilman Jaye Sims.
The filing deadline was April 9. At press time that day the only confirmed Republican candidate was Joseph Liguori for Borough Council.
If Wilson wins re-election in November his new term will run through December 2011, at which time he would have served 26 years and seven months in office.
During his present term, on May 10, 2005, Wilson became the longest serving mayor in Freehold’s history, eclipsing the previous mark set by Dr. Peter F. Runyon, who was mayor from Jan. 1, 1926 to Dec. 31, 1945 (20 years).
Wilson began his speech by saying he had something he wanted to share with residents.
“Some of the friends I grew up with here in Freehold moved away a long time ago, looking in other places or what seemed to them better things. I didn’t. I stayed and I tried to make things better here. And I think I have, with the help of a lot of people, the people who have served up here with me, the people who sit on all of our boards, who volunteer with all of our organizations, the people of our community who believe, as I do, that we have a special town here, a town that’s worth fighting for,” Wilson said.
The mayor said he was aware of the fact that the town has faced some difficult times.
“When I was growing up the rug mill packed up and took its jobs south. Main Street was pockmarked by vacant stores, our cops had riot gear and wore it. But we made it through all that and our town grew stronger because of it,” he said.
Wilson saw much of what he referred to as the difficult times as a borough councilman in the early 1980s when he served during the administration of his friend Mayor Jack McGackin.
After McGackin’s sudden death in April 1985, Wilson, then 34 and serving as the council president, was appointed interim mayor. He was elected to the position later that year and has been re-elected five times since.
During his speech he referred to what he called “recent difficult times.”
“Difficult in different ways, as our community has joined the long list of other communities in our nation that are bearing the inequitable burden of a failed immigration policy,” the mayor said, noting that Freehold has been addressing the issue of illegal immigration for more than 15 years and has learned some hard lessons.
“The first lesson learned was that the federal government has neither the will nor the means to address this problem,” Wilson said. “Back when the INS at least pretended to listen to us, a raid took away a bus load of illegal immigrants one day, and most of them were back later that afternoon.
“And when we tried to take some action ourselves by closing a muster zone that had made us the center of an illegal labor market by stepping up enforcement of dangerous and overcrowded dwellings, where did we end up? In federal court. Other similarly frustrated and overburdened towns have taken steps that from afar, seem like reasonable remedies, but that have landed them in court, too,” he said.
Wilson said officials have learned they cannot fight a national battle.
“Our leaders in Washington will ultimately have to wrestle with this issue that they have ignored for so long, and we will have to keep up our pressure on them. What we can do, however, is to keep fighting for our community, the way we always have,” he said.
Wilson referred to a recent public meeting when residents gathered to address state legislators about the issue of school funding. He said hundreds of residents packed a school gymnasium and showed legislators the people of Freehold Borough are “thoughtful, passionate and most of all united, fighting for equity in school funding, fighting for our children, fighting for our community.”
Wilson said that is a fight he wants to continue.
“Along with council President Kevin Kane and Councilman Jaye Sims as my running mates,” the mayor said, “I have decided to run for re-election as mayor. I want to keep following through on that decision I made a long time ago – that decision to stay, to try to make things better here, in our hometown.”