BY VINCENT TODARO
Staff Writer
Curtis Stollen SPOTSWOOD – The Borough Council reorganized last week, re-electing Curtis Stollen to serve as council president for the next 12 months.
Stollen will lead the council for the second straight year. He also served as president in 2001. He said his biggest goal for the coming months is to see the borough make significant progress on a new master plan.
He noted that he was grateful to his colleagues for re-electing him during the July 9 meeting in a unanimous vote by those who were present.
“It’s additional work, but I’m very pleased with the current group of volunteer officials we have,” he said. He said the governing body at present consists of “independent thinkers” who do not let politics affect their judgment.
Councilwoman Marge Drozd described Stollen as a “calming influence” on the council.
“He actually gets a lot of input from others, and moderates discussion when it might get more heated than needed,” she said.
Stollen has a lot of experience serving the town and is willing to share his knowledge, said Drozd, who recently completed her first year as a councilwoman.
“He’s been a mentor to me over my first year,” she said. “He helped me learn the ins and outs of council business and how to be a more effective council member.”
Stollen told the Sentinel he wants to see the borough move forward this year with a full-blown revision of its master plan and to present a clear vision of how commercial development should take place in the future. He said such a plan would give the town’s Planning and Zoning boards further ability to “mold commercial development into what we want it to be.” The guidelines need to be both realistic and lawful, he noted.
The borough will soon hire a planner to work with the Planning Board on the master plan changes, and ultimately the board will issue its recommendations to the mayor and council. Stollen said funding for the work will be spread out over a number of years to lighten its impact on the budget.
Stollen said it was his displeasure with the way commercial development was being handled more than a decade ago that got him involved in politics in the first place. He said he began by serving on the Planning Board in an effort to help steer the town away from what he felt was “poorly done planning.” That was in 1996 when, he said, “things were getting knocked down and built, not for residents, but for developers.”
He has been serving on the council since 1998.
“I have wanted a long-term vision to make our community something other than a haphazard collection of commercial development,” he said.