BRICK TOWNSHIP – Township Councilwoman Ruthanne Scaturro sums up her showing in the recent election in two words.
“Pretty cool,” she said.
“I have to say I was a little taken aback that I was the top vote-getter,” Scaturro added. “I think it’s good for women in politics. We don’t have a lot in Ocean County.”
Scaturro and her running mates, incumbents Anthony Matthews and Michael Thulen and newcomer Brian DeLuca, swept all four four-year seats on the Township Council.
Scaturro was the top vote-getter with 9,685 votes. DeLuca was second with 9,551, followed by Matthews with 9,431 and Thulen with 9,114.
They won over the Democratic slate of Paul E. Panuska, Anthony G. D’Elia, Michael Mauro and Anthony Lazroe. Panuska was the top Democratic vote getter with 8,138, followed by D’Elia with 7,993, Mauro with 7,642 and Lazroe with 7,307.
Scaturro, who served on the Business and Finance Committee, said the current council members instituted a number of cost-savings measures over the past few years.
They stopped the practice of the township paying the bill for officials to attend the annual League of Municipalities convention in Atlantic City each November, she said.
Scaturro said she was “astonished” her first year on the council to discover that township employees were still using handwritten ledger books, rather than computers.
Many employees didn’t use e-mail a few years ago either, she said.
“I fought to get … the ledger system computerized,” she said. “The township had been very set in their ways.”
The current council also scaled back the number of SummerFest performances and looked for more sponsors to fund the annual events, she said.
Scaturro, the Township Council vice president, will open the Nov. 20 council meeting.
The council will appoint a new Township Council president that night, to serve until the end of the year. A new council president will be picked at the New Year’s Day organization meeting, she said.
“We’ve been discussing it,” she said. “People have thrown their hats in the ring. But until everybody votes on it, we really don’t know. A couple of people only want it for the short term.”
Scaturro said she was not surprised the entire Republican team, including Mayor Stephen C. Acropolis, won.
“I felt very, very confident in the team we had,” she said. “Brian rounded out the team with his school board background. It was a good working group. There’s nobody I can call a slacker in the whole group. I really think the residents of Brick Township recognized that we had done a lot for the town.”