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HILLSBOROUGH: Administrator Merdinger stepping back

He’s been at center of community life for more than 35 years

By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
   Township Administrator Michael Merdinger can be seen around town hall these days occasionally wearing a colorful T-shirt and beach swimsuit.
   That’s a tip that the man who has run township business for the last 19 months is changing his lifestyle.
   He’s eventually going to retire, but he’ll step aside from the township job by the end of August, slowing down to savor family and monitor his health, he said.
   Mayor Carl Suraci said he hoped to have a replacement on board by the end of next month.
   Nothing but a fixture in town, the gregarious Mr. Merdinger has been in the Rotary Club for 31 years, and the Flagtown fire company for 36, including his current stint as president. He has served on many township boards, including four years on the Township Committee, serving as mayor in 1984. His service on the library board lasted more than 20 years, as did his tenure on the municipal utilities authority.
   He lives in a historic house in Flagtown, built by Clement C. Clawson, the inventor of the slot machine and snow cone machine, in 1901, he says.
   These days, Mr. Merdinger puts on socks and shoes and comes into the office when he has to, generally relying on computers and high-powered cell phones between taking breaks playing with his grandkids at the family’s Seaside Beach home.
   His departure will be the beginning of the end of an era that stretches back to the 1970s.’’
   ”I haven’t just seen the township change,” he said. “I’ve been part of that change for 35 years.”
   His office sits in a municipal building on land he helped negotiate to secure when the several hundred-home Rohill development was built in the Beekman Lane area. He had a hand in conceptualizing, planning and arranging for the financing of the municipal building.
   Mr. Merdinger’s been around for the entire decades-long debate and implementation of putting sewers in the Claremont area of the township. One of the final steps — an assessment plan to pay for the sewers — will soon be decided by the Township Committee.
   He’s been sued dozens of times, he said, particularly when the township moved to update zoning to require larger lot sizes for homes.
   In 1977, the township had zero preserved acres, he said; today it has 10,700, he said.It could only be done by talent and dint of hard work. He was selected as administrator in late December 2010 after a private engineering career highlighted by 23 years of working around the world on environmental projects in such places as Kuwait and South Africa and Africa. Photos of African animals in the wild and him dressed in Arab garb bring personality to his office.
   A lot of things went into his decision to step back, he said.
   One major reason was an on-the-job back injury caused when he twisted his body up the final step onto the roof to see how a roof repair and HVAC installation project was proceeding last December.
   That led to a pulled muscle, which he favored, he said. Eventually he hurt a lower spinal disc, requiring surgery in late April to relieve the pressure.
   In pretests, doctors noticed an irregular heart beat, he said, which he’s told could increase his chances for having a stroke.
   Surgery barely slowed him. He was in the office the day after, he said, and moved around with the aid of a rolling walker.
   While he was in Kuwait working to remediate oil contamination a few years ago, he and his wife Barbara bought a Jersey shore house, he said. His brother-in-law lives nearby, he said, and Mr. Merdinger said he has found he likes to sit on the beach and play with his two young grandkids.
   And he said he saw friends passing away, particularly Peter Biondi, the former mayor and Assemblyman with whom Mr. Merdinger collaborated on projects like incorporating library, police, school and township offices all in the one location.
   He took all of these things as signals to slow down and enjoy life.
   He says he always seen the job as interim, but he will benefit from holding the administrator’s post for even a relatively short time. Most of his 28 years of accumulated qualifying service came as an MUA member and as an elected Township Committeeman, with salaries of $2,000 or $3,000 a year. Even 20 months at the $124,000 administrator’s salary will boost his annual pension from about $1,300 to about $26,000 a year, according to calculations from the state treasurer’s office.
   That’s not why he took the job, Mr. Merdinger insisted. He came on board at the end of 2010 after then Administrator Kevin Davis had resigned to take a state political staff job. Mr. Merdinger was a perfect fit, township leaders said, able to jump right into dealing with environmental remediation projects.
   His volunteer service on a number of boards also gave him knowledge of the history and progress of issues to be addressed. And it probably didn’t hurt that he was a past Republican Party chairman.
   He was someone who could take over and “hit the ground running,” said Mayor Suraci.
   ”I don’t think we ever expected him to be around for five or 10 years,” said the mayor. “Mike came on board with Kevin’s sudden departure and helped get us through projects that were going on at the time.”