BY SUE M. MORGAN
Staff Writer
EATONTOWN –– As he returns to the council’s dais after almost 28 months, Borough Councilman William M. Kinney might be feeling a bit of deja vu.
When he last served as a councilman in 2002, Kinney, now chair of the Eatontown Republican Organization, was filling the unexpired term of a fellow party member who had stepped down to move out of town.
This time around, Kinney will spend about the next eight months completing the term of ex-Councilman John J. Collins, who resigned on April 1.
Unanimously chosen by the Democrat-led council during its April 27 meeting, Kinney will be one of two Republicans on a council that is moving on after Collins, a 20-year councilman, was arrested twice in March on sexual assault charges.
Collins, who is now in the process of retiring after 35 years as a Memorial School music teacher, remains free on $200,000 bail in the incidents involving two of his female former students.
In January 2002, Kinney was appointed by the council to succeed former Councilman John M. Kleinfelder, who had resigned a month earlier.
Kinney then completed Kleinfelder’s unexpired term, leaving office on Dec. 31, 2002 after failing to win a full term in the previous month’s election.
Kleinfelder also chaired the Eatontown Republican Organization during his tenure in the borough.
The history of how Kinney has now twice been appointed to the council, despite two previously unsuccessful election runs, was not lost on Democratic Mayor Gerald Tarantolo.
“As Yogi Berra would say, ‘it’s deja vu all over again,’” Tarantolo said quoting the baseball great.
Now a candidate for a three-year council seat this year, Kinney was the only one of the three nominees put forth by the borough Republicans to actually show up for a closed door interview with Tarantolo and the five remaining council members held about 30 minutes before the public meeting.
Kinney’s professional experience as an attorney specializing in domestic and international insurance and reinsurance litigation gave him the edge, over his competition, former Monmouth County Freeholder Edward J. Stominski and Memorial School social studies teacher Anthony “Bubba” Gaetano according to Republican Councilman Roy Eisen.
“Bill’s insurance background spoke volumes for the work he is going to be doing,” said Eisen, who will run alongside Kinney for a three-year term this fall.
The new councilman will take over Collins’ former duties chairing the town’s public buildings and insurance committees. He will also serve as liaison to the historic and traffic advisory committees and is assigned to the public works and welfare committee.
Stominski, a former mayor and councilman before becoming freeholder, wrote in a letter read aloud by Tarantolo that he could not attend due to a prior commitment that he could not reschedule “on such short notice.”
The former freeholder, who last June failed to win his party’s nomination for re-election to the all-Republican county board, asked the council to consider his “30 years of service” as a former borough councilman and mayor in lieu of an in-person interview, Tarantolo read from his letter.
Gaetano, who had unsuccessfully sought a council seat last November, sent a letter, also read aloud by Tarantolo, stating that he could not appear for an interview because he was chaperoning an eighth-grade class trip to Washington, D.C., in accordance with his teaching duties.
Likewise, Gaetano asked the council to consider his service as a volunteer member of the borough fire department and first aid squad.
Stominski, ironically, was the one who first convinced Kinney to seek a council seat back in 1998, the new councilman recalled.
Though unsuccessful at that time, Kinney subsequently ran for the Eatontown Board of Education, winning in 2000 and serving as its vice-president until 2002 when he was appointed to fill Kleinfelder’s council seat.
Now as one of the first orders of business, Kinney, will be working with the balance of the council to review the failed $17.4 million Board of Education budget for the 2005-06 academic year that was rejected by voters on April 19.
The imminent release of the federal Base Closing and Realignment (BRAC) list by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), which will reveal the fate of Fort Monmouth, is the “biggest issue facing Eatontown,” said Kinney, a one-time U.S. Army helicopter pilot.
May 13 is the date when the DOD is expected to notify borough and state officials as to whether or not Fort Monmouth, or any other New Jersey bases, would be slated for closure or restructuring under this year’s BRAC program.
Admitting that he has not seen the latest plans for the proposed revitalization of the borough’s historic district along Main Street, Kinney expressed faith in the project designers to create a pleasing, economically viable downtown.
Eatontown’s business district is divided by an “immovable barrier,” namely Route 35,traveling right through the center of the targeted district said Kinney, who has a law office nearby on Broad Street.
“You can make life a little better for the people in Eatontown,” he said. “We’re a quadrant town with two state highways.”
Kinney, a graduate of Seton Hall University School of Law, is a member of the bars in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., and Connecticut. He specializes in cases concerning asbestos, environmental and product liability matters.
He has also worked as assistant Monmouth County counsel representing insurance matters pertaining to county residents housed at Trenton State Psychiatric Hospital.
Kinney’s family has resided in the borough since 1961.
A dual citizen of the United States and Ireland, Kinney holds a bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa., a master’s degree of science in systems management from the University of Southern California, and a master’s degree in business administration from Golden Gate University in San Francisco.