Updated: West Orange Mayor Election Draws Interest From 4 Potential Candidates

NOTE: A previous version omitted information about Susan McCartney and Cindy Matute-Brown; Patch apologizes for the error.

WEST ORANGE, NJ — West Orange will get a new mayor in 2022.

On Wednesday, Robert Parisi told Patch that he is not running for mayor again in the municipal nonpartisan election, which will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 8. Candidates do not choose political parties in a nonpartisan election.

Parisi – a former West Orange council member – first took office as mayor in 2010. He was re-elected as mayor in 2014 and 2018.

According to the West Orange Township Clerk's Office, four people have pulled petitions to run for mayor: Susan McCartney, Cindy Matute-Brown, Joe Krakoviak and Bill Rutherford. None have filed their petitions as of Friday.

McCartney, Matute-Brown, Krakoviak and Rutherford have each established online presences about their campaigns. Learn more below.

BILL RUTHERFORD

Rutherford announced his bid for mayor in January. Learn more about his background here and see his campaign platform here.

Rutherford, who has lived in the town since 2001, was elected to the West Orange Town Council in 2020. His current term lasts until 2024.

According to the municipal website, the “20-year veteran of Wall Street” holds a degree in economics from Rutgers University, and his professional background includes work for Chase Manhattan Bank, Salomon Smith Barney and Wells Fargo Advisors. He is licensed as a Baptist minister and became pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Orange in 2012. Rutherford has also been involved in a range of community service, including mentoring youth and volunteer work at a soup kitchen.

According to his campaign website, Rutherford’s platform includes:

TAX STABILITY FOR HOMEOWNERS – “Bill Rutherford’s tax relief plan includes short-term, intermediate, and long-term changes to help relieve the tax burden of our town’s residents, especially our seniors. One goal is to forego using PILOTs and other tax breaks for residential property developers and to focus on smart, commercial development that is consistent with what our town and the residents need, preserves our open spaces, is in line with our goals for clean and green development and increases revenues without increasing taxes for homeowners.”

QUALITY OF LIFE – “Bill Rutherford understands that strong and reliable town services go a long way to improving the quality of life for all of us. Bill supports creating a senior advisory board and giving a voice to seniors, maintaining affordable recreational activities for the town’s youth, and ensuring that our town employees, especially our first responders, have fair contracts and the support they need to do their jobs well.”

INFRASTRUCTURE – “Bill Rutherford believes that, as the home of Thomas Edison, our town should be the home of high technology and should lead the country in how we use tech to improve quality of life and solve problems with our infrastructure. As we identify areas that need attention, our repairs and upgrades must focus on mitigating the environmental impact of climate change and embrace cutting-edge technology.”

“As I said when I was running for council, we need a realistic, long-term plan for property tax relief,” Rutherford states on his campaign website. “I am more excited than ever about the opportunity to reimagine how we utilize our current assets in town to make West Orange the town of choice in the 21st century.”

“West Orange is a wonderful place to live,” he says. “If we think outside the box, work cooperatively with our neighbors and partners, become more fiscally responsible, and respect our civil servants and each other, we will create the town we all want and need.”

CINDY MATUTE-BROWN

Matute-Brown announced she was holding a campaign kickoff in June. Learn more about her background here and see her campaign platform here.

Matute-Brown previously served as town council president. Her current term on the council ends in 2022.

According to the municipal website, Matute-Brown graduated from Rutgers University with degrees in English, women and gender studies and criminal justice. She works an associate director at the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) for their Human and Civil Rights, Equity and Governance Division.

She is a member of several local advocacy groups, including NJ 11th For Change, Essex Rising, Action Together NJ, Working Families NJ, Our Revolution Essex County and Our Green West Orange. She serves as the chair of the NJEA Public Charter Schools Members Work Group, and also serves on the NJEA Leadership Committee.

According to her campaign website, some of Matute-Brown's platform planks include:

MANAGING OUR TAX BURDEN - "First, managing our tax burden is something that every single candidate will talk about. Cindy understands how much the municipality controls and that approximately 25% of our property tax burden originates from the mayor’s budget. The majority of it (approximately 75%) comes from our school budgets and from Essex County."

TASK FORCE COMMITTEES - "Residents in West Orange may feel helpless in the face of rising property tax rates. The Administration has effectively no working relationship with Essex County and has no effective role or input whatsoever into the school budgeting process. To neglect those relationships is a dereliction of duty that our municipal officials have ignored for decades. We currently have a completely ineffective liaison between the town and the school board. We need a priority task force to identify potential savings and collaboration or partnership. We have heard about integrating refuse collection and other services that perhaps could help, but this task force needs to be empowered to identify resources that the town and the school system could more efficiently use to greater benefit of town residents. This can happen, but neither the current administration, nor any other candidate is committed to this kind of work."

DEBT SERVICE REDUCTION - "Another critical aspect of managing our tax burden is managing the town’s debt obligations. Neither the current administration, nor the other candidates for Mayor have any plan to manage our town’s debt. Cindy will implement a debt service reduction plan, modeled on similar efforts made by neighboring towns. In the last 12 years, the Mayor’s plan appears to have been: sell land to developers in order to create properties that the town can then tax. That plan can work for a while, but at the expense of green spaces, and it has no long term possibility of success. Eventually we will run out of development opportunities. Cindy will put us on a transparent plan to reduce the town’s debt while also generating additional revenue from the prime properties we have acquired and from the opportunities presented by downtown redevelopment."

ENVIRONMENT - "West Orange is ideally situated to be a leading community for the environment. The mayor of West Orange has a duty to our residents to prepare for the impacts of climate change. West Orange can be a leader among municipalities as we work to preserve our environment and begin to limit and undo the damage that human activities are causing. On a municipal level, we need to do much more than just green space preservation and strengthening our tree ordinance and enforcement. We must look at our energy consumption and reconsider the sources for our energy. We need ultimately to phase out fossil fuel consumption. To start, we need to know how much energy we consume as a municipality. New Jersey will conduct an audit of all municipal and school buildings that we identify, will tell us how we can conserve energy, and how to achieve cost savings for our community in the process. We need a leader in our government who will engage on these issues. Right now and for at least the last two decades we have not had that type of vision in our municipal government. We need to think about investment in renewable energy and how that can pay us, either monetarily with reduced energy bills, or environmentally with reduced carbon emissions. West Orange has an opportunity to be a leader as we transition New Jersey toward a better future."

JOE KRAKOVIAK

Krakoviak announced his bid for mayor in June. Learn more about his background here and see his campaign platform here.

According to his campaign website, Krakoviak served on the West Orange Town Council for 10 years. After two full terms, he left the council at the end of 2020, declining to run for re-election due to his belief in the “necessity of term limits.”

A 19-year resident of West Orange, Krakoviak is a former award-winning financial journalist who has worked at USA Today and for other newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal. He has also worked as a marketing and public relations executive. His community work includes serving as a local Scout leader, a youth sports coach, a PTA member, an officer in the Knights of Columbus and a board member of Friends of the West Orange Public Library. He’s also done volunteer work at St. Joseph’s Church.

Krakoviak outlined some of his top priorities in a campaign announcement. They include:

PROPERTY TAXES – “Ever-increasing taxes caused by overspending, including an 8.3% increase voted in 2018 by two other mayoral candidates, has damaged a tax base that’s declined eight of the last 10 years – likely diminishing the value of every owner’s property from what it otherwise would be.”

DEBT – “A borrowing explosion – up 77%, or $63 million, in the last three years, increasing debt to nearly $142 million and debt service up 24% to $8.7 million and almost certainly heading higher as interest rates double – further pressures residents wary of a looming recession while inflation raises costs, especially for gas and food.”

30-YEAR TAX ABATEMENTS – “Three-decade tax abatements to wealthy developers rob millions of dollars in future revenues to the town’s coffers that actual taxpayers must make up.”

DEVELOPMENT – “The need for a full-time planner with economic development experience to manage smart development and spur the right commercial improvements, especially in our Main Street corridor.”

TOWN SERVICES – “Enhancing municipal services to enable senior citizens to ‘age in place’ and provide support to our disabled and at-risk youth.”

ENVIRONMENT – “Preserving and enhancing the environment by acquiring important parcels of open space, strengthening and enforcing our tree and steep slope ordinances, and strict oversight of recycling and refuse contractors.”

“Poor financial management is hurting every taxpayer and renter, whether they realize it or not,” Krakoviak said. “The numbers clearly say we must hold the line on spending and taxes. We must stop wasting our resources to focus better on our quality of life, improve municipal services and protect our environment.”

“As mayor, my commitment will be to make West Orange a place where everyone in our diverse community can thrive,” Krakoviak said.

SUSAN MCCARTNEY

McCartney held a campaign kickoff in April. Learn more about her background here.

McCartney currently serves as the West Orange Town Council president. Her term ends in 2022. She currently serves as the council liaison to the Chamber of Commerce and the West Orange Planning Board.

According to the municipal website, McCartney is the founder and owner of First Mountain Preschool. She holds a bachelor's degree from Seton Hall University and a master's degree from Kean University. She has designed state-wide curriculum models and served as an adjunct professor in education and administration at Seton Hall University and Montclair State University.

McCartney said some of her achievements with the township have included votes to approve:

• the preservation of 138 acres at Rock Spring Golf Club
• preserving the 94-acre Crestmont subdivision
• Open Space funds to preserve Ridgeway Park
• the Executive Drive Redevelopment Plan
• the creation of the new dog park at Executive Drive
• the Senior Livability Aging Well Program
• affordable housing for seniors and an advocate for the Senior Health Center/ Satellite Library
• a site for the West Orange Arts Gallery and Gift Center
• improvements for Degnan Park ADA-compliant playground

McCartney's current platform includes:

• Continue to preserve the historic Rock Spring Golf Course
• Push toward the completion of the Downtown Film Production District
• Use budgeted funds to secure a Strategic Marketing Coordinator
• Coordinate partnerships to pursue The Highland Avenue Transit Village in The Valley
• Enhance placemaking opportunities for Art in the Community along The Valley corridor
• Implement the Township’s Sustainability Management Plan to minimize environmental and economic impacts
• Continue to seek local, State and Federal funding to help stabilize the Township budget.

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