Candidate Profile: Brian DeLuca (R)

Editor's Note: Each of the eight candidates running for a seat on the township council responded to a questionnaire sent by Brick Patch. Their answers to our questions will be published on our site verbatim. Two candidate profiles per day – one Republican and one Democrat – in alphabetical order according to last name, will appear this week until all have been published. We have disabled comments on profile articles to ensure the candidates' statements speak for themselves and readers can decide, without additional, potentially anonymous commentary, their view on those running for office.

~

Full Name: Brian DeLuca

Current Age: N/A

Highest level of education achieved (feel free to list your high school, college, and the nature of any degrees you have earned):

N/A

Occupation:

Retired from Merrill Lynch after 30 years as a Vice President and Operations Manager. Agent at Lakewood MVC.

Do you currently receive any public salary compensation? If so, from what public agency?

Editor's note: DeLuca is employed at the Lakewood MVC location.

Have you ever previously held an elected office in Brick or elsewhere?

Councilman, 2008-Present (Current President)
Board of Education, 2001-2004 and 2006-2007 (President '07)
Board of Adjustment, 2006

If elected or re-elected to council, will you choose to receive taxpayer-funded health benefits from your elected position? Why or why not?

Public Service is a challenge for me to make my community better, not a money pit as my opponents would like to paint it.  Before being on the Township Council, I was an elected member and past president of the Brick Board of Education, a position which paid nothing yet I did for years just to give back to the community much like my elected position now as a Councilman where I take zero pay and zero benefits.

~

Question 1:

 Like those in most New Jersey communities, property taxes are, perhaps, the primary concern of most township residents in this election cycle. Regardless of the impact of state policies on our property tax bills, summarize some specific ideas you have to stabilize or reduce the property tax burden for Brick residents.

First thing is to help elect Republicans to the State Legislature to help pass Governor Christie’s “tool kit” reform.  The current Democratic legislature has failed to do so, thus making most of the Governor’s initiatives incomplete until this happens.  This will have an immediate impact on property taxes when passed.  In Brick, we have already done a great number of things to keep taxes stable.  A shining example is that our credit rating just went up again this year even thought the federal credit rating went down, we have one of the most enviable ratings in the State now for a Township.  We saved the Township millions from having our public employees pay into their benefits for the first time in Brick’s history before even the Governor made it law, we reduced our workforce by over 88 employees through layoffs and attrition and entered into multiple shared services contracts.  My goal is to continue to give Brick residents the services that have made our town desirable to live in.  If you look at other towns our size (we are the 12th largest city in NJ out of 566) specifically up north you will see their taxes are twice as much as ours and they get zero services from their town, that means twice the taxes and no recreation department, no senior services, no garbage pick up and no public works. Twice the taxes and they still have to pay for all these services on the side.  It is my mission to make sure Brick never becomes like that. 

My team and I work very hard to make this 80,000 person city feel as much like a small community as we can.  We even have  at no cost to taxpayers Summerfest.  We get corporate donors to sponsor this event every year so families in town can enjoy a few nights out in the Summer with their neighbors without emptying their wallets.

Question 2:

Though it held relatively stable in the recent FBI Uniform Crime Report, crime in Brick has been trending upward in recent years. Compounding matters, our police department, due to budgetary constraints, also recently had to disband its Selective Enforcement Team (SET Team), a specialized anti-crime unit. Please describe your plan, including specifics, to maintain and promote public safety in Brick.

For a city of our size, we are annually listed as one of the safest cities in America.  We even had an independent audit done on our police force which stated we needed 125 officers, which we have.  We just hired 10 more to replace those which just retired.  This Council even for the first time in history added an extra pay step for the police where starting officers now make $28,900 as opposed to the $51,400 they use to start at. 

The Democrats are lying to people that there is a police shortage in town, yet at a recent debate we had they couldn't’t tell us how many officers where on our force.  In regards to the SET team, the Chief deployed his officers and restructured his force to complete the jobs that the SET team was solely responsible for.  Now that we have a new class of officers coming on to replace the retired ones, the SET team will be back up and running.  In regards to other things our opponents are saying, we already have neighborhood watch programs and in fact crime in Brick has been pro in a recent FBI report to be down in most areas.  Our officers do a fantastic job in solving crimes and keeping communities safe, this is one of the main reason people keep moving to Brick.

Question 3:

Please describe your vision for the former Foodtown site on Route 70, and how you would favor executing that vision and bringing it to fruition.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, we should never have bought this place to begin with.  Mayor Scarpelli and his Democrat Council in the early to mid 2000’s bought this site.  Why the Democrats bought it I will never know. The Democrats let it sit there vacant for years without collecting property taxes in order to prevent a Home Depot from moving there which they subsequently chose another place in Brick and moved in there anyway.  Two years ago this Republican team finally had enough and had the developer take the building down, we are now awaiting the State DOT to give it's final approvals so the developer can build.  I can not wait for there to be a banquet facility/hotel there (Brick has none), a Trader Joes or Whole Foods and a few fine dining areas collecting much needed tax revenue.  Brick's commercial population is starting to rise again contrary to our opponents statements. Look around at different businesses moving in and commercial sites being built due to our eagerness to help small businesses coupled with our large population being a magnate for national companies.  Autozone has taken over the abandoned Lukeoil Satation on Chambersbridge Road, Deninos from Staten Island has moved to Brick out of all the areas down the Shore to choose from and the strip of long abandoned gas stations on Route 88 are all under remediation from their respective owners and the Department of Environmental Protection.  Once the remediation is completed by them, they will be able to start re-developing these properties.

Question 4:

Brick has more frontage on Barnegat Bay that any other community in Ocean County. In all, it boasts 53 miles of waterfront. Keeping in mind that many of these waterfront lands are privately owned, what is your plan to promote public access to natural areas and maintain other recreational facilities for Brick residents?

Brick Township has taken a great deal of pride in providing the most water front property in all of NJ.  We also to my knowledge have the greatest amount of public water access as well.  Besides Brick Beaches I, II and III, our numerous bayside parks, Windward Beach, the Mantoloking fishing pier and now Traders Cove, this team has made sure the public will always have ample water way access.  As for the private beaches in town, these are all privately owned and unfortunately there is not much we can do there except to continually promote and secure the Township owned water front and make sure it always is opened to the people of Brick.