LETTER: Hickey demonstrates 'persistent advocacy' for Bedminster

September 16, 2020

EDITOR: As chair of the Environmental Commission and a resident of The Hills for 21 years, I can attest that Colin Hickey, during his three years serving on The Township Committee, has established himself as an advocate for Bedminster residents whose individual voices were not being heard.

When residents shared their frustrations with public utilities and cable companies, Colin interceded to pursue quality services at fair rates for all.

In response to the notice of a substantial rate increase by New Jersey American Water, Colin Hickey analyzed the impact to ratepayers and organized a group of municipalities to collectively push back against the usurious rate inflation.

For many years, JCP&L seemed to ignore complaints about repeated power outages. Colin joined forces with the homeowner associations in The Hills to command the attention of JCP&L and to compel the company to upgrade their equipment.

Similarly, when the social media outcry against cable provider Altice showed increasing frustration with no satisfaction, Colin reached out to the company expressing his surprise at their silence and indicated that he had no choice but to educate our residents about the options that are on the horizon for them with emerging competition from streaming content services and 5G wireless broadband.

As chair of the Environmental Commission I worked closely with Colin. This has given me insight, not only to the inner workings of local government, but the man.

The same high standards and strong core values Colin practices in his personal life are the same qualities he is committed to and demonstrates with the township and the residents he serves. Colin’s strong and persistent advocacy has already yielded improvements, yet there is much more work to be done. Colin is the right person to continue these efforts!

Therefore, This November, I strongly urge my fellow residents to re-elect Colin Hickey to the Township Committee where I know he will continue to make local government work for Bedminster residents and businesses.

DAWN MARCH
Bedminster Township

This Letter to the Editor originally appeared in The Bernardsville News.