---

Councilwoman Sue Henderson has announced her candidacy for the city council in the 2013 election.

Henderson is winding up her first full term on council. She was appointed to the governing body after former councilman Jim Keady resigned a few months before his term was up. After her appointment, she ran on a successful ticket with Mayor Ed Johnson, Deputy Mayor John G. Loffredo, and councilmen Kevin Sanders and Jim Bruno. All of them will see their terms expire June 30.

Henderson’s ticket isn’t finalized yet, but should be nailed down by the end of January, she said. She expects to run with some incumbents and possibly a few newcomers.

Henderson has “been very involved in Asbury Park” since moving to Sunset Avenue about 20 years ago with her partner, Donna. They have three dogs.

Henderson grew up down the street — literally — in Wanamassa. Her father was a doctor with a practice in Asbury Park, where she spent much of her adolescence.

“I was a Kohr’s custard girl, I rode the rides, and I rode the circuit,” she said. “I wanted to come back here. I had a passion for Asbury.”

She works as a school counselor at Ocean Township High School and has been in education for 35 years. She went to Elon University in North Carolina, studying health and physical education. She holds master’s degrees from The College of New Jersey and the University of Edinboro in Pennsylvania.

Henderson first became involved in the city by co-founding the Asbury Park Homeowners Association. When she and Loffredo were heading up the group about 15 years ago, they “were instrumental in bringing on the investigations that resulted in quite a few indictments and some jail time for some council people, police and board of education members,” she said. “I think it’s important that people remember that history of what occurred. It’s a part of our history and we don’t want to repeat that history.”

Following the indictments, “you had this giant hole we had fallen into — a hole of despair with corruption, and we finally had an honest council in there who had to climb out of that hole and bring the city up into what you see today,” she said. “I was part of that as a Homeowners Association officer and now I’m proud to be part of that as a council member.”

While on council, Henderson has served as a member of the dog park committee, which was controversial at first for proposing a dog park in Library Square Park. Now, the committee is searching for another location to propose the park, she said.

She also is on the board of the Revision Theater Company and is on the Wesley Lake Commission and the Deal Lake Commission. She’s on the city’s public arts committee, and served on the committee with the Asbury Park Historical Society to reconstruct the Rainbow Room sign, which now hangs in the transportation center.

Henderson enjoyed serving on the council redevelopment advisory committee last year, which enabled her to meet with officials from iStar and Maidson Marquette, as well as business owners, on various issues, including the proposed redevelopment of Bradley Cove, a vacant area near the North End beach where condominiums were proposed.

“Through that committee, one of the things we strongly advised was to take the Bradley Cove development and move it somewhere else,” she said. “We really felt that it should be moved … so we were kind of excited when the county became interested in that property, and we supported it — but we don’t own that land. Even though people felt we should just give it away, it was not ours to give.”

Another of her favorite projects from her time on council has been the revitalization of Springwood Avenue and the addition of the Springwood Center.

“I always felt we were one city,” she said. “People say we’re separated into east and west or we’re separated into four quadrants, and I don’t like that. I like to be one city.”

A common misconception is that the city has put more money into revitalizing the waterfront, Henderson said, when that money actually comes from private developers.

“This council decided to spend our money to replace the infrastructure and bring Springwood Avenue and that area back,” she said. “We’ve partnered with Interfaith Neighbors, Monmouth Affordable Housing, Habitat for Humanity, the Stars Project. We spent over $9 million just on redevelopment there.”

The repaving and infrastructure repairs on Springwood have encouraged private developers to submit plans for redevelopment as well, Henderson said.

Henderson would also like to see affordable housing throughout the town, she said.

“I’d like to get rid of the [housing] projects and put townhouses and different types of affordable living down there,” she said, “not these giant buildings with concrete walls and cinder blocks. That’s not a home.”

She’d also like to help people with job training and education, she said, adding that she and her running mates were the first council to work with the school board. She’d like to strengthen that relationship further if she wins another term on council.

Previously, “they always fought over who owns what and who’s gonna pay for what. We decided as a council that that’s not what’s going to happen.”

While on council, Henderson helped ensure Cookman Avenue would be revitalized, she said.

“When the economy took a turn for the worse, we were able to maintain,” she said. “We were able to bring in businesses taht opened up. We were able to flourish as a resort town with people coming to our boardwalk. What we were able to do is unbelievable.”

This council has also done a good job putting “good people in key positions,” she said. “You have a good city manager, you have a reliable, excellent police chief and fire chief. You have a guy like Don Sammet who has to handle four to five different redevelopment areas. You have to have the strong people in key positions to run a city like this. It’s so complex.”

Henderson would like to make sure historical buildings like Convention Hall, the Casino and the Post Office are kept intact if reelected, she said.

She’s also like to see the council look for more sources of revenue, such as by possibly turning the areas around the railroad tracks into an industrial area, she said.

If she wins another term, Henderson would like to have an active role in a task force or organization to reduce violence in the city, she said.

“Our police do an excellent job, but I think community policing is key — police that actaully walk the beat,” she said. “We’re doing that now. We’re working with the board of education to pay police to walk the areas where the schools are. But I think we need to expand that.”

She also stressed that citizens must come together to decrease the crime.

“We used to have large neighborhood watch groups,” she said. “We used to look out our windows and report things we saw. And you can do that here anonymously … We need to do a better job looking out for each other instead of living in fear of reporting.”

Meetings between the police and the public are a good start when it comes to bringing people together, she said, and involving churches could also help.

Henderson said the city’s reaction to Hurricane Sandy showed her “the integrity of this community and how this community could come together … I worked with people I never thought I’d work with because of our differences. I saw one Asbury Park. I don’t want people to tear apart this town and make it us and them and east and west.”

Henderson can be followed on twitter @suehenderson_ap, and will soon have a campaign website and Facebook page.

---