Community activist and charter study commission member Duanne Small, 43, has thrown his hat in the ring for this year’s May council election.
Small, who has been an outspoken critic of the current council, was elected to the charter study commission in November 2012. The commission is tasked with scrutinizing the city’s form of government and possibly suggesting changes to the current city manager-council arrangement.
Small also serves as a Democratic county committeeman in District 3. He’s a member of the Asbury Park Elks Lodge.
He lives on Mattison Avenue with his mother, Carol Small, and cousin, Tyreek Small. He grew up in both Neptune and Asbury, attending high school in both towns.
Small did not attend college but works as a general contractor. He started his own company several years ago after he was laid off from a job and wanted to keep that from happening again.
In the past, Small has had run-ins with the law. He was charged with theft and possession of controlled dangerous substance [CDS] in November 1991. In June 1992, he was convicted of those charges, as well as possession of CDS with intent to distribute, and another charge of possession of CDS, which stemmed from a separate incident. He was sentenced to five years of jail time for those convictions. He served 669 days.
In July 1997, he was sentenced to 10 years of jail time after pleading guilty to aggravated assault, burglary and escape from detention. He served four years of his sentence and was released in 2001. He received a parole violation in 2003 for failure to report to parole, he said, after which he was incarcerated for 10 months.
Small was also charged with possession of CDS in 2004. Small said he pled guilty to the charge only because his attorney advised him that fighting it would be difficult due to his arrest record. He received two years of probation.
The burglary and aggravated assault charges both stemmed from “something that happened in the street,” Small said. He added that weapons were not involved.
The earlier CDS charges came from Small’s past involvement with selling drugs, which he draws upon when speaking at council meetings and other public venues.
“I’ve been there before,” he said. “I know what it takes and what the people are going through, and I know what it takes to come up out of it.”
Small’s number-one issue in this election is crime, he said.
“Crime, joblessness, education — there’s no concern for that,” he said. “The only time you’ll hear something about it [at a council meeting] is when somebody in public session comes to speak about it.”
Small is running for council “because there’s a lack of leadership in Asbury Park,” he said. “It has our city divided. A city that’s divided can’t prosper.”
Small feels the current council isn’t addressing the needs of Asbury Park residents, he said.
“We need to address the issues that are causing our crime,” he said. “We also need to go to the groups and individuals who are committing the crimes. We need to let them know that we’re here for you, and you’re part of Asbury. And you need to respect the laws of our city.”
He’d also encourage people to report crimes and work with the police department to “give them more tools to help solve the crime,” he said. “Right now, I think the police department needs more help. I feel they’re not getting it from the current council.”
Small would like to see more forums being held to facilitate conversations between city residents and the police, “to show our residents that our police are here for us, not here to lock us up or harass us,” he said. “I think it would bring about a better relationship between the police department and the community.”
Small is also interested in ensuring that developers follow the city’s rules about employing a percentage of city residents when possible, he said. If elected, he’d “interact more with the developer and encourage them to participate in job training for residents of the city,” he said.
He’d also like to enact an ordinance with a residency requirement for people being hired to work for the city, he said.
Small would also try to strengthen the relationship between the city council and the board of education if elected, he said.
If elected, Small plans to “go through the budget line by line and see the things that are being done twice and we don’t need and see what we can cut,” he said. “We’ve got to face the facts. Some things, we’re going to have to cut.”
Small acknowledges his criminal past and says it helps him reach out to young people who are faced with similar circumstances.
“That life is a dead end,” he said. “It’s hard times. You’re abandoned by the community and by your family. It’s a life that I wish on no one.”
Small’s mother raised him alone, and was “out at work trying to put food on the table,” he said. “I was out running the streets and running with the wrong people.”
Things have gotten even worse since he was younger, he said.
“Now, they’re not out in the streets to earn,” he said. “They’re out hurting one another … I’ve never in my lifetime seen this much violence. You have groups of young men with nothing to do. When they have nothing to do, they create their own things to do. One of the things they create is to see who can be dominant over each other.”
Small is part of a ticket with four running mates — former board of education member Remond Palmer, former councilman Jim Keady, Nora Hyland and Danny Harris — under the name Uniting Asbury.
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[NOTE: This article has been edited to clarify details about Small’s criminal charges.]
