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First Avenue resident Gregory J. Hopson Sr. is seeking a seat on the Asbury Park council in the May 14 election.

Hopson, 58, resides on First Avenue with his wife, Ida M. Hopson. The couple has three children, Haleema, 35, Gregory Jr., 25, and Frederick III, 24.

Hopson is a retired steel worker and a veteran of the Vietnam War. He served three years in the Navy and three years in the Army after growing up in Newark. He then attended Essex County College and participated in Upward Bound before entering the work force as a property manager.

Hopson moved to Asbury Park about 15 years ago after having lived in Bradley Beach for several years. He has three children. He moved his young family out of Newark about 18 years ago due to increased drug activity in the neighborhood where they lived, he said.

Now that he is retired, he volunteers at Triumphant Life Church as director of buildings and grounds, director of transportation and securities coordinator. He also mentors young people and has been involved with the Asbury Park High School football team since 2006, he said.

Hopson has mentored “about 50” children, many of whom he met through his involvement with the football team when his two sons were players, he said. He’s advocated for the football players in the city over the years, he said.

Hopson has served on the Asbury Park Board of Education since 2006. He served as BOE president twice. If elected to the city council, he would step down from the board, he has said.

While on the BOE, he was chair of the athletic committee for three years; chair of the personnel committee for two years; chair of the finance committee for two years; and chair of the negotiations committee for two years.

During his tenure on the board, he initiated and completed the renovation of the high school’s football field and the track, he said, which included renovation of the Prospect Basketball Courts. He also helped negotiate two teachers’ contracts and one administrators’ contract with a minimal tax increase, he said.

Hopson joined the board of education because he thought he could help improve things, he said. He is now running for council for the same reason.

He would like to help bring crime down in the city, and notes that the school district and the city successfully worked together to bring special police officer patrols to the areas around the schools.

He also hopes to bring his background as a BOE member to the dais.

“Prior to being a board member, I noticed there was no relationship, no collaboration, between the city government and the school government,” he said. “Over the past few years, we’ve been able to forge a positive relationship.”

He would like to bring more youth programming and facilities to the city, he said. The city and the school board in the past collaborated on the Prospect Basketball Courts, he said.

He also wants to continue to decrease perceptions of a divide between the eastern and western sides of town.

“Asbury Park is one-and-a-quarter square miles,” he said. “We need more meetings with the entities from all areas of town, more collaboration, and just totally breaking down the barriers that separate the two or three or whatever.”

Some of the most important issues in the city for Hopson include the unemployment rate and gun violence, he said.

To help reduce unemployment, he would like to “bring more job training in, more job placements in, and better-quality employment which would ultimately lead to a better quality of life,” he said.

He would like to enforce employment quotas for developers to hire more local help, he said.

He also advocates for bringing more programs like distributive education, a program he took advantage of during his childhood in Newark, to the city. This program allowed him to attend school for half of the day and go to work for the other half of the day, earning money as customer service manager of a department store when he was a sophomore in high school.

“I’m a product of vocational training,” he said. “It didn’t hurt. It’s something you can always use to get employment and not just be called a laborer.”

Regarding gun violence, Hopson would like to “take a really strong look at the policies surrounding it and see what the mandated policy is or what the state allows us to do,” he said.

He is not a proponent of bringing any more oversight to the police department — a tactic some residents have suggested in the past — because he feels that would cost unnecessary extra money, he said.

He emphasizes the importance of preventative measures such as aiding residents in finding employment and recreational activities. In addition to vocational training, he thinks a program teaching residents how to behave on job interviews, how to create a résumé, and how to present oneself in a professional environment would be beneficial.

If elected, Hopson hopes to continue to help the council to provide necessary tools to help bring down the crime and violence rate in the city by being creative with job fairs, job trainings and job placement, he said, “which will increase the quality of life for the residents and children of the [community].”

Hopson is running on the incumbent-led Forward Asbury Park ticket, with Deputy Mayor John M. Loffredo, Councilwoman Susan Henderson, Councilman Kevin Sanders, and newcomer Will Potter.

“I like the job they have done up to this point,” he said. “I like the fact that they’re honest, very wholesome people. They have a level of integrity that I strive to stay with.”

The Asbury Park election is scheduled for May 14. All five council seats are up for grabs and the election is nonpartisan. The current council’s terms expire on June 30 and the new terms will begin on July 1.

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