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Deputy Mayor John M. Loffredo has announced that he’s running for a fourth term on the Asbury Park city council.

All five council seats are up for grabs in the nonpartisan May 14 election. The current council’s terms end on June 30, with new four-year terms beginning July 1.

After 12 years as a council member, Loffredo has selected as running mates Councilwoman Sue Henderson, Councilman Kevin Sanders, Gregory Hopson and Joe Grillo.

Loffredo, 59, bought his Sixth Avenue home in 1985. He lives with his partner Richard Gore. Loffredo received a bachelor of arts degree in English from Franklin College in Indiana. He currently works as a realtor associate with the Jack Green Agency in Ocean Grove.

When he was younger, Loffredo was a member of Act Up, a gay rights advocacy group. He marched in Washington, DC, on behalf of many causes, demonstrating for equal rights and against nuclear energy.

Loffredo was founding president of the  Asbury Park Homeowners Association. He’s been an active volunteer in the city, participating in city-wide cleanups and other initiatives. He’s also a member of the planning board.

Loffredo grew up in Neptune and spent a lot of time in Asbury Park as a child. He attended Holy Spirit School in the city, and he remembers when Springwood Avenue was brimming with businesses and their customers. His father, a local butcher with a shop on Springwood, was a councilman in Neptune Township.

“My whole family was raised to be socially conscious,” said Loffredo, who has 11 brothers and sisters.

Loffredo has run with Sanders in every election. During Loffredo’s first four-year term, then-newcomer Ed Johnson was appointed to replace another council person who stepped down. Johnson is now mayor but will not run again after his term expires in June.

Henderson joined the council five years ago, being appointed after Jim Keady left office before his term expired. Keady is now running against the incumbents on another ticket.

Shortly after Loffredo helped found the Asbury Park Homeowners Association, he participated in a walk for Quiana Dees, the 12-year-old Neptune girl whose apparent murder by gunshot in 1992 was never solved. This was the first time he saw Springwood Avenue “so empty and so barren, and it struck me how different it was from when I was a kid,” he said.

Loffredo and other council members have worked on redeveloping the Springwood Avenue corridor. The council partnered with local nonprofit group Interfaith Neighbors to build the new Springwood Center complex, and they’re also working on building a park nearby.

They’re also in the process of selecting a redeveloper for the Springwood Avenue corridor. They received several redevelopment plans after issuing a request for proposals [RFP]. Twelve years ago, the city may not have received any plans from developers for Springwood Avenue, Loffredo said.

“We always tried to ease developers over to the West Side,” he said of the early days of the city’s redevelopment. “We always asked if anybody would be interested. Nobody was.”

Redevelopment has always been one of Loffredo’s pet interests. One of his first tasks as a councilman 12 years ago was to work toward the designation of the downtown as a redevelopment zone. This enabled the city to tell property owners to “fix your property, sell it, or we’re … taking it for the greater good [through eminent domain],” Loffredo said.

“I’m very glad I did that,” he said. “It was a battle, and it needed to be done … People scream about eminent domain all they want, but there are certain cases where eminent domain can be done and it works.”

Loffredo is also a member of the council’s technical review committee [TRC], meaning he’s seen many local building projects before they even got to the planning board, of which he’s also a member.

He was also heavily involved in waterfront redevelopment, attending meetings and presentations for almost a year until the waterfront redevelopment plan came to fruition. Some people in town aren’t fans of the plan, Loffredo said, “but at the time, everything was vetted, everything was agreed upon, and the contract was signed. It’s not a simple thing now for the city to turn around and say, ‘We’re not going to do that.'”

As for the city’s pending payment-in-lieu-of-taxes [PILOT] agreement with iStar Financial, Loffredo said that way of funding waterfront infrastructure enables the city’s newcomers — not veteran residents — to pay for improvements.

Under the PILOT agreement, homeowners who buy newly constructed residences in the waterfront redevelopment zone will pay a special assessment in lieu of property taxes. They will pay the same rate of municipal property taxes as other residents pay. At the same time, the funds that would normally go to the school district and the county will pay back a loan for redoing infrastructure in the waterfront area. Five percent of the total payment will go to the county.

Some residents have questioned the plan, saying they think they will ultimately be paying for the infrastructure repairs, while city officials insist the PILOT program ensures they will not. Loffredo is in favor of the plan.

“You can’t expect people who live here now to do that [pay for the infrastructure],” Loffredo said. The PILOT agreement and special assessment are “the prudent and ethical thing to do. It’s the financially responsible thing to do.”

Loffredo considers infrastructure — which includes road-paving, electric wires, street lights and more — to be important, as well.

“We’ve known for a long time that our infrastructure was falling apart,” Loffredo said. “I know it’s not sexy. I know it’s not glamorous. But it has to be paid for.”

Infrastructure costs can dissuade developers from coming to the city, so the city must find ways to fund these infrastructure changes, Loffredo said.

“We have to find a way to make sure this will be done and it doesn’t overburden the taxpayers of this city,” he said.

Loffredo is also interested in expanding the city’s recreation offerings. Establishing a recreation commission was one of the first things Loffredo and his fellow council members achieved when he first took office 12 years ago.

If he wins another term on council, Loffredo would like to help create a parks and recreation department, which would include paid employees in addition to the city’s recreation commission.

“We have more programs and more activities for kids than I can ever remember,” he said. “And it’s paying off. Because if you get the statistics on underage crime, it’s way down.”

In terms of crime, Loffredo said one of the biggest issues in the city is victims who refuse to testify.

“They will not say who, what or where,” he said. “It is absolutely necessary that they do so.”

He feels the council should “stay the course” when it comes to crime prevention, as well as add police to the force.

“We had a committee on crime that did a lot of research and did a report,” he said. “We’ve had the Prosecutor’s Office in here. If there’s something worth trying, we’ll try it and we’re open for suggestions.”

Some other council candidates have suggested they will go through the city’s budget, line by line, and delete unnecessary expenses. Loffredo said this would not result in much of a cost savings.

“I’d like to know what they’re thinking isn’t needed,” Loffredo said. “One of the things people need to realize is that we’re watched very closely by the state now. We’re not going to spend any money or do anything frivolous. During our tenure, Asbury Park has received more awards in the last 10 years than the last 50.”

Those awards were for redevelopment, financial planning, city planning and having a green city, Loffredo said.

“I know it doesn’t mean anything to our detractors, but we are being recognized for being a success and doing what is necessary to move this town forward,” Loffredo said.

Loffredo and his running mates are running under the slogan, “Forward Asbury Park.” He says it has been difficult at times to coax some residents into embracing change and forward movement.

“In our first years in office, anything we wanted to try, somebody was yelling no,” he said. “And if we listened to them, we’d still be sitting where we were 12 years ago … I find it interesting that some of the people running against us probably wouldn’t be living here if we hadn’t done what we did.”

In recent months, city residents have often come to the microphone at council meetings to tell the council there should be more jobs created for city residents. Loffredo feels it is not the city’s responsibility to create work for residents.

He added that people who say the city needs to create jobs are “being disingenuous. You can say it. But leadership is action, not position.”

In response to allegations from other candidates that the city is divided, Loffredo said, “It’s divided in their own minds. I don’t feel that way. Every day, I am everywhere in this city. And people are friendly all over this city.”

Loffredo has also been on council during debates over the Bradley Cove and North End Beach areas. Waterfront redeveloper iStar financial has permission to develop on those tracts of land, but many in the city have advocated for the area to be turned into a protected park area.

The contractual agreement at Bradley Cove includes amenities like a pavilion, a boardwalk, dunes and more, Loffredo said, all paid for by the developer and not the city. Development on Bradley Cove would not take away from the surfing and dog beach, he said.

Some have suggested the county should buy the land and turn it into a protected park, but Loffredo is skeptical about that plan because it could change beach access, and he does not want to sell portions of the beach.

“I’m not against a park at all,” Loffredo said. “But hopefully it would be something the city would run. I don’t want it separate [from the rest of the beach].”

In fact, city manager Terence Reidy announced last week that the city will apply for Green Acres funding to possibly turn the area into a park.

Loffredo decided to defend his seat on council because Asbury Park is “at a critical time in our history,” he said. “There are a lot of projects in the works that I want to see completed and that I want to see come to fruition. We spent a long time building relationships and inroads with the state and the community. I want to keep it going. This is no time to slide back.”

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