"Great timing, Kate," I sighed, contemplating the renewed blizzard raging outside. "Let's hope this isn't a sign from heaven."

Linking arms with another employee, I half-stumbled, half-slid to a row of snowdrifts that hopefully contained our cars. Forty minutes later, wet and shivering, I was rocking out to a ZZ Top song as I edged my car behind the company snowplow.

On any other day, the excruciating ride down the Garden State Parkway would have petrified me. On that particular day - with the defroster and car stereo blasting, and with no visibility and no solid plans for my future - I was amazingly content.

That same welcome sense of, well, "rightness" hit me again last Wednesday - exactly nine years later - as I watched my successor, Ed Johnson, being sworn onto the Asbury Park city council.

Of all the roles I've played in Asbury Park over the last decade - resident, business owner, volunteer, activist - the role of elected official was definitely the most unexpected, at least to me.

On the day I resigned from office, I sent a personal letter to my friends and family describing my reasons for both running and resigning, and my unflagging optimism in Asbury Park's future.

That letter was never intended for widespread distribution, but - to no one's surprise, I guess - someone immediately handed it to a local reporter and I'm told it's been posted on an e-mail chat group.

Given that it's already making the rounds, I've asked Pete Walton to append it to this column when he posts it on asburypark.net in a few days. It's a long letter - even by Kate standards - but it's about as honest and complete as I could make it, and you're welcome to read it if you choose.

The month since my resignation has brought all the expected rumors, of course: That I've lost faith in the current city council and city management. (Wrong! In fact, I think they're performing miracles, given the hand they've been dealt.) That I anticipate another FBI raid against myself or someone else in current city government. (Balderdash!)

And, my personal favorite, that my recent weight loss is the result of some mysterious illness. (Definitely not. In fact, I will happily share my secret weapon with all you post-holiday dieters: Marlene, who runs the 9:30 Weight Watchers sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at Middlebrook Plaza. The woman is dynamite.)

And, yes, I sincerely believe that the basic beachfront redevelopment deal (despite the inevitable bumps and adjustments that must accompany anything so complex) is an extremely beneficial one for the city - the entire city - for the reasons cited in Councilman John Loffredo's recent letter and many, many more.

In fact, as odd as it sounds, the real reason I felt free to return to "civilian" life is that I believe the city is finally on a winning course, rather than the opposite.

I am also elated with the council's choice for my successor. Three years ago, almost every city merchant (including me) was up in arms about the city's failing and frustrating Urban Enterprise Zone program.

That program has gone from deathbed to dancing, thanks largely to Ed Johnson's unwavering leadership of the UEZ Board over the last three years. He's withstood an array of political and personal insults and challenges that only Asbury Park could inflict, and he's demonstrated that he's calm, knowledgeable, caring, honest, resilient and definitely effective. Asbury Park is in good hands.

Of course, I'm not planning to disappear altogether. Beginning next time, my column will sport a new title, and I hope to illustrate it with a different Asbury Park photo each week. (It's always interesting to see what people identify with in this ever-evolving place we call Asbury Park.)

I'll also give you a little insight into what I learned as a councilwoman, including what I think is going well, what needs attention, and what it's like to hold public office. (Bring plenty of Excedrin Migraine…)

Mostly, though, I'll write about what I've always written about: issues that concern us all, from downtown redevelopment to homelessness, and from West Side rehabilitation to recreation.

Because the one thing I hope I've communicated in this column is that every one of us has a role to play in Asbury Park's rebuilding, whether we're dedicated to saving the town, our business, or simply ourselves and our children.

Which brings me to my final words as a city councilwoman at our December 15 meeting.

There's a Hindu greeting that's always appealed to me, despite its New Age trendiness. Only three syllables long, it's a way to tell another person that "the Divine in me recognizes and greets in the Divine in you."

Over the past nine years I've had the privilege of seeing the Divine in many wonderful people working for Asbury Park.

To all of you, I say, "Namaste" and thanks.

December 15, 2004

Dear Friends -

As some of you may have already heard, I am planning to resign from the city council at the end of tonight's 7 p.m. meeting. For various (mostly obvious) reasons, I didn't want to broadcast this news too far in advance, but the pressures associated with getting ready for tonight's meeting mean that I won't be able to talk to everyone in advance.

Below is the type of e-mail I usually don't have time to read myself - rambling and long - but I wanted to give the people I care about a chance to hear something directly from me since I plan to make myself scarce for the next few days.

So please feel free to read this, or not, as you have time, and know that we can talk about it once the initial craziness blows over.

Most of you have heard my oft-repeated story of how, when I moved to New Jersey in 1984, my real estate agent advised me that "Whatever you do, don't move to Asbury Park - no one wants to live there."

And then how, in 1988, Dave and I drove across the Deal Lake bridge one Saturday morning and found the house of our dreams on Locust Drive.

What I usually don't describe is how we almost lost the chance to buy that house because the sellers hired their cousin as their attorney, and he and our attorney got into a spitting match over the contract details.

After two or three weeks of this, I finally parked in front of the house one day with our dogs Shambles and Seal in tow, and promised the Universe, "Just let us get this house and I promise I'll do something to help Asbury Park."

Unfortunately, I forgot to add a cut-off date and a salary requirement to my offer.

So, eight years later, we opened the Cleopatra Steps Out Gallery, and I suddenly found myself co-chairing a downtown "Arts and Business Entrepreneur Day", assembling an annual "Arts & Services Directory", organizing downtown clean-up days and an August Arts Festival, kicking off a Business Block Watch group, and leading a group of business owners and city employees on a tour of Philadelphia's art districts to try to find the secret of their success.

Then, of course, there were our annual Cleopatra Steps Out fund-raisers, parties and exhibits to benefit the middle school and high school art programs, the high school library, the Boys & Girls Club after-school program and, of course, that wild-eyed group of idealists that I always thought of as "Save the Bumper Car Ladies, Inc." ("Save Tillie" to them….)

From there, I wound up as the token straight person on the new Asbury Park Homeowners Association Board after they advertised for a treasurer and I told them that Sister Michael Thomas used to let me carry the class candy money to the bank in a cookie tin…..all of which led to helping with projects ranging from house tours to holiday food collection projects and more….

Then, two things happened - the Homeowners Association Board asked me to start reporting on school board affairs at our monthly membership meetings (Me? The one whose kids all had four legs?), and I volunteered to chair the group's new Quality of Life Committee.

I got quite an eyeful at the school board meetings in the late '90s, and not much of it was good or had to do with educating kids. And, no sooner did we start a "Quality of Life Campaign" to focus attention on Asbury Park's needs, then people started showing up with copies of documents and allegations of widespread political corruption in town.

As a result, I wound up compiling the infamous "three-inch binder" of information that eventually led John Loffredo, Sue Henderson, a group of dedicated homeowners and myself to the Monmouth County Prosecutors Office, our state assemblymen and senator, and the County Department of Education. From there, we were sent to the NJ Attorney General, the FBI, the NJ Department of Education, the NJ Department of Community Affairs, the IRS, Governor Christie Whitman, and more people and places than I can remember.

There were lots of investigations, the state sent monitors into the school system, various people were removed from boards, and there was one major trial that ended in all three defendants being found not guilty.

Along the way, I wound up being personally sued by a subset of the Asbury Park Board of Education (the case was thrown out of federal court), I was told that my background was being investigated, I got a call warning me that our house (Remember our house? The one that caused all the trouble in the first place?) might be burned down if I didn't back off, I was rushed by an angry mob at a school board meeting and wound up sitting between two Prosecutor's Office detectives, and I was called every conceivable name from political, racist and unkind to rude, bellicose and ignorant by the former school board attorney, which either confirms that I'm really a pip or implies that he owned a fairly large thesaurus.

And I certainly wasn't the only one. Black Homeowners Association members like Ann and Lawson June were called names I won't repeat, Barbara Lesinski was personally sued along with the Homeowners Association itself, and my local hero Robert Sanders was even arrested on the eve of Veterans Day (ironically, he defended our rights in two wars) for legally attempting to videotape a Board of Education meeting with the permission of the school business administrator. (He probably still carries a blown-up copy of the $70,000 compensation check they had to pay him.)

Which is why I was so, so ready to claim I'd done my part for Asbury Park when we closed our gallery in December 2000. As I told John Loffredo that fall, I had no interest in running for city council, and I was ready to find a good paying job.

And then a handful of very diverse people, who I will discretely not name, talked me into throwing my hat into the ring just four days before the filing deadline, and I decided to let the Universe decide if I won or lost.

I'm not sure how many people believe just how happy I was when they told me I came in in 11th place on May 8, 2001. Nor do I think they know how upset I was when another candidate challenged the election in late May and it was discovered that - surprise! - they'd shortchanged me by about 160 votes in two voting districts. (Hopefully, you've seen and taken to heart the Coaster columns I've written about the abuses that go on during Asbury Park elections, because - with all this new money floating around now - next May's election promises to be the dirtiest and most crooked yet.)

The last 3-1/2 years have lasted only a minute and stretched out for a million years. The council's gone from a threatened state takeover because of spending excesses by the previous city government, to meeting the challenge of staying alive until redevelopment kicks in. City manager Terry Reidy even (somehow!) managed to get us our first municipal bond rating. After decades of decline, there's a new boardwalk, the first beachfront redevelopment and infrastructure improvements are kicking in, and we've hopefully found a way to not only save, but historically restore our Convention Hall, the Paramount Theatre, the power plant and the Casino carousel house and arcade - something the city could never afford on its own and the almost bankrupt state government couldn't help us do.

After over a decade of inaction, we've also won back the rights to develop Springwood Avenue from Asbury Shores (look for lots of public planning meetings over the next few months) and city Housing Director Hazel Samuels has somehow put together an almost $1 million rehabilitation fund for Ridge and Bangs Avenues on the West Side.

Come January, we should have a full-time city hall professional who does nothing but find jobs and training opportunities for Asbury Park residents (initially paid for by funds provided by our beachfront developers) and Eve Silver - a woman with lots of experience and, I believe, both a good heart and a good brain - recently joined the city as our relocation expert. The council is also committed to using beachfront redeveloper funds to establish a real city recreation and senior center. (I anticipate site selection and improvement in 2005.)

The UEZ program, which was one of the merchants' largest bones of contention in 2001, has turned around unbelievably thanks to Economic Development Director Tom Gilmour and the UEZ board. (BTW - Thanks for those wonderful new holiday decorations!)

I'm impressed with new Police Director Lou Jordan (who almost single-handedly, I'm convinced, ended those destructive, misnamed "Greekfests" that annually crippled the city and who brought in the federal Drug Enforcement Agency this year), new Redevlopment Director Don Sammet, new city Engineer Brian Grant, and - of course - new City Manager Terry Reidy who has been pulling out all the stops to keep us floating financially and who has been making significant changes to city hall's organization and staffing that I believe will benefit us all, even before our finances significantly improve.

And, of course, there is a substantial list of long-time employees and department heads who have been chugging along for years despite inadequate facilities, outdated equipment, and a town where just about everything has become broken or obsolete over the years.

And, as those of you who saw the last city council in action (or, more accurately, "inaction") know, the current city council has been working an unbelievable number of hours trying to reverse decades of decay, corruption, and disarray in a town where (as I sometimes believe) there are 17,000 residents and 25,000 special interest groups.

So why am I resigning now?

Before the on-line water-cooler speculation starts, let me just confirm that, No - the feds are not hunting me down, I don't have any diseases or life-threatening illnesses (exotic or otherwise), I'm not being successfully bullied, no one's trying to extort money from me (that would actually keep me in office, as would the bullying), my marriage isn't breaking up, Dave and I are not having affairs with anyone (hell, we hardly have time to have one with each other), I'm not mad at the rest of the council (in fact, you'll see me campaigning hard for Jimmy Bruno, John Loffredo and Kevin Sanders' team this spring), I'm not disgusted with the beachfront redevelopment plan or with Asbury Partners (like everyone else, they frustrate me - sometimes more than others - but they're not crooks and we're continually working on improvements and clarifications to the plan - just as you'd expect with something this complicated), and, oh yes, I don't think our attorneys are "slick" con artists who don't care about the city and who are leading us into endless lawsuits, as a few members of the public charged at the last council meeting. In fact, given how complicated this entire project - and the laws governing it - are, I marvel that we haven't hit more major problems than we have. It's also interesting that, while the lawsuits keep piling up - mostly brought on by the friends or patrons of the people at the microphone - the city keeps being exonerated in court, implying that our attorneys are either competent, care about the city, or both.

(Let's see - Have I missed anything? I guess I'll hear about it when some speculator types it on a website or e-mail exchange….)

As I described earlier, I've spent nine years of my life volunteering almost full-time for Asbury Park. (Hey - even a novena only lasts nine days!)

Running for office was not something that ever appealed to me, but - after all the time I invested as a business owner and Homeowners Association member - I just didn't want to see things revert back to the way they were.

You may not agree with many of my decisions - I've learned the hard way that being in office basically means trying to choose between many equally bad options and sometimes sacrificing small short-term wins for big long-term improvements - but I hope you'll agree that, working together, the residents, business community and (finally!) city hall are insuring that Asbury Park will survive the inevitable potholes and only improve from here.

Thanks to Dave - my confidant, shrink, co-adventurer, and favorite husband - I was able to put in 40 to 50 hours a week on Asbury Park these last few years, while bringing home only $5,000 a year. (And you'd better believe that it costs more than that to feed and maintain me!) Still, I'm 51 years old now, and we've had a tough couple of years personally, between my sister's serious brain cancer (she's miraculously on the road to recovery) and the long illnesses and traumatic deaths of Dave's father and mother, our close friend Tim, our niece's child, and even our 15-year-old dog Needles last winter.

It was then that I realized it was time to step back and re-evaluate what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

And, as someone who tries to operate out of her heart, I also realized that the constant hostility, conspiracy theories, endless glitches, and angry complaints that all council members are bombarded with was taking its toll on my (already menopausal) disposition. I'm old enough now to know my limits, and I'm smart enough to know that you can't pretend to save anyone else when you lose yourself in the process.

So, why not tough it out 'til noon on July 1? One of the things I hear over and over again from investors and potential investors in Asbury Park (including grant foundations and even the state) is that they fear Asbury Park's past political instability. One minute you have a hopeful looking council and - poof! - there's a recall election or some other political uprising and they're gone. I know for a fact that several businesses and financial agencies are waiting until after the next election to invest in the city.

Resigning now will give the remaining council the opportunity to appoint a solid candidate to begin learning the ropes (and it's not a simple process) and will give the public an opportunity to evaluate how they perform. And, should the public choose to re-elect the Loffredo-Bruno-Sanders-new-candidate team, then we'll have the stability that investors crave and that Asbury Park desperately needs.

If the public elects a different council with a different agenda, well, then that's the public's prerogative (given that it's not just the result of shady absentee ballots, "bought votes", etc., but that's a different story….)

So there it is, said in a way that's much longer than it is eloquent, but I don't have time to edit this into manageable form.

Dave and I are not planning to leave Asbury Park (not with all those damn rocks we piled on the lawn this summer) and - as I search for the next big thing I'm going to do as I grow up - I can anticipate that it will probably have something to do with Asbury Park - although something that doesn't involve attending council meetings.

Thanks to all of you who have supported this council and believed in us and, more importantly, worked together for Asbury Park even when we didn't all see eye-to-eye.

And thanks especially to Jimmy Bruno, John Loffredo and Kevin Sanders. The pressure on us has been unbelievable these last few years and will continue to be so on them, and I count them as my three kid brothers (okay, John - but only by a few months), with all the fun, accomplishment and flat-out squabbling that implies -

Love,
Kate Mellina