'Proactive' Candidate for Committee Gets Morris Twp. Resident's Support

My name is Cathy Yamashita.  I am a 51-year old married, mother of two, who moved to Morris Township from Montclair almost one year ago.  Until now, I have never closely followed, or gotten involved in, local politics.  Recently, I was home cooking dinner when my doorbell rang.  Reluctantly, I answered the door and standing there was a middle-aged woman with a name badge and clipboard.  I immediately said to myself, “be polite, but make this quick”.

Thirty minutes later, Cathy Wilson had not only managed to get me to say that I would vote for her, but also that I wanted to volunteer to help her get elected to the Morris Township Committee.

I was impressed with Cathy’s intelligence, experience and ability to express her vision for the community in a clear and compelling way.  I was also struck by Cathy’s reasons for running – she cares and wants to make a difference. 

Cathy spent her 26-year career in education as a teacher and administrator.  She retired in 2004 and recently completed a Master’s Degree in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution.  While Cathy has always followed local politics, she has never run for office before.  Cathy explained to me that she was moved to run in the aftermath of the Honeywell and Hurricane Sandy debacles. 

In the case of Honeywell, Cathy feels strongly that a missing ingredient in our current process is a collaborative communication forum that engages residents, officials, planners, and other stakeholders in working together to create a guiding vision, clarify common concerns, and develop creative resolution options. 

In the case of Sandy, Cathy was frustrated not only with the length of the outage, but also with the lack of communication during the outage.  Cathy has already proven to me that she is a woman of action by the fact that she was a founding member of CREMT, Citizens for Reliable Electricity in Morris Township, an organization created in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  CREMT is focused on results – fewer outages with shorter duration and better communication among JCP&L, the township and the residents.    

After our brief encounter at my front door, I asked Cathy for a meeting so that I could get to know her better.  In that two-hour session, my initial reaction to Cathy was validated and reinforced.  

I was struck by the fact that Cathy doesn’t need to do this – she WANTS to do it.  She believes, and I strongly agree, that her many years of working with people from diverse backgrounds as a teacher and administrator, coupled with her degree in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, give her a unique skillset to work effectively and creatively to solve the community’s problems in an open and inclusive manner.

As I was sitting and chatting with Cathy, it dawned on me that if Cathy loses in November, while she would be disappointed, the real losers would be the residents of Morris Township.  We would lose someone who has the experience, vision and energy to effect “targeted change” (as Cathy puts it) in our community.  Cathy readily acknowledged that while some things work well in our local government, there are other things that she wants to change, most notably the closed, top-down practice currently used for resolving contentious land use and zoning issues. 

Cathy would supplement the current practice with a state-of-the-art process that is open, transparent, and invites real communication among all the constituents throughout.  Cathy is a proactive, results-oriented team player who wants the opportunity to listen to the concerns and views of all the various stakeholders in Morris Township and use that input to build a stronger community.  Cathy is not someone who will wait around for problems to come up and then react to them.  Rather, she will be proactive in addressing issues before they become problems. 

As you can see, I was moved by Cathy’s vision and energy to write this letter to get the word out about her candidacy.  I also will be volunteering my time between now and November 5 doing whatever I can to help get Cathy elected.  I believe that others would be similarly motivated if they had the opportunity to meet and talk to Cathy.  

There are three such upcoming opportunities:  there are two upcoming fundraisers on Oct. 4 and 13, and there is a debate on Oct. 28.  The debate will be held at 7:30 pm at the Alfred Vail School.  For more information on any of these events, you can email Cathy Wilson directly at cathy@cathy2013.com.   

For those of you who want to learn more about Cathy but aren’t able to attend any of the upcoming events, you can visit Cathy’s website at www.cathy2013.com.