Pitman Dems Endorse Matt Weng for Re-Election to Council

The Pitman Democrats proudly support Councilman Matthew Weng for re-election to Borough Council.

From Councilman Weng:

Friends, I’m running for re-election this year.
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January of this year, when I first started drafting this post asking my Pitman friends and family for another term as their voice in local government, seems like a lifetime ago. Since then, a deadly pandemic claimed the lives of over 100,000 Americans, including our fellow Pitmanites. Many in our town lost jobs, homes, and businesses in the ensuing financial crisis. George Floyd was killed by someone sworn to serve and protect him, and people rose up in protest in Pitman and around the world.
In my first term my aim was to lead through service. Our community deserves to be informed, so I posted meeting agendas and tried to explain in plain language some important changes in our town. You deserve to get answers to your questions and concerns, so I tried to be responsive to posts, emails, messages, and phone calls. And no one should ever face difficult times alone, so I made sure to solve the issues I could locally and connect residents with the right resources at all levels of government. I am particularly proud that Mayor and Council together passed three consecutive budgets with no municipal tax increase, without cutting services or raiding our surplus.

Thinking about a second term, I still have many of the same goals. Despite the current issues we face, we still need to pick up the trash, clean the parks, and get our first responders the resources they need to help our residents. These are all essential to the well-being of Pitman.

The rest of these issues have no easy answers. They require work and dedication and humility. Even then, we will not solve them immediately, nor will we solve them in the next three years, or maybe not even in the next thirty years. But we can begin.

And we can begin here, at the local level. We have already taken some of those small steps. This month Pitman recognized LGBT Pride Month for the first time ever. We created a Task Force on Inclusion and Diversity with the goal of making Pitman as welcoming as possible. The leadership of our police department and I are working on reviving a community dispute resolution board, so that residents have a forum to address their concerns and solve their disagreements without involving the criminal justice system. Like I said above-that's just the beginning.

With your support this year, we can continue that progress. Your vote decides not just who we are, but who we can be.
I cannot promise I will get everything right, and when I get something wrong, I want you to let me know.
What I can promise is that I will listen to you, learn from you, and address your needs. I also promise, to the best of my ability, to do everything I can to improve your life, and the lives of everyone in our small town; to make gentle the life of this world. Thank you for giving me the privilege of serving you.

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