County operations are focus
for Monmouth administrator
Robert J. Collins will
retire in August 2002
after 18 years on the job
By dick metzgar
Correspondent

FARRAH MAFFAI As county administrator in Monmouth, Robert J. Collins oversees 20 departments and 3,500 employees.

FREEHOLD — Monmouth County has grown by leaps and bounds during Robert J. Collins’ tenure as county administrator — from a budget of about $108 million when he was appointed to that position in 1984 to $353 million in 2001.

With that growth, Monmouth County has gained the status of being one of the best areas in the country in which to live.

However, the county has also experienced growing pains during that time, and those growing pains have sometimes been sensitive and controversial.

Even though the buck stops with the five-member elected Monmouth County Board of Freeholders, more often than not it has been Collins’ responsibility to deal with the touchy issues because the administrator is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the county, presiding over some 20 departments and about 3,500 employees.

Collins believes he has dealt adequately with the issues as they have arisen over the years, such as a proposal for the incineration of solid waste about a decade ago and complaints about the operation of the county’s two medical homes — the John L. Montgomery Care Center in Freehold Township and the Geraldine L. Thompson Care Center in Allenwood, Wall Town-ship.

Come Aug. 1 of 2002, Collins, 64, will no longer have to worry about county matters. At that time, Collins will officially retire as administrator, a job in which he currently earns $142,000. He said he plans to enter the consulting field, one that draws many retired administrators.

Collins is one of 155 Monmouth County employees who will take advantage of an early retirement incentive, a plan that will eliminate 42 positions and save the county $7.5 million over the next five years.

Collins will be replaced as administrator by Louis Paparozzi, the present deputy administrator and director of human services.

Paparozzi will be replaced as director of human services by Kathleen A. Brady, currently the county’s director of social services, which operates as a branch of the Department of Human Services.

Collins, of Interlaken, is the second person to serve as county administrator, replacing Theodore Narozanick, who retired in 1984 and won a seat on the board of freeholders a year later.

Although county spending has increased threefold since 1984, Collins pointed out that the county tax rate has actually decreased from 54 cents per $100 of net valuation in 1984 to 42 cents per $100 of net valuation in 2001.

While the tremendous growth in the county during the last 20 years has caused the cost of operating the county to escalate at a rapid rate, Collins said county officials have been able to keep a stable tax rate at the same time because of net valuation on which county taxes are apportioned.

The county’s net valuation in 1984 was a little more than $14 billion, while in 2001 it is almost $52 billion.

"The secret of evaluating a budget is looking at the percentage of the tax levy to the actual budget," the administrator said.

Collins pointed out that the tax levy to support the $108 million budget in 1984 was approximately $77 million (71 percent), while the tax levy to support the current $353 million budget is about $218 million (62 percent).

"Because of the tremendous growth in this part of New Jersey, the county has had to provide many more services and create new departments so that we can maintain the quality of life in the county," he said.

Collins said the biggest issue he has had to deal with is the disposal of solid waste, which is currently disposed of at the Tinton Falls Reclamation Center.

In the 1980s, the state mandated that the county come up with a solid waste disposal plan for the future. The construction of a solid waste incinerator at Tinton Falls appeared to be the direction the county was going to take.

Because of heated opposition to the incinerator by clean air activists and at least one freeholder, Amy Handlin, the freeholders opted by a 3-2 vote to take the issue to the voters through a referendum. The incinerator proposal was turned down by the voters and county officials decided to junk the plan altogether.

The county had already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars doing the preliminary ground work in anticipation of the construction of the incinerator.

"Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent, but the money really wasn’t wasted," Collins said. "We learned from the experience and were able to upgrade our facility at Tinton Falls to handle the disposal of our solid waste. We are fine for another 20 years and we are about to enter another phase of the upgrade that should increase that. But the disposal of solid waste is going to be an ongoing issue. Perhaps sometime in the future the county will have to build an incinerator or maybe by that time there will be some new technology."

During the mid-1990s, complaints surfaced about alleged mistreatment and inadequate treatment of patients at the county’s two nursing homes, especially at the Montgomery home in Freehold Township.

Again it was left to Collins to take the bull by the horns and address any real problems that existed at the care centers. A consultant was hired to study and analyze the matter and propose solutions.

"As a result, we had to reorganize the two medical centers and change staff in some cases," Collins said. "We had to put more money into them, but it has been worth the expense. Both facilities are now in excellent shape."

Collins was a star athlete at Matawan High School, excelling in baseball and basketball. Both teams won state championships while Collins played for them. The Huskies’ baseball team won 35 straight games between 1952 and 1955. A middle infielder, Collins hit .500.

Collins was recently inducted into his high school’s hall of fame.

He has won many awards, among which are the Monmouth County Private Industry Council Award in 1995, the New Jersey Association of Counties’ 1995 County Achievement Award, the Monmouth County Boy Scouts’ Joshua Huddy Award in 2000 and the Eastern Monmouth Area Chamber of Commerce Spinnaker Award in 2001.

A graduate of Niagara University, New York, Collins began his career in 1963 with the state’s civil service office in Newark. In 1970 he took a job as personnel director in Plainfield, Union County. He came to Monmouth County in 1975 as clerk to the board of freeholders but left in 1977 to accept a job in the Philippines.

In 1982, he was named city administrator in Long Branch and two years later was appointed county administrator.

Collins and his wife, Kathryn, have a grown son and daughter and two grandchildren.