Huntley Hopes to Streamline Shared Services If Elected

The following is the eighth in our eight-part series of council candidate profiles for the Nov. 8 election. Each day, Tri-Boro Patch will bring you a new profile so that you know who you can vote for and what issues they are most concerned with. On election day, we will bring all of the profiles together for you in one article so you can make an informed decision.

In Blomingdale, four candidates, two Republicans and two Democrats, are running for two council seats. This is a profile story of one of them.

In the 12 years Republican council candidate Linda Huntley has lived in she has come to appreciate the "small town" feeling the borough provides and the friendliness of its citizens.

"You get to know your neighbors very well and I believe it's a very warm community," she said.

Huntley is running for her third term on the Bloomingdale Council and currently serves as council president. Initially, she decided to run for council because she said she was not pleased with the way councilmembers were acting towards one another.

"I didn't like the way the Democratic council was treating other councilmembers," she said.

Huntley has a brother, Keith, and nephew, Kyle, living in the borough. She was born in Yonkers and has been working as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) for the past 30 years.

In addition to being council president, Huntley serves as the liaision to the (BASS), the Board of Health and the Bloomingdale Youth Organization. She is also the borough's Clean Communities Coordinator and a Public Events Committee member.

This year, Huntley said that she feels the council has taken strides to bring financial relief to Bloomingdale residents.

"We're finally moving forward with an agenda to help the taxpayers," she said.

If elected, Huntley said she will continue to be a watchdog for the taxpayers and she hopes to be able to inform the public of more items on the borough's bills list, which the council is asked to approve each month.

"I've never been hesitant to address when I thought something was inappropriate," she said.

Another priority of hers is to continue negotiations with the Pompton Lakes Municipal Utilities Authority for a shared services agreement to provide water and sewer services to Bloomingdale residents at a lower cost. Examining shared service agreements as a whole is something Huntley said she hopes to do more of.

"Looking into newer shared services agreements that are truly shared services agreements whereas we don't have to hire people to fulfill our agreements," she said as one of her priorities.

Another of Huntley's priorities is to get flood mitigation taken care of, she said.