{"id":1660,"date":"2016-04-19T00:12:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T04:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/?p=1660"},"modified":"2016-04-19T01:07:48","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T05:07:48","slug":"lavallette-bids-an-emotional-farewell-to-longtime-borough-administrator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/2016\/04\/lavallette-bids-an-emotional-farewell-to-longtime-borough-administrator\/","title":{"rendered":"Lavallette Bids an Emotional Farewell to Longtime Borough Administrator"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Christopher<\/a>

Christopher Parlow receives a retirement gift from Lavallette Mayor Walter LaCicero. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

Christopher Parlow has guided\u00a0Lavallette through the good times and the bad times over his nearly 17 year-long tenure as borough administrator, and was instrumental in handling the borough\u2019s recovery from Superstorm Sandy, officials said Monday night.<\/p>\n

The borough council meeting Monday would be the last for Parlow, who is retiring April 30. Joined by his wife in the audience, officials, professionals and residents heaped praise upon the Brick Township resident, who will now have more time to commit to his favorite pastime \u2013 fishing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t say enough about Mr. Parlow and the work that he\u2019s done for the borough itself \u2013 millions of dollars he\u2019s saved the borough,\u201d said Mayor Walter LaCicero, joking that the two became better friends after they were no longer on opposite sides of the negotiating\u00a0table once LaCicero retired from the borough\u2019s police department. \u201cHe taught me what it means to run a multimillion dollar corporation like the Borough of Lavallette.\u00a0I\u2019m hoping that his replacement can even\u00a0partially fill the shoes that he\u2019s going to leave here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councilman\u00a0James G. Borowski served on the committee that searched for the borough\u2019s first administrator in 1999. He said he met Parlow at a meeting of officials from towns that operate their own electric utilities. Parlow was representing Milltown, Middlesex County, at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was so helpful, helping a freshman councilman get those answers,\u201d Borowski said, noting how Parlow went out of his way to help a council member of another town.<\/p>\n

Parlow applied for the Lavallette job, but was not one of the candidates to be offered a second interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was able to use my veto power, or whatever you might call it, to insist that we bring him in for an interview,\u201d said\u00a0Borowski. \u201cYou can blame it all on me, Chris.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since those days, the two have become good friends, having fished together in their off-time from borough business.<\/p>\n

Parlow received specific praise on his leadership in the wake of Sandy, when he was able to adapt quickly and find solutions to myriad storm-related problems.<\/p>\n

\"Christopher<\/a>

Christopher Parlow receives a hug from Lavallette Council President Anita Zalom at his final meeting with the borough. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe rule book on how to run a borough was thrown out the window and you had to start from square one,\u201d said Councilman Robert Lamb. \u201cI was here and watched Mr. Parlow \u2013 whether he hitchhiked over here or caught a ride, every day, eating the cheap soup we were all eating from the Red Cross. He knew his job from the old way to run a borough. To watch that every day was really an amazing feat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe deal with a lot of administrators throughout the state, but there are few who have given as much time and service to their communities as you have,\u201d borough attorney Eric Bernstein said, addressing Parlow.<\/p>\n

For his part, Parlow said that he enjoyed his job from day one, because no day was ever the same. While his officials job description tasked him with developing budgets and heading departments, the experiences in the day-to-day work went far beyond that.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you work in a small town like Lavallette, it involves doing so much more than those core duties,\u201d Parlow said, referencing occasions when he plowed snow and helped assemble water meters at the Public Works Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no two days here that are ever the same, and that\u2019s one of the things I live about working in Lavallette and working in a small town,\u201d he said, speaking on why he always chose to stay in Lavallette over pursuing other opportunities in larger communities when they arose over the years.<\/p>\n

LaCicero and a tearful Council President Anita Zalom presented Parlow with a watch as a retirement gift, inscribed with a message hoping Parlow will always keep Lavallette in his heart.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re a man of great integrity and great expertise, and we have all benefited from that,\u201d said Councilwoman\u00a0Joanne Filippone.<\/p>\n

Parlow\u2019s replacement has not yet been announced by officials.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher Parlow has guided\u00a0Lavallette through the good times and the bad times over his nearly 17 year-long tenure as borough administrator, and was instrumental in handling the borough\u2019s recovery from Superstorm Sandy, officials said Monday night. The borough council meeting Monday would be the last for Parlow, who is retiring April 30. Joined by his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1661,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18,3,2],"tags":[379,29],"class_list":["post-1660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-lavallette-government","category-lavallette","tag-christopher-parlow","tag-lavallette-nj-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/parlow_1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgsn9q-qM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}