In the well-appointed chambers of Wayne Township, where the rituals of local governance typically unfold with predictable decorum, the annual “State of the Township” address this year detonated a silent grenade of discontent.
Mayor Chris Vergano, a Republican embarking on a historic fifth term, painted a portrait of a “strong, resilient, and inclusive” community of 55,000—a place where neighbors look out for one another and smart planning guides the future.
The official transcript, however, was almost immediately rendered a contested document by the searing response from progressive Democrat Stewart Resmer, who offered a minority report from a township he describes as “imperiled and at risk.”
Resmer, who served in Vietnam with the United States Marine Corps before embarking on a career as a Hollywood stuntman and limousine driver. He is retired and now lives in Wayne, New Jersey.
The mayor’s centerpiece achievement, unanimously endorsed by the council, was the $12 million purchase of the Wayne Community Center. Vergano framed it as a legacy investment.
“This community center will serve as a hub for recreation, learning, wellness, and civic engagement,” Vergano said, calling it a space that would bring generations together.
From the opposing viewpoint, this grand project is a “vanity project” and a fiscal insult.
Resmer counters that an underused municipal center already exists, and that the mayor’s priority encumbers taxpayers for a luxury while essential services falter.
The divergence is stark: one man’s hub of community is another’s monument to misplaced ambition.
This conflict over treasure is mirrored in a deeper dispute over trust and public safety.
Vergano praised the police department for keeping Wayne “a very safe community” and honored the “essential” volunteer firefighters and first aid squad.
Resmer’s retort frames this volunteerism not as a virtue, but as a symptom of a government stretching its people thin.
He cites unpaid crossing guards, aging ambulances logging constant hours, and a policy of buying “a new million-dollar fire truck every year” for unmanned stations while relying on volunteers to staff the rigs.
The picture is not of seamless service, but of a system patched together by citizen goodwill while capital expenditures roll on.
The mayor’s speech celebrated inclusivity, but Resmer’s response reached into the township’s past to question its present.
He invoked the 1955 civil rights decision against Wayne for discriminatory deed restrictions, suggesting a lingering ethos in “a town of a plethora of members-only, dues-paying lake clubs and golf clubs.”
He connected this history to current rejections of mixed-use housing at sites like Willowbrook Mall, arguing such decisions perpetuate exclusivity and exacerbate an affordable housing crisis now being forced upon the township by builders’ remedy lawsuits.
For Resmer, the “shared values” the mayor extolled are not universally shared.
Perhaps the most fundamental rift is over the very nature of power in Wayne.
Vergano welcomed a new and returning council, reminding them that “our mission is to serve the people.”
Vergano expressed gratitude for his reelection, a mandate to continue. Resmer, however, sees not a mandate but a captured system.
Resmer describes a Republican supermajority running the township “as though it were a members-only private club,” where consequential votes are cast in nearly empty chambers.
Resmer alleges the council initially aided a failed attempt to raise the mayor’s salary by 670 percent and points to the approval of a gun store near a range—juxtaposed with a recent shooting at the mall—as evidence of a governing philosophy at odds with public welfare.
In the end, two realities were presented. One is of a township confidently marching forward, investing in its future, and upheld by dedicated servants and volunteers.
The other is of a community choking on traffic, burdened by flooding, neglecting its schools, and governed by a clique clinging to a fading status quo.
As Vergano looked with optimism toward the future, Resmer issued a warning that in Wayne, and in the nation it mirrors, “the very republic is in peril, ergo the township is likewise imperiled.”
The state of this township depends entirely on which address you choose to believe.