Getting elected to serve on a council is not an easy feat, but for Colleen Labow of Budd Lake, she is winning the streak in terms of being the only woman elected to her sixth consecutive term on the Mt. Olive Twp. Council.
Barbara Swasey was the other councilwoman who served from 1978 through 1997, giving her 20 years of service, according to Michelle Masser, Mt. Olive Twp. clerk. With Labow elected to council every four years since 2004, she also has served 20 years “but with her new four-year appointment for 2024-2027, if she remains the entire term, she will then have 24 years of service,” says Masser.
And with councilwoman elect Mary Lalama, this “will be the first time two women will sit together on council together.”
A Budd Lake resident since 1979, Labow decided to first run for council in 2001 because she “wanted to help my community,” she explains. “I did not win; ran again in 2003, won and took office in 2004.”
A mother of two grown children —Jeremy Jackson, 42, and Curtis Labow, 33, and two grandchildren, Labow is happy for all the support from her husband and family.
She looks forward to the next four years as a civic leader.
“Absolutely thrilled,” she says about being reelected. “It is an incredible honor! I am the first woman to be elected to a sixth term. Barbara Swase, a dear friend and mentor of mine, was on the council for five terms and she was pretty much responsible for out Senior Center being built.”
Labow Finds Her Voice
Labow knew at an early age that her voice does matter.
As the oldest of six siblings, Labow shares “I was pretty good at showing bullies that they were not allowed to pick on my brothers and sisters.”
Then in high school she got involved in many clubs and activities.
“I was the editor in chief of the high school newspaper called the “Student Prints,” she explains. “I was also a member of the Student Council and found that it was very difficult to find teachers willing to chaperone our activities such as school dances. Then one day I heard some teachers complaining about student apathy, saying the kids just don’t care about participating.
“I wrote an editorial about teacher apathy stating that the kids do care but could not get the chaperones needed to complete our plans for various activities,” she says. While some did appreciate her stirring up some criticism in the school paper, she quickly learned that her words do make a difference. “We had a lot of chaperones and thankfully we were able to have our various events.”
Local Involvement
Before taking a seat on council, Labow volunteered in various ways. She was a homeroom mom for her two sons in their elementary and middle school years;
Cub Scout leader for both sons; was a member of the Mt. Olive High School Parents Club, serving as its president for two years; and worked the snack bar at the high school football home games.
“For four years I shopped and stocked what we needed each home game and met with the health inspector for our yearly certification,” she describes.
She was also a member of the Mt. Olive Kiwanis Club working on many fundraisers, with her favorite one being the Santa House.
She also volunteered to help raise funds for Big Brother and Big Sister events in 1994 and 1996.
“In 2008, my friend Flora Salierno and I participated in the Pajama Program and collected 1,371 new pajamas for neglected and abused children helping them to have nice warm, comforting PJ’s,” she adds.
In 2001, Labow was trained to be an advocate for victims of Domestic Violence with the Mt. Olive Police Department’s Domestic Violence Crisis Response Team.
One of her greatest honors, she notes, was being nominated and selected as the VMC’s Outstanding Volunteer Award in 2006.
And on March 27, 2013, she was one of four women to receive the
Phenomenal Woman Award in celebration of Woman’s History Month for phenomenal contributions to the Morris County Area.
“The phenomenal woman award was so shocking and I will always be thankful for receiving it,” says Labow. “Made me feel like all of my time volunteering was well spent.”
Asset to Council
A realtor since 1986, Labow says her role on the council fits in nicely with her profession.
“I have found that my years as an agent and my time on council has helped me in both areas, tremendously,” she says. “When you are an agent you need to know about the towns and how things work and as an elected official you learn about what families purchasing a home are looking for in their home’s government.
It’s awesome to know a lot about the community I serve and provide useful information to my clients.”
Her personal skills have also been effective as a councilwoman.
She is “caring,” and has the “desire to help people and improve our community, listen to what people have to say and help them with what I can, if I can’t then lead them to where they can get help.”
As far as her accomplishments, Labow is quite humble.
“I am not sure of any major accomplishments as a councilwoman,” she says. “I just continue my efforts to help when and where I can.” She did play a role in supporting the Trap-Neuter-Return program. “At first I was not a believer in the positive nature of this program,” she admits. But after researching the value of the program. “I was on board all the way. The year before the program began, over 170 cats were euthanized in Mt. Olive, costing a lot of money with no resolution to the growing number of stray and lost cats.
“The purpose is to stop the stray cat population from growing and it works. We don’t euthanize dozens of cats anymore, we don’t have an abundance of stray cats.”
Outnumbered as the only female on the council for the past two decades, Labow has earned the respect of her counterparts and realizes her desire to keep her seat.
“Way back in 2001 when I first started attending council meetings, I don’t think the guys on council were very interested in the questions I asked and seemed to consider me annoying,” Labow admits. “I noticed that every time I got up to the podium to ask a question or make a comment, all of a sudden I could hear soda cans pop open, bags of chips being opened and some chatter going on. Not from all of them, just a few. Then one day I went to the podium, identified myself, and the can popping and bag opening commenced so I just stood there. Then the council president at the time apparently thought I was done and said “Oh, Mrs. Labow are you finished?” I had not even said anything yet and I told him no, ‘I am just waiting for all of you to finish and pay attention.’
“Things changed a bit after that,” she says. “They were a little more respectful.”
She’s ecstatic that come January she will no longer be the lone female.
“I am extremely happy that Mary Lalama has been elected to serve,” says Labow. “Finally another female! Women and men have different ways of approaching situations. I enjoy the various opinions. It’s going to be nice to have more than one female voice on the council.
“Personally, I believe women do a great job at evaluating where their time and energies are best spent,” she says. “Running for office and dealing with the political nonsense can be a huge waste of time. However, if you really enjoy government, laws, policies, then it’s worth it and can be very interesting.
“It’s important to have various points of view,” she continues. “Having older men vs. younger men helps with various viewpoints as well. So different sexes and ages helps to round out the panel to cover as many points possible.”
Concerns and goals for this next four-year term?
As she looks to her upcoming term, she admits “I do have concerns for the coming years. We have never experienced a pandemic before and life as we knew it has changed considerably. Many people have lost their jobs for various reasons. Many families lost members of their families creating hardships for the families. These things are often hard to come through.
“Then we had the mortgage rates drop to unbelievably low rates encouraging a rush to purchase new homes and the bidding wars began. Houses were selling at nearly double what they were worth. What worries me about that is pretty soon people will not be able to afford, maintain the overpriced homes and will not be able to sell them for what they paid, they will be abandoned or foreclosed on.”
She will use her smarts in this industry and as an elected official with the community’s best interests in mind, just as she has been doing for the past 20 years on council.
“Learning about government,” is what she has enjoyed most as a councilwoman. “Never gets boring and is always changing. I love to help people.”
