Hopewell Township Mayor Courtney Peters-Manning became the third woman in succession to serve in that role when she was sworn in at the January municipal reorganization meeting.
Peters-Manning follows Julie Blake and Kristin McLaughlin in leading the five-member Township Committee. She paid tribute to both of her predecessors in a phone interview with the Express last month.
“Julie Blake is one of my favorite people,” Peters-Manning said. “She did a really good job of teaching me and keeping me involved in things. I learned a lot watching. Most women in politics are lucky if they get a female mentor ever, and I’ve had two with Kristin and Julie and I’m just astounded that I’ve been able to learn from both of them.”
Neither Blake nor McLaughlin is on the committee this year. Blake opted not to run for a third term after completing her second last year, while McLaughlin stepped down from the committee this year after winning election to the Mercer County Board of Commissioners in November.
Peters-Manning, a Democrat, first became involved in Hopewell Valley politics after the 2016 elections. “I said, whatever you believe in terms of policy—Republican, Democrat — I thought the level of discourse could be better and had to be better for us to get anything done,” Peters-Manning says. “I decided I didn’t want to just complain on the sidelines. I wanted to get involved.”
At that time, she did not really know anyone involved in local politics. “I just started showing up for things, volunteering for campaigns, things like that,” she said.
She did have some experience with land-use laws from her time working as a lawyer. That experience helped get her a spot on the township’s planning board and, in 2019, she ran for the first time for township committee and won.
Starting her first term as mayor, Peters-Manning says that one of her main areas of focus is to improve communication between the township committee and the community.
“I’ve really been working hard to increase the communication with the public,” she said. “We’ve been all writing letters to various publications this year, and we’re really committed to putting out the newsletter quarterly.”
Though political discourse in America can still be said to be highly polarized and contentious, Peters-Manning says there have been times when the interactions have been productive.
“Of course you’re going to have some negative people, that’s just life,” she said. “But for example, the cannabis public forums we had were hugely civil and positive. There were people on both sides of the issue, but people said, ‘These are my opinions, this is what I think we should do,’ and we listened.”
After voters passed the state referendum allowing for the cultivation and sale of recreational marijuana in 2020, towns were more or less required to declare whether or not cannabis businesses would be allowed within their borders by last summer. At that time, the Hopewell Township Committee opted to permit business related to the cultivation of cannabis, but not retail businesses.
Last month, after hearing further to the community, the committee introduced an ordinance that would permit retail businesses as well.
“This is a great opportunity to listen to what the people want,” Peters-Manning says. “It was a wonderful experience and a wonderful collaboration with our attorneys and professionals and the public, and it was just the sort of the best of what government can be.”
She knows that affordable housing will be another issue that will be front and center this year. “Some of our big inclusionary developments will be breaking ground this year. I know that affordable housing is always controversial, but my perspective is, the settlement was done. It was all unanimous, so the only thing I have control over is time to get our community to be a welcoming place for our new neighbors,” Peters-Manning said.
Peters-Manning said whether a person is happy or unhappy with the township’s agreement to allow the building of affordable housing, current residents owe it to incoming residents to be welcoming.
“To me it’s a moral obligation to welcome new people to the neighborhood,” she said. “I think whatever people’s feelings are on these new developments, there’s a lot of good that can come from it. Affordable housing is the law of the land in New Jersey. We can talk about how it’s inefficient the way New Jersey does it, but we have what we have. It really can be a great opportunity for our community.”
The committee announced on Feb. 7 that it has been working with the Stoutsburg Sourland African-American Museum to make a list of prominent African-Americans from the Hopewell Valley to name streets after in the new neighborhoods.
“Look around Hopewell Township, you see a lot of historical street names and parks but this historical part of the community was always overlooked,” Peters-Manning said. “We have a chance now with these new neighborhoods to change that.”
Peters-Manning, 44, lives in Elm Ridge Park with husband Tomas and their children, Seamus, 14, and Conor, 11. Tomas, a native of Dublin, is a software engineer.
Peters-Manning lived in a number of cities growing up, including Cleveland and Boston. After she graduated from high school in Chicago, her family moved to the Hopewell Valley area, and she went to Brown University, where she studied psychology.She spent a year training dolphins in a research lab in Hawaii before going to Boston to attend law school and, later, working in a Boston law firm.
She met Tomas while there, and they lived there for a time before moving to Hopewell, where her parents, Deborah and James Peters, had recently opened The Cambridge School, a school for children who learn differently. Peters-Manning said they moved here in 2009 so that she could take a job at the school as general counsel. She also serves as the school’s director of finance.
As fate would have it, both of Peters-Manning’s children are dyslexic, and have been students at The Cambridge School.
“My parents had always wanted me to come get involved in the school and protect their legacy,” Peters-Manning said. “But my two kids are both dyslexic and to have come to The Cambridge School, it has been a godsend for them.”
At the Jan. 4 reorganization meeting, Michael Ruger was sworn in as deputy mayor, and Uma Purandare was also sworn in for her first term on the committee after being elected to a three-year term in November.
Also on Jan. 10, the Township Committee voted to add David Chait to its ranks. Chait succeeds former committee member and mayor Kristin McLaughlin, who was elected to the Mercer County Board of Commissioners in November.
Hopewell Township Courtney Peters-Manning, second from left, with sons Seamus and Conor and husband Tomas Manning.,
