Qualifications/Experience
Colin Hickey was first appointed to the Bedminster Township Committee in August of 2017, elected to a full three-year term later that year and reelected in both 2020 and 2023. Previously, Colin was the Chair of the Environmental Commission and a member of the Master Plan Review Committee. He is currently the liaison to the Utilities Committee, Board of Health and Land Use Board, and also serves on the Farmers Market Committee, Agricultural Advisory Committee and on the Board of the Clarence Dillon Public Library.
Involvement in Community
Thirty four year resident of Bedminster, including 15 in The Hills. First appointed to the Bedminster Environmental Commission in 2014, Colin has a long track record of service to the community. Read more about it here: https://www.colinhickey.com/accomplishments
Slogan
Making Government Work for You
We have been suffering from a public service infrastructure that hasn’t been properly maintained or upgraded in years, causing a significant disruption to the lives of our residents and potentially impacting the values of our homes. As a Township Committee, we have the ability to amplify the voices of our residents and use the swing weight of local government to get results. For our electric provider, JCP&L, that means hosting public forums to raise concerns, as well as holding the utility responsible for maintaining and upgrading its local infrastructure. Simultaneously, we are working with multiple cable companies, including our current service provider, Optimum, to upgrade subscribers to fiber throughout our community.
Local government and residents should be THE deciding factor regarding any potential data center development in ANY municipality. While they may provide tax relief and generate some jobs, these benefits are largely outweighed by the excessive power and water consumption posed by their operation. In addition, the need for business continuity and peak load power requires the installation of back-up generators, which impose a significant noise burden on the surrounding community. It is for these reasons that I am fully opposed to any data center development in Bedminster.
Low taxes and preventing overdevelopment are the two factors that work hand-in-hand in preserving Bedminster. In the case of the former, that means ensuring that we are utilizing our limited tax dollars wisely, and not pursuing wasteful or redundant spending. It also implies carefully maintaining the taxes collected from businesses, which help to alleviate the tax burden on our residents. While developers would love to pursue expansion strategies at the expense of our farms and open space, the quality-of-life impact would certainly outweigh any potential tax benefit. As a result, we need to hold the line by engaging in careful land management and planning work with our partners at the state and county level to make sure Bedminster remains an ideal place to live, work and play.
Bedminster has taken all steps to be fully compliant with our fourth-round affordable housing obligations. A copy of the finalized consent order, dated April 15, 2026, can be found at https://content.campaignpartner.net/images/89600/Bedminster_-_Filed_Consent_Order_Final_Compliance_Certification_4.15.26.pdf. In addition, Bedminster maintains hundreds of affordable housing credits that can be applied to future rounds, the first of which is not anticipated until 2035.
Qualifications/Experience
Julia is retired from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where she was the Region 2 Geospatial Coordinator, responsible for data analysis of both natural and manmade threats and disasters. Prior to joining FEMA, she consulted in the fields of public safety, community planning, and environmental analysis for over 25 years. Her career has given her a background in many of the areas that will prove important in Bedminster in the coming years – public safety communication systems and data, environmental issues that will affect our power and communications infrastructures, community planning, and emergency response.
Involvement in Community
Julia O’Brien has lived in Bedminster since 2021, and has lived in New Jersey since 1989. Julia has been the chair of the Bedminster Democratic Committee since November 2023. She is a regular attendee of Bedminster Township Committee meetings. A resident of the Bedminster Hills, she serves on the HOA Board for Signal Point, and has been a lifetime volunteer and activist for women’s rights, environmental responsibility, and community organizations wherever she has lived.
Slogan
Put Bedminster First
Bedminster sits at the confluence of several major highways – Interstates 287 and 78, and US Routes 202 and 206. Traffic to and through Bedminster can be heavy, particularly during rush hour. Our volunteer fire companies are often busy responding to accidents on those highways. At the same time, we have empty storefronts, and in some cases empty office buildings, particularly post-COVID. One of our challenges will be attracting new businesses to our Township without creating new traffic issues. As we market Bedminster to new businesses, we should be looking for those that can use existing facilities and focus on types of businesses with flexible business hours.
At this point in time, with what we know about energy and water consumption of data centers, I feel local governments should require environmental impact studies before approval of any data centers. There should be no financial incentives to the companies that build them, as they rarely result in benefits to communities to offset those incentives. They should be required to generate sufficient power internally, and to utilize technology that limits the amount of water for cooling required. This technology all exists, but it is more expensive. For sustainability, they must be required to adhere to standards that keep communities safe without shouldering the financial burden of these centers.
Bedminster is a town in two parts. The eastern part of town, The Hills, is a designed community with dense housing surrounded by many recreational facilities including tennis, pickleball and basketball courts, pools, and walking trails. The western part of town is more rural, with horse farms and beautiful estates. It is very important to preserve the open space we all enjoy and keep the agricultural land in agriculture.
Bedminster has been careful to meet its affordable housing obligation since the development of The Hills. We have four neighborhoods which were built specifically to be all or partial affordable housing units. Since 2008 each sale of an affordable unit has included a renewal of the restriction on the deed, which helps maintain our numbers. Our problem is more that the oversight of the Affordable Housing program, beyond maintenance of numbers, lacks appropriate oversight. We need to return to having an Affordable Housing Executive Board that oversees the sizeable Affordable Housing Trust Fund and the contracted agent.
