Four New Mayors Begin to Serve: Stone Harbor – Davies-Dunhour

STONE HARBOR – On Nov. 8, 2016, Stone Harbor elected its first new mayor in two decades. 
Judith Davies-Dunhour, a seven-year member of Borough Council and 25-year veteran of the borough police department, assumed her new responsibilities at the reorganization meeting in early January.
Davies-Dunhour, “Judy,” as she is called by just about everyone, ran a campaign promising greater openness and transparency in government, and called for increased public involvement in municipal governance. Now she is working to deliver on that vision.
We met recently in the mayor’s office at the municipal building and talked about her background, her decision to challenge 20-year mayor Suzanne Walters in 2016 and the challenges facing the borough.
Davies-Dunhour is, in some ways, a product of the intertwined network of personal relationships that is not uncommon in this county of less than 100,000 permanent residents.
Davies-Dunhour already had strong ties to the area when her father left Stone Harbor to pursue career opportunities. The family moved back when Judy was 6 months old, this time to the Avalon side of Seven Mile Island.
Her lifelong residency on Seven-Mile Island began at that early age. She grew up in Avalon with her sister and five brothers.
A continuous Roman Catholic education followed as Davies-Dunhour attended St. Joseph Catholic School in Sea Isle City, followed by Wildwood Catholic High School and then the University of Scranton, a Jesuit institution, where she received her degree in Criminal Justice in 1984. 
During time home from college, Davies-Dunhour worked as a summer dispatcher. Her efforts were rewarded following graduation when she started as a full-time dispatcher on Labor Day 1984.
The late Stone Harbor Chief of Police William Donohue, who was also godfather to the young Davies-Dunhour, spoke to her about moving from dispatch to police officer.
As Davies-Dunhour said, “This is one of the only jobs you can test drive.” She took a chance as what islanders have always called a “summer cop” in 1986. By November of that year, she had joined the department as a full-time officer.
These were days when female police officers were uncommon. Only two that Davies Dunhour could recall had served before her in Stone Harbor.
New training requirements in 1986 extended the period that newly-hired officers had to be away from the department leading to some growth in total staffing just to ensure adequate coverage, especially during the season.
Davies-Dunhour’s career spanned 25 years “to the day,” she said. Armed with her vested pension, Davies-Dunhour left the department in 2009.
A pet lover most of her life, Davies-Dunhour moved from police officer to her new job as manager of the Cape May County Animal Shelter. While a police officer, Davies-Dunhour had volunteered at the shelter that had opened to great fanfare in August 2004. She had moved up to volunteer coordinator and helped set up the shelter’s program with the new PetSmart store in Rio Grande.
In 2004, the county shelter was established to more efficiently and humanely deal with animal control issues. By 2009, growing pains at the shelter led to high euthanasia rates.
Sherriff Gary Schaffer, to whom the shelter reports, turned to volunteer Davies-Dunhour, recently free of her full-time responsibilities to the police department, and convinced her, “kicking and screaming” as she remembers it, to take the job.
What Schaffer wanted when he turned to Davies-Dunhour, and what many have wanted before and since, is her skills in managing people. What Davies-Dunhour knew she did not have as this new challenge emerged was experience running an animal shelter.
She hired Leslie Riedel for those skills. The partnership has produced a very successful shelter program in the county.
While one would think Davies-Dunhour had enough on her plate in 2009, a new group arrived to ask her to take on yet more.
Julian Miraglia, then head of the Stone Harbor Republican organization, asked Davies-Dunhour to run for council. Considering the new shelter job, she turned him down.
Intervention by Michael Donohue, son of her godfather, county Republican chairman, and party organizer, along with Barry Mastrangelo, who ironically just lost his council seat last year to a slate headed by Davies-Dunhour, finally convinced her to run.
She was successful in that election and then was reelected twice running unopposed. 
It added up to seven years on council. At various times this has led her to chair the Beach, Recreation, and Tourism Committee and the Public Safety Committee while also serving on the Utilities Committee. These engagements provided a broad view of the challenges facing the borough.
As late as the beginning of 2016, Davies-Dunhour, whose term on council would not expire until 2018, says “The mayor’s job was not on my radar.”
A series of actions in the borough, including but not limited to the controversial Atlantic City Electric project, led Davies-Dunhour to be unsatisfied with what she saw as a closed and somewhat opaque borough government.
She thought the process of moving issues through closed committee meetings before briefly taking them to open council session for a vote, did not encourage public involvement.
She frowned at meetings that had been held on issues without her knowledge or participation even though she was a sitting council member.
Issues like the new Stone Harbor Library debated in one form or another for over a decade, and the plans for a new police building that she felt were too expansive, did not seem to get the kind of open discussion and resolution she thought they deserved.
When the information about early meetings with Atlantic City Electric came up attended by only some members of borough government, it seemed to fit an uncomfortable pattern.
Teaming with Mantura Gallagher and newly-sworn Council member Charles Krafczek, she won the Republican primary nomination for mayor.
In heavily Republican Stone Harbor that is the election.
In November it was confirmed in the general election. In January, before a standing-room-only crowd, many drawn because they supported her candidacy, Davies-Dunhour became the borough’s 13th mayor.
She speaks with passion about wanting to bring greater transparency and accessibility to local government and about wanting to increase public participation in borough affairs.
She sits in the mayor’s office and ran with and saw elected her preferred slate. The challenge now is to move the vision to reality.
If energy is the key to success, Davies-Dunhour has a leg up. One cannot help but notice that she is perpetually on the move. She always seems to be expending energy without running out of it.
A past fitness instructor at the Police Academy, Davies-Dunhour is, among her many current roles, also a part-time spin instructor at Island Aerobics in Avalon.
Davies-Dunhour and her husband Douglas reside on 95th Street. One can see her home from the windows in the mayor’s office.
Less than a month in office, Davies-Dunhour seems energized by the challenge of being mayor of a borough she loves.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.