Democrat candidate, Robert "Bob" Uhrik is ahead of Independent candidate Thomas Bremner by 16 votes as of Wednesday morning.
The Somerset County clerk still has 79 absentee and six provisional votes to count, so it is too soon to declare a winner, according to Rocky Hill Councilman and candidate Uhrik.
"It was good there was a contest," Uhrik said.
In a small borough such as Rocky Hill, which only has about 600 residents, it is sometimes difficult to field enough candidates for the five-member town council plus one mayor. As it turns out, Uhrik and Bremner, who is president of the Rocky Hill First Aid Squad, attend the same church!
Both candidates are members at Trinity Episcopal Church of Rocky Hill. "This tempers things," Uhrik says. "We are not going to be trashing each other while under the eyes of God! We'd be in purgatory."
Bremner, who has previously served as a Rocky Hill borough councilman and as council president, was not available for comment on Wednesday morning.
He is known in town for his countless hours of volunteer work. He earned an MBA at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio and is married to Karen Mroz-Bremner, PhD, who works for Integra Life Science in Plainsboro in business development. They have a daughter, Rose, who is a senior at Montgomery High School.
Uhrik is a borough councilman, re-elected to a three-year-term in 2017. He is also a senior environmental health specialist for the South Brunswick Health Department, where he has worked since 1981. He is a past president of the New Jersey Environmental Health Association; and an NEHA technical advisor on Radon / Radiation.
Uhrik moved to Rocky Hill about 16 years ago. He earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental biology from Rutgers. Incidentally, he is a certified “Community Noise Enforcement” agent according to his LinkedIn page. He is married to former Rocky Hill Councilwoman Eileen Uhrik and they have a daughter, Rebecca, who is a student at Stockton State University.
In addition to the race for mayor, two new committee members were elected in an non-contested race.
Independent candidate Connie Hall received 192 votes and Independent canidated Irene Battaglia received 203 votes.
Battaglia — a civil engineer who plays viola and piano — currently serves on Rocky Hill borough council, having been appointed to fill a vacated seat on town council in March. She previously served on the Rocky Hill Planning Board for about three years.
After earning her engineering degree from Lehigh University, she obtained a master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Battaglia lives with her husband, Devon, who is employed by the Princeton Plasma Physics
Lab, and their two children, Aldon, 8, who is in the third grade, and Claire, 5, who is in kindergarten.
Hallman, a social worker by trade, has lived in Rocky Hill for almost 20 years. She served on Rocky Hill borough council for two terms, from 2003 to 2005 and again from 2013 to 2015. Her husband, Rutgers professor William Hallman, has also served on borough council in the past. They have raised three children: William, Stewart, and Eileen (who painted the bright blue “Rocky Hill Rock” behind borough hall). Connie earned her undergraduate degree at Juniata College, and two master’s degrees from the University of South Carolina, in social work and public policy.
