New Leadership For Mendham Township Committee Seats

Jordan Orlins and Tom Baio Want Lower Taxes, Lower Debt and the Same Idyllic Mendham for Future Generations

MENDHAM TOWNSHIP – Jordan Orlins (52) and Tom Baio (54), long time Mendham residents and experienced businessmen, are running for two seats on the Mendham Township Committee.

“Mendham has always been Mayberry to me,” said Orlins referring to The Andy Griffith Show reruns popular in his youth.  “My wife, Gina, and I joined the Mendham Golf and Tennis Club in 2002 while we still lived in New York City.  We loved visiting our family here and knew we would move to Mendham one day, it was that idyllic.”  That day came in 2007 when the Harvard educated fund manager moved his family from the upper east side of Manhattan to the bucolic Oak Knoll neighborhood on the west side of Mendham.  Orlins now serves as President of the forty-five year old Oak Knoll Property Owners Association (OKPOA) while also serving Mendham Township on the Finance Committee.  Orlins initiated a multi-year beautification program in Oak Knoll which is paying dividends.  “Oak Knoll is a microcosm of the rest of Mendham, our property values are challenged.  Here in Oak Knoll we did something about it by mobilizing a POA created principally for social endeavors and putting it to work improving our marketing and our grounds.”  The program is paying dividends including street repaving, new entrance gardens and new signage, an Oak Knoll website and an Oak Knoll brochure featured at open houses.

Orlins intends to bring the same can do leadership and creative thinking to Mendham Township.  “Serving on the township Finance Committee has crystalized my belief that our residents need tax relief.  The town made progress with the shared services initiative but there is much more we can do,” Orlins said.  “For the last seven years I’ve coached youth sports with Mendham Borough moms and dads.  We are the same people with the same tax concerns and everyone I talk to, in the township and in the borough, agrees it makes sense to cooperate more openly and share services.  It will take focus and persistence but the potential for savings is enormous.”  Orlins also sees potential for savings in automating certain township administrative processes.

Orlins has engineering degrees from Boston University and Georgia Tech and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.  He applied the engineering skillset in the US Air Force during the first Gulf War.  He left the Air Force in 1994 as a decorated Captain to earn an MBA at Harvard.  Orlins then went to Bain & Company, a preeminent management consulting firm, where he specialized in corporate mergers.  He left Bain to join a NYC student financing start-up that eventually went public.  Orlins went on to start the Minuteman Investment Fund LP in 2002 and has led that partnership, in NYC and Mendham, ever since.

All three Orlins children — Madison (15), Carly (13) and Max (11) — are in Mendham Township public schools where they are active in sports, band and the honor roll.  The Orlins children are graduates of the Westmont Montessori in Mendham where Gina Orlins served as treasurer and Board Chair for many years.  Orlins’ in-laws, Robert “Bob” and Joan Scialla, have been in Mendham for thirty-three years.  Bob founded Scialla and Associates Architects here in Mendham.  He is also an officer at the Mendham Golf and Tennis Club and Bob and Joan served the Brookside Community Church for many years where Scialla Hall is named in their honor.

Tom Baio is a licensed New Jersey Architect.  He is a graduate of NYIT (B-Arch 1987) and has obtained certificates in Architecture from The University of Venice (1985) and Harvard GSD (2001).  Baio is the founder and principal architect of Thomas Baio Architect PC since 1991.  Baio has designed or been involved with nearly 3,000 structures throughout neighboring towns over the last twenty seven years.  His work has contributed broadly to the communities he has served and it has influenced the upward trajectory of property values in those same communities.

Baio has testified before numerous planning and zoning boards.  His testimony before various township committees has promoted changes in Building Ordinances and Master Plan re-writes for communities such as Livingston, Westfield, Metuchen and Millburn Township among others.

Baio and his wife, Monica, have lived in Mendham Township since 2008.  They raised three children in Mendham where they excelled in school and sports.  Their youngest Ian (19) is enrolled at The University of Arizona, their middle daughter Ariana (22) is a journalist and graduate of High Point University (May 2019).  Their oldest daughter Emily, who was born with cerebral palsy, passed away suddenly in 2012.

Baio is a former resident of Short Hills New Jersey.  “I witnessed firsthand how fiscal conservatism in municipal governance benefited the residents of Millburn and Short Hills with rising property values and a AAA bond rating,” Baio says.  Baio supports policies which bring together and engage business development, historic preservation and civic pride.  “I feel strongly that Mendham can be better and I will utilize my creative and professional skill sets to help make that happen while I serve on the Mendham Township Committee.“

Want to learn more?  Visit Orlins and Baio at www.orlinsandbaioformendham.com.