\u201cThere was a big election in in Long Beach in 1979,\u201d former City Councilman Roy Tepper recalled. \u201cA coalition government with Republicans and Democrats was elected. The city was at a low point then. But in January of 1980, when they took office, everything really changed when they hired Ed as city manager.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tepper was referring to Ed Eaton, who went on to serve as city manager<\/a> for nearly 25 years in three separate terms, from 1980 to 1999, briefly in 2001, and once more from 2006 until he retired in 2008.<\/p>\n Eaton died on July 16 at age 83, after a long illness.<\/p>\n In a 2015 interview<\/a> with the Herald, Eaton described the early 1980s as the period of his career he was most proud of. \u201cTo me, it was the best of times,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause [for] four or five years there, all of the efforts were going toward saving the town, and not party politics.\u201d<\/p>\n When he first became city manager, Long Beach was in the midst of a significant financial crisis that had begun over a decade earlier. In 1980 the city earned all of $20,000 on its investments. Just two years later, after Eaton helped to implement a range of fiscal and real estate policies, as well as more stringent code enforcement, the city\u2019s annual earnings reached $500,000.<\/p>\n \u201cHis time as a city manager was a really good time for Long Beach,\u201d current City Council President Brendan Finn<\/a> said of Eaton. \u201cHe saw Long Beach through some difficult times. We’ve always had our economic problems, and I think that he was a really good custodian of Long Beach. He took good care of us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEd was a hands-on city manager,\u201d said Tepper, who served on the 1979 council that hired Eaton. \u201cHe brought people together, put politics aside and helped save our city.\u201d Tepper and Eaton remained friends in the ensuing decades, spending time together virtually every week. When Tepper served as a city judge, he officiated Eaton\u2019s 2006 marriage to Carolyn Roganti. (Carolyn Eaton died in 2024.)<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll always be grateful to have served alongside of him and called him my friend,\u201d Tepper, 81, said. \u201cEverything Ed did when he was city manager \u2014 all those years led to the resurgence of prosperity and making Long Beach the beautiful place that it is now.\u201d<\/p>\n One result of Eaton\u2019s work is used daily by hundreds of residents and out-of-towners alike: the city\u2019s Long Island Rail Road<\/a> station, which was renovated in the 1980s after Eaton reached out to then Sen. Alfonse D\u2019Amato for grant assistance. Eaton was also instrumental in keeping the Waldbaum\u2019s supermarket in the city \u2014 at the time, one of the last big-name chain stores in the area \u2014 by incentivizing its relocation in 1983 from a small shopping strip on East Park Avenue near Long Beach Boulevard to the large East Park Avenue shopping center adjacent to the train station, where it remained until it shut down in 2015, replaced by Stop & Shop.<\/p>\n