Living in East Hanover, N.J. - Land of Light Taxes and Heavy Shopping Juan Arredondo for The New York Times WREATHED Ridgedale Avenue is one of two arteries popular with East Hanover residents as an alternative to the sometimes traffic-clogged big-box corridor on State Route 10. The upside of the commercial bustle is the low property taxes. EAST HANOVER wasn't spared much misery when the hurricane struck in late October. Trees were downed and power was out as long as two weeks. Then, once lights and heating came back on, Lisa Beck recalled, an electrical surge almost immediately sparked a fire at her neighbor's house. Mrs. Beck, who graduated from Hanover Park High School and has lived in East Hanover "my whole adult life," said the mayor, Joseph Pannullo, and a priest soon visited the neighborhood, damaged by the storm, to see if everyone was all right. "It wasn't a political thing, and it wasn't a join-my-church thing," Mrs. Beck said. It was a caring-community thing. Many residents of many towns have helped one another in the aftermath of Sandy, but Mrs. Beck believes that being a good neighbor is standard behavior in East Hanover, the Morris County township of 11,000 that is probably best known for State Route 10 - the strip with, it seems, every big-box store there is. In August Mrs. Beck and her husband, John, put their four-bedroom colonial on the market for $942,500 because their two children are grown and they want to downsize. They paid $350,000 for the house, new, in 1995. But they want to stay in the area. To Mrs. Beck, East Hanover feels more like a small town than a suburb. Flavia and John Viana had friends who lived here, and in May they bought a three-bedroom two-bath renovated bilevel on a half-acre lot for $475,000. They moved from Newark with their 4-year-old daughter, who is in prekindergarten, because the price was right and public schools are considered good. Then along came Hurricane Sandy. "I was really pleased with the way the community took care of everything every day," Ms. Viana said. That made me feel better about our purchase. For a small town, they really do a lot for their residents. A shelter was set up at East Hanover Middle School after the hurricane and stayed open until power was restored to every township resident, Mayor Pannullo said. He provided updates to residents who had phone service. Then he drove around in a fire truck or police cruiser, using a bullhorn to deliver updates. "It's a little town," he said, "so you get to know everybody." The township, he is pleased to say, has endured the economic downturn without laying off employees. Mr. Pannullo, who moved to East Hanover in 1969 to set up a pest control business from which he is now retired, is one year into his second four-year term as mayor. In two of those years, there has been no tax increase. A lot has changed since he moved into a small Cape (with a septic tank and no gas service) in a development across from a farm. Although the population had tripled from 1950, the 1970 census still counted only 7,734 residents. East Hanover was then a destination, in a manner of speaking: it had three cemeteries on Ridgedale Avenue, the largest two of which (Gate of Heaven and Restland Memorial Park) took over farms during the Depression. An article in The New York Times on May 28, 1972, pointed out that the dead outnumbered the living in East Hanover, 9 to 1. But Interstate 280 was being built through the northeast part of town, with two local exits. Mayor Pannullo said of the road, finished in 1973, "Once that opened up, it just opened up the gates." State Route 10 has a Costco, a Marshalls, a Best Buy, a Dick's Sporting Goods outlet, a Home Depot, a Party City, a Target, a Michaels, and a Bed Bath and Beyond. A bowling alley hunches next to a cineplex. Name a chain restaurant, and you can probably find it along Route 10. But the commercial area accounts for only the southern third of this eight-square-mile township 25 miles west of New York. Its presence - and that of Novartis, the pharmaceutical company, and Mondelez International, formerly Kraft - has helped keep taxes low.