City Council Approves Transfer of Line Items

Hoboken City Council approved the transfer of $1,016,712 in line items in the 2010 fiscal year budget. The 6-3 vote—with Council members Michael Russo, Beth Mason and Theresa Castellano voting against—was supposed to take place during last week's council meeting, but was tabled.

On Friday Mayor Dawn Zimmer called for the special meeting to vote on the line items after all. 

The vote comes two days before Zimmer is scheduled to appear before the Local Finance Board in Trenton to ask for fiscal independence. It's likely that the Board will decide if City Council is fit to govern by itself and whether or not to remove Hoboken from under the State's supervision.

It's expected that the Local Finance Board will decide to remove Fiscal Monitor Judy Tripodi, who is set to leave at the end of this week.

Arch Liston, the City's new Business Administrator, was hired last month. 

Hoboken resident Lane Bajardi spoke during the public portion of the sparsely attended meeting, and expressed skepticism.   

"The Mayor has a date with the local finance board in a few days," Bajardi said, insinuating that passing the line items needed to happen before the Board would vote on Hoboken's independence. 

"If there's a concern the local finance board may not give control back to the city of Hoboken because we failed to approve line item transfers," said Fourth Ward Councilman Michael Lenz, "in my mind it's a good reason to hold a special meeting."

Russo said that while he'd probably agree with most of money being transferred from one line to the other, he didn't like the way the meeting was scheduled. He said he had requested documents to inform himself on the matter, which he didn't see until right before the yesterday night's meeting.

"The level of feigned outrage at this table would be ridiculous if it wasn't so sad," Lenz said in response to Russo. Lenz proceeded to say that he called Russo immediately after finding out about this meeting, as well as a special meeting held over the weekend. 

Lenz explained also that moving money from one line item to another, does not increase the budget. "It's city business," he said. "They're not emergency appropriations." 

Former Hoboken Finance Director Nick Trasente was present to answer the Council members' questions. Trasente called moving the line items "preventive rather than reactive." From a financial planning point of view, he said, it made more sense to transfer the line items now. 

Among the money that was moved was $175,000 which was budgeted for the purchase of new police vehicles. This will not happen before the end of the fiscal year on June 30, Trasente predicted. 

First Ward Councilwoman Castellano said this reminded her of the Roberts Administration. She explained that she voted against these type of things then, and she will do so now. 

Councilwoman-at-Large Carol Marsh did not agree with the comparison between Roberts and Zimmer. 

"Apples, oranges, kumquats and zebras," she said, "let's vote."

The scheduled executive session during which the Council was supposed to discuss police labor contract negotiations was canceled.