It is much worse than setting off a storm. The Old Guard majority council members have no less than lit the fuse on an inevitable financial meltdown which guarantees a huge tax increase with little or no warning when the other shoe drops on unscheduled but predictable lump sum payments are needed. We don't know exactly when, but we do know it is inevitable.

It is ridiculous and destructive to have lame duck council meetings, seeing as this group of power-mad irresponsible schemers is using that window to cripple the municipality for political reasons. The schedule must be changed to disallow such lame duck meetings.

Anthony - the fiscal monitor REQUIRED the city raise that money and keep it in surplus, not the politicians. And she did that b/c she had no idea what the true position of the city was b/c the previous mayor had so screwed up the budget and misspent money that they weren't sure how much he had overspent. And did you read the budget presentation? There is no $25mm in cash lying around and the budget already anticipated most of the surplus would be used to cover anticipated expenses in this current fiscal year. So now you are going to get big reduction in taxes this quarter and a massive tax increase next quarter when the city needs the money. Mason is an idiot, remember that when you get a 40% tax hike in a few months.

As for how long it takes to negotiate w/ the FD, I am sure it would go quick if the mayor caved into the FD and gave them everything they wanted. Would that satisfy you? I think not.

ANTHONY- the reason why it is taking so long is the city is praying that the gov. comes up with a plan that would save them the embarassment of being hardheaded and costing the taxpayer so much money by stalling- the fd is in abritration with the city and the city is not cooperating with either the fire union nor the abritrator they are acting like BETHRUSSO- and for that REDRIDER765 misinformed commentor some of those comments are true but when it comes to acting like they know what the fd wants or is entitled to THAT REDRIDER PERSON HAS NO CLUE that comment of the city cave into the fd and give them want they want is just another person speaking on a subject they have no i mean no knowledge of whatsovever REDRIDER STICK TO THE POLITIC PART OF YOUR COMMENTS AND LEAVE THE FD NEGOTIONS TO THE PROFESSIONALS WOULD THAT SATISFY YOU? I THINK NOT......

Retro pay goes back a few years, to when the last contract ended.

If the city needs to do a repeat of 2009 (and it will), it will because you decided a short term cut in your taxes was more important than making sure the city could pay its bills over the long term. We have tax refunds, retro pay, retirements and a whole host of other items that surplus was going to cover. No surplus means no money to pay for those items. So you will get a very very short term tax cut now then in a few months you get your tax increase. And you will have nobody to be upset with except yourself b/w you have been warned.

Anthony said: "I simply do not agree that that extra money should have been used to cover 2010 expenses..."

Anthony, you are an utter fool and apparently quite proud of it also. Which part of retro-pay don't you understand? Retro-pay will not be a 2010 expense but represents compensation that was earned in past years and therefore should be paid by the money that was collected in the past and kept in reserve for precisely this purpose. Why should somebody who buys a condo in Hoboken in July 2011 have to pay increased taxes so that the city can pay compensation for the HFD earned in 2008, 2009 and 2010?

HR - All Anthony cares about is his next tax bill. He will applaud Mason for giving him a cut and then blast Zimmer for raising taxes the following periods even though at the end of the day every dollar in tax cuts Mason delivers to him this quarter will REQUIRE that same dollar be given back a few months later. It is just this sort of short term and narrow minded mentality that let Roberts get away w/ screwing up the city finances so spectacularly.

Hey Greg you got blown out in your election bid. They public didn't buy what you were selling. Now go back to your hateful existance as a smear merchant and stfu. No one wants to hear from you anymore. Anyone with half a brain can see you got your @ss handed to you in the election. You tried to sell Lincoln loggs but people saw you for the turd that you are.

Well for starters, the resolution on the table was for a 0% surplus. Maybe the man should have written one and submitted it if he really believed in a 1.5% surplus and maybe he shouldn't have voted in favor of completely zeroing it out. Mason, Occhipinti and Giachi all at one time or another agreed that some level of surplus was prudent and all voted to completely deplete it down to 0 when it was time to vote on the matter. Personally I think none were sincere in preserving the surplus b/c when it mattered, they all voted for no surplus at all. What matters the most is what they actually do, not the "noises" they make before the vote.

What does this have to do with the reform council members? Giacchi and his crew had 5 votes for whatever they wanted to do. If he had said I think zero is irresponsible I can't support anything less than 1.5% (which is already irresponsible and Giacchi's email demonstrates he knows that) then his allies would have passed 1.5%. Giacchi and company did what they did because they chose to. Trying to blaming the reformers for your own irresponsible vote is pretty pathetic.

I dont think Giacchi wanted to be reelected.

Glad to see one less politican whose health care we are footing the bill for gone! Tony when will you be giving up your taxpayer funded healthcare from North Hudson Sewer Authority? And wasn't Giacchi your treasurer when you ran for office with Dave Roberts and the backing of the HCDO?

Maybe Giacchi will be Ruben Ramos' treasurer when he beats Dawn Zimmer in two years!

Call that kettle black Tony, you want to talk about bigoted bloggers? Look at your own post. Dawn Zimmer got elected in 2007 because of the HCDO. Maybe you don't know all the details because you walked out on the campaign when Lenz wouldn't let you into the brain trust and told you to go hand out cards on the corner, but its the truth. Remember, when Carol Marsh (the one you ran with in 2005 while she was hanging out at Paul Byrne's house all the time, speaking of FBI targets)was running for Assembly on the HCDO ticket? With triple-dipper Sal Vega, and Juan Perez, the guy who flipped to run as a Republican last year (oh yeah, and was out campaigning with "Democrat" Ravi Bhalla this week)? The Dawn Zimmer who let an election be overturned rather than go to court and have her dirt aired publicly because the people she asked to lie on the stand said no? The Dawn Zimmer who promised over and over again a 25% tax cut that she now opposes because she wanted to hold the money until right before the 2013 election and give the tax cut then ? The HCDO financed and staffed Zimmer and Cunningham's run-offs, obviously before they knew she was going to become the biggest Republican cheerleader in Hudson County, check ELEC. There are plenty of arguments that you people could make that might have some legitimacy, so why do you try so hard to find the ones that are so blatantly hypocritical? Write some new lines, you self-centered ego maniac, or go drip with contempt elsewhere.

Tony you were supported by the HCDO in 2001! Bernie Kenny and Dave Roberts funded your entire campaign! At least look in the mirror and realize you are cut from the same cloth as Bob Janezswki and Paul Byrne. You are nothing more than a $hit stain in Hoboken's history books.

Hey $hit Stain Tony how do you feel about Zimmer endorsing the guy who sent your heroes Bobby J and Paul Byrne to Jail?

I am sure she paid to have ads up for a long long time. She won't go away til Ricky takes away her allowance.

Mason donates her entire salary to charities around the city. What have you ever done for anyone? How is the $5k a year you get from North Hudson Sewer that justifies a $23,000 healthcare bill for the taxpayers? Go away Tony you just make it too easy for Zimmer's enemies to use you as a rebuttal to arguements. Yell at any neighbors lately for letting their dogs poop in front of the building even though they clean it up?

Mason made a big deal about not taking a slary and benefits when she tought it would do her some political good. Then she wanted her back salary and benefits back when that ploy like many of her others failed. Now her husband Richard Mason make a reportedly makes million dollars a year and takes his wife's donations salary off on his taxes.

Richard Mason spent over a million and a half dollars to buy his wife a political career so far and she still has had to sell her soul to the likes of the Russo's and Hoboken's Culture of Corruption to even stay in office.

That's an impressive reference GH. BiffyB for Mayor!

Yeah, I guess its better to just raise taxes an extra 24% three years in advance so you can claim you haven't raised taxes when you're up for re-election in 2013. Much better for the city to have the money and waste it on a politically motivated appeal of county committee candidates that was thrown out with a single line from the appellate court that could be best paraphrased as "Hey stupid, this was decided in 1980, stop wasting our time" than for taxpayers to be able to hang on to their own money, spend it if they want, invest it if they want, and then actually plan properly, appropriate money, and raise taxes by the correct amount when needed rather than keep an open tab with no accountability. Zimmer doesn't want to give the money back because she basically snuck in an 8% annual tax hike over three years, which is even more relevant now that the state has set a 2% annual cap on tax increases. It's like the Allstate car insurance accident forgiveness scam where they say they won't raise your rates because of one accident, but that's just because they already jacked everyone's rates, so anyone who gets in an accident ends up paying what they're supposed to, and everyone who doesn't is overpaying. Taxes are a zero sum game, so unless any future tax increases that the Zimmerazzi are screaming about amount to more than this tax cut, its still a reduction.

I am not sure why you picked such a despicable, anti-Semitic and disgusting screen name. But your choice renders any of your comments, as iditoic as they are on their own, irrelelvant. Why dont you just come out and call the Mayor a fucking Kike bitch. If your name is intended to be funny, it most assuredly is not. It is utterly offensive to a great many people. If your intent is to promote a bigoted platform of hate, I have faith that the people of Hoboken will see through the venom that you are trying to spew.

I am not sure why you picked such a despicable, anti-Semitic and disgusting screen name. But your choice renders any of your comments, as iditoic as they are on their own, irrelelvant. Why dont you just come out and call the Mayor a fucking Kike bitch. If your name is intended to be funny, it most assuredly is not. It is utterly offensive to a great many people. If your intent is to promote a bigoted platform of hate, I have faith that the people of Hoboken will see through the venom that you are trying to spew.

Pink hearts? Yellow moons? Orange stars? Green clovers? Blu diamonds? Purple horseshoes? The FBI is after lane's lucky charms. When Lane wears those dapper purple and green getups to coordinate with $ugar Mama Ma$on, he really does kind of look like Lucky the Leprechan.

You better watch it or Tony will accuse you of being a bigot for mentioning the guy from lucky charms and start linking dwarf ads on Craigslist!

That's nuts. Councilwoman Marsh was tremendous. Councilman Giacchi did well in the role too. One thing everyone can agree, Beth Mason as council chair is atrocious!

Too bad his legacy will only be rememebrd as the crucial vote for the terror heaped on Hoboken in the last council meeting. That was all his own chosing. It was sad to watch him vote. He knows better. He is better than that. Sad, truly sad. But he went down as the ultimate enabler. That will be his legacy.

A smart person knows when to ask questions. A smart person knows when to listen to an expert opinion. Marsh may have had to ask questions about procedure and the law but she at least knew enough to ask. More importantly, she knew enough to know when to listen.

Yet Jen Giattino won an election over a long time incubent who was backed and funded by Hobooken's Culture of Corruption that he has enabled for years.

As we have all seen Mrs. Mason's recent purchased the dazed and confused Timmy Occhipinti still stumbles around at every Council meeting to the point that Mason has to reach over and point out which line he is supposed to read on the script he was given by her consultants. She purchased Timmy's votes by wheeeling $13,400.00 plus to pay for over five hundred $40.00 "street workers" on election day and he has been repaying her by rubber stamping her every move. A clear lack of ethics being fueled by blind ambition for both Mason and Occhipinti.

FORGETABOUTIT.

Mason and the Russos have eliminated any chance of those things by elimanating the budget reserve. They have returned Hoboken's bond status to junk.

Think about it on Tuesday when they ask you to vote for their cronies.

You should ask Nino Giacchi about the pool. What deals were cut with developers while he was on the council? Were the deals Nino voted for structured in a way where the developer got what they wanted and assured the promised pools, we were promised more than one, would never be built?

Dave Roberts made a bunch of deals w/ Tarragon that was supposed to get us a pool. But when he made those deals and sold us the idea of giving Tarragon/URSA variances, he got nothing in writing requiring them to give us a pool. We got empty promises, that is it. There is no pool and there never will be a pool unless we again make a deal w/ a developer to build a pool and get it in writing (unlike how Roberts did it).

I'll be happy to correct you. Its neither a DCA requirement nor the law. Some towns do it, many do not. Including estimated increases in the annual budget, or instead maintaining sufficient surplus are both responsible ways to budget for contract retro. The Mayor made clear this was one of the reasons we needed a substantial reserve. Thanks to Mason and her union supported crew, Hoboken has neither budgeted sufficiently for retro nor maintained a surplus. The losers will be both City workers and taxpayers. The absence of a source of funds for retro and other costs will result in both layoffs and higher taxes. Maybe you should call the Council people you and your union have supported and let them no how pissed off you are that they've screwed you.

Yeah, as far as I am concerned, Russo, Mason, Occhipinti, Castellano and Giachi have made it very clear that retro pay should not be paid to the unions since they are giving all that money back to the taxpayers instead of reserving for the expected payments. They want it that way, then I say lets do it that way. YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES made that decision and if you don't like it, give them an earful. They basically told you city workers to eff off.

Friendly Fire: Usually I find that the person who starts with the insults is the one who can't keep up with the argument and loses. Insults should be a last resort. I guess your mind is as big as your dick....which doesn't say much for you.

You left off the most crucial answer to Diane's questions. Voters don't bother to inform themselves, eg, not knowing which roads are county vs city; not knowing the history of promised, not-delivered pools. And then they vote at a rate of 22% turnout as they did in the last election. This pretty much dooms reform as those with vested interests (housing and city payroll jobs) always vote as do their families. And they like Hoboken just the way it is - dumb, fat, and happy. And not voting. Now the surplus is gone. What are the chances that the 78% non-voting make a connection between that and improvements they want to see that don't happen?

Borninhobo raises a good point about unsettled contracts. With no surplus, new taxes will have to be levied to settle backpay. If you are buying this summer in Hoboken, you'll get levied new tax for an event in the past. What are the chances the dumb-fat-happy crowd will make the connection between the deadwood council - who lose the majority in 3 weeks - and the new taxes? Bet your ass they campaign on the fact that "Zimmer raised taxes".