Council Minority Once Again Shows They Don’t care about Taxpayers Or City Employees

Last week there was an ordinance to provide our hardworking fighters with terminal pay that they have earned. Again (and again) Theresa Castellano, Beth Mason, Michael Russo and Tim Occhipinti aka MORTe failed to do their sworn civic duty and refused to show up. My guess is they were too afraid to face the firefighters and Hoboken’s taxpayers.

With approximately 200 employees in our police and fire units, 25 represents 1 in 8, making the number extremely high. The state of NJ specifically has a recommendation for this scenario. The state permits NJ towns to bond and spread the cost over 5 years. This would ease the annual tax burden, preventing a one year spike, something that MORTe apparently desires.

The compromise to use our surplus may work out, but it has been depleted by Sandy. This means that if something unforeseen occurs an unnecessary tax rise may happen. I hope it does not, but it is fiscally unwise to take any chances, and does not absolve MORTe from taking blame if it occurs.

This is far from the first time the fiscal incompetents have attempted to harm Hoboken. Although the list is too long they played the same game of chicken with our hospital, HUMC, our lawyers, our Corporate Counsel, Beth Mason lying about the cash surplus and of course taxpayers when they attempted to zero out the surplus. Luckily they proved to mathematically challenged as they couldn’t add their numbers correctly on the budget and it was rejected by the NJ DLGS.

There is a constant battle over end of year transfers. No one can budget to the penny. There are always some items that come in over/below the original estimate. In every other town these transfers are routine, but not in Hoboken. It took the very unusual step for Thomas Neff, head of NJ DLGS to write a letter of rebuke aimed squarely at MORTe on this matter.

On legal matters Theresa Castellano spoke of the Nueman Leather case before it was adjudicated and as stated above refused to pay lawyers that were defending the City of Hoboken. They also ignore the string of wins or pushes on the last 10 or so legal cases.

When it came time to repave 3 of Hoboken major arteries they voted it down despite having 15 members of our public showing 100% support. Then Tim Occhipinti complained about potholes on Washington St after he voted no on repaving it. The minority blocked a prudent refinancing of the Midtown garage, forcing taxpayers to shell out almost $5 million and then Tim denied that he starved the Parking department of funds. They voted down exposing Belgian Blocks which would not only beautify the streets but last 10X longer than a paved road. They failed to upgrade our HOP buses keeping them overcrowded, subject to breakdowns and costly repairs and keeping them non ADA compliant. They held up new equipment for our Environmental department even though they were rusted out and subject to constant expensive repairs. Ditto for our police and fire department’s infrastructure.

Now that it is over I hope it will work out for the best, but this is no way govern prudently.