If you haven't been paying attention to the Hoboken tax situation, some bad news to report. Judy Tripodi was good enough to make an error for all of us. Oh, whoops, she forgot to report a 4.2 million debt that the city owed to the state. Mayor Roberts introduced a plan to let 25 municipal employees retire early, which was designed to save the city money...until later we found out this was basically illegal because those that retired drew their pension and the state of NJ flipped out and slapped the city with a 4.2 million bill.
Great!
So who gets to clean up this mess? Mayor Zimmer.
I'm not happy about the tax increase but it is clear to me that there are just a ton of people in Hoboken who royally screwed the rest of us with their mismanagement. But, i'm certainly glad that we have people like Dawn Zimmer, Ravi Bhalla, Dave Mello and Carol Marsh in office. Could you imagine a bunch of "the same old same old" in office with this mess? No doubt it would only get worse, not better.
I certainly feel for Mayor Zimmer in this situation, she promised a 25% cut in taxes based on what was given to her by Judy Tripodi, our fiscal monitor. Heck, everyone was misled. Beth Mason, who was a candidate at the time, she promised a 25% tax decrease also. If you listened to Frank Raia, he was very vague about how exactly he would do anything about fixing the budget except "he wouldn't VOTE for a tax increase". Maybe we should have all voted for Frank, since he didn't make false promises.
I don't believe that this was not some calculated plan, but the City of Hoboken inheriting the problems of the past. I'm a tax payer. I'll gladly pay my taxes to fix this mess and hope to put people in place NOW that our future taxpayers don't have to bear our burdens. Plus, I think a lot of people in recent years have been getting more and more involved in business at City Hall. I like that and glad there are websites out there up reporting the local, unbiased political news.
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