Year: 2014

News

Mayor Zimmer refuses to back down on Gov. Christie holding Hoboken Sandy aid hostage claim

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading
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In a national story escalating the war of words in the battle over Hurricane Sandy aid, Mayor Dawn Zimmer didn’t back down to challenges on her TV interview Saturday saying the city of Hoboken had been held hostage on hurricane relief for a proposed development by a private developer, the Rockefeller group.

Appearing on CNN with Candy Crowley,  the mayor fighting vocal exhaustion stood her ground saying to the question of why now,  “I didn’t think anyone would believe me.” Read More...

News

GOV. CHRISTIE BLOCKBUSTER: MAYOR ZIMMER ALLEGES SANDY AID TIED TO ROCKEFELLER DEVELOPMENT

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading
 




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In a blockbuster interview this morning on MSNBC, Mayor Dawn Zimmer accused the Christie Administration of attempting to trade on assistance to Hoboken for approval of a massive potentially billion dollar development by the Rockefeller Group.

The Mayor spoke of a meeting with Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno where she was flatly told she needed to approve a massive development by the Rockefeller Group and if she didn’t, Sandy aid to Hoboken would not be forthcoming.

The mayor alleged the Lt. Gov. told her this in-person and it would be denied if she mentioned it publicly. Read More...

News

Hoboken political jockeying and ode to an Avenger

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading
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Competition especially of the political kind is lively fare in the Mile Square and Ft. Lee may have traffic and snow cones near a bridge come and go making some waves but Hobokenites know when its political drama, you can’t beat this town especially since the Sopranos departed HBO leaving the real crime entertainment here the only game in town.

Quite a bit swirling in the air including the weights of justice.  That inevitable day comes closer as the seconds go by but the truth is forcing its way in no matter how many political operatives (and lawyers) desperately try to stop it.  But this is not a column about Beth Mason. Read More...

News

City: Flood Protection Plan meeting set for next Thursday

by SmartyJones3 Min Reading
Agency Logo

City of Hoboken
   

Community: Community Invited to Flood Protection Plan Public Meeting

** International Design Firms’ Strategy to Protect Hoboken a Finalist in Regional Resiliency Design Competition **

The Hoboken community is invited to a public meeting to learn more about a strategy to protect Hoboken from flooding. The meeting will take place on Thursday, January 23rd at 7:00pm at the Multi Service Center, located at 124 Grand Street. Refreshments will be served.

“Through this design competition, we have a unique opportunity to protect Hoboken from flooding with the help of federal funding,” said Mayor Dawn Zimmer. “It’s important for our community to understand this project and provide their feedback. Ultimately, support from the community will enhance Hoboken’s chances for winning the competition and receiving federal funding to help protect us from flooding.”

The public meetings are a part of the Rebuild by Design competition, an initiative of President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The City of Hoboken is working with a multi-disciplinary team of experts to develop a comprehensive strategy to protect the community from all kinds of flooding. Led by architects and urban designers, OMA, and Director Shohei Shigematsu, the team brings together the water management and engineering expertise of Royal HaskoningDHV, the landscape and land-use planning experience of Balmori and the economic understanding of HR&A. The public meeting is a chance for our community to speak directly with these experts and learn more about this initiative.

Rebuild by Design is an unprecedented regional design competition with a goal of rebuilding areas affected by Hurricane Sandy to be more resilient, sustainable, and livable. The competition also represents a policy innovation by committing to set aside HUD Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery funding specifically to incentivize implementation of winning projects and proposals. More information on the competition is available at www.rebuildbydesign.org.

OMA’s design proposal titled “Resist, Delay, Store, Discharge: a Comprehensive Strategy for Hoboken” employs a multi-pronged approach to address Hoboken’s historic flooding challenge and increasing threats from rising seas and stronger storms. The comprehensive strategy uses both hard infrastructure and soft landscape for coastal defense (resist), recommends policies to enable the urban fabric to slow down water (delay), and includes a green circuit to trap water (store) and water pumps to support drainage (discharge).

The proposal has advanced to the third round of the competition as one of 10 finalists. Winning projects that demonstrate community support will be implemented with federal disaster recovery funds and private funding. Finalists will be selected in March 2014.

Residents are invited to learn more about the project and add their comments at www.rebuildbydesign.org/project/comprehensive-strategy.
News

Majority rights? HHA counsel Charles Daglian offers tortured non-answer

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading

At last week’s Hoboken Housing Authority, commissioner Dave Mello posed a simple question to the HHA legal counsel Charles Daglian.  Can the HHA board move to suspend the agenda?

Suspending the agenda, a common practice under public and private boards governed by Robert’s Rules of Order is done for numerous reasons: to allow public speakers, to introduce a new resolution or make changes to the existing agenda based on the (majority) will of the body.

Except here, it’s not so clear.  Daglian begins answering the question by saying, “You can not…” stops himself and begins a non-answer talking about the Chair setting the agenda for the meeting. It’s not a coherent legal reply to the question. Read More...

News

Mayor Zimmer to NJ Attorney General: ‘Investigate the Vote by Mail fraud’

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading

Office of the Mayor announces:

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Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer today called on the Hudson County Superintendent of Elections and the New Jersey Attorney General to conduct a full investigation into allegations of improprieties in Vote by Mail ballots during the November, 2013 election.

Almost 300 Vote by Mail ballots, approximately 22% of the Vote by Mail ballots cast in Hoboken, were rejected by the County Board of Elections due to a variety of concerns including signature match and undisclosed assistance. This large number of rejected ballots has led to an election challenge of the rejection of a ballot initiative proposing changes to the City’s rent control law by 122 votes.  If the Superior Court determines that some or all of the rejected ballots should have been counted, then those Vote by Mail ballots will decide the future of rent control in Hoboken. Read More...

News

Horse Sense: HHA meetings the battleground and Carmelitos latest: anti-Semitic attacks

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading

The ending to the first Hoboken Housing Authority meeting last week is a precursor of what can be anticipated: the most ugly fabrications and most foul unrestrained behavior at Hoboken public meetings in living memory.

If you thought last year with the KKK pillow case references and personal attacks on reform council members at City Council meetings was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Yesterday a letter appeared on Hoboken Patch revealing the latest fusillade of personal attacks and fabrications woven for the wider Hoboken reader on the little read AOL regional site Hoboken Patch.  (There is no Hoboken editor anymore.) Read More...

News

Mayor Zimmer and area mayors question relationship with Gov. Christie

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading

Hudson County and regional mayors are questioning their relationship with Gov. Christie in light of the media feeding frenzy over the orange cone controversial lane closures in Ft. Lee at the George Washington Bridge.

The temporary closure and ensuing added traffic has become the focus of the national media who are using the controversy to define Gov. Chris Christie, an anticipated Republican candidate for President in 2016.

Gov. Christie appeared up the hill in Union City to collect this endorsement from State Senator Brian Stack.
Christie also received an endorsement from Stack’s selected Assembly pick Carmelo Garcia (rear right).

The operative words here are Republican and President.

The feeding frenzy has reached the Hoboken mayor’s office where unsolicited media inquiries are arriving in the hunt. Read More...

News

First 2014 HHA meeting degenerates into fracas as Carmelo Garcia illegally ends proceedings

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading
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Analysis:

The end of the HHA meeting degenerated into absolute chaos when commissioner Dave Mello made a simple motion to move the February meeting date by several days to accommodate a member who wanted to attend in-person and would be out of town.

The motion was not entertained by Chairman Rob Davis and according to the video some gobble gook having nothing to do with Robert’s Rules of Order surfaced by the compromised HHA legal counsel Charles Daglian.

Seven attempts to reappoint HHA Executive Director Carmelo Garcia’s choice for the legal counsel contract have failed.  One vote initially “passing” last February was deemed legally flawed by Housing & Urban Development.) Dagalian has remained as a contractual holdover. Read More...

News

Changing of the Old Guard in the HHA

by SmartyJones1 Min Reading

Last night, two new HHA members were sworn-in, beginning a new day and some would hope a new light shinning on the fiduciary necessities of that agency.

It is the last and third largest public budget in the City of Hoboken spared reform financial oversight.
As MSV has reported the most thorough coverage on the Hoboken Housing Authority in the last year or more, the changes are not insignificant.

As readers here well know, the attempt to merely rotate professionals in auditing and legal counsel under former chair Jake Stuiver led to World War III and a level of acrimony, politics of personal destruction and depraved indifference to decency not seen since the Beth Mason SLAPP. Read More...