Hoboken Mayor-elect Peter Cammarano shakes hands with opponent Dawn Zimmer after all the ballots were counted yesterday at the Hudson County Board of Elections office in Jersey City.
After a drawn-out election process, Councilman-at-Large Peter Cammarano edged out Fourth Ward Councilwoman Dawn Zimmer by 161 votes yesterday to become mayor of Hoboken.
"This election has been a long and arduous one and a very close one, but it is over," the 31-year-old Cammarano told Hoboken Now's Carly Baldwin shortly after provisional and newly found absentee ballots were tallied at county Board of Elections offices in Jersey City. "I'm satisfied with this margin of victory."
Councilwoman Beth Mason, less than a month after her candidacy for mayor failed, has asked the city to reimburse her council salary going back to January and to reinstate her salary and medical benefits going forward.
City officials confirmed yesterday that Mason requested backpay totaling $8,816, a reestablishment of her council salary - roughly $22,000 per year - and council health benefits going forward.
Mason confirmed the request after the City Council meeting on Wednesday, and said that she finally listened to all the supporters who told her she earned her salary and should take it.
A day later, the shock still hadn't worn off in the Beth Mason camp.
The councilwoman, who expected to win the Hoboken mayoral race, or at least qualify for a runoff election, finished a distant third to fellow council members Peter Cammarano and Dawn Zimmer.
"We were completely blindsided," Mason's campaign manager, Jake Stuiver, said of the 1,000-vote loss to the two candidates who will vie for City Hall in the June 9 runoff. "We had polling as late as over the weekend that still had (Mason) as the frontrunner by a significant margin, so I can't tell you how much we were taken by surprise."
Stuiver attributed Mason's loss to two things: Not building up her base and not getting Mason's message across to voters.
"This election clearly demonstrates that those are two things we didn't do well enough," said Stuiver. "And as campaign manager that's something for which I have to take responsibility."
As many expected, Hoboken will have to wait until next month for its next mayor to be chosen. Council members Dawn Zimmer and Peter Cammarano will vie in a runoff June 9 to determine who will lead the city.
None of the six candidates running gained the 50 percent-plus-one votes needed to win the election, so the two top vote-getters, Cammarano, who came in first with 3,755 votes, and Zimmer with 3,671 will face off.
Zimmer said she was shocked she got into the runoff.
"I was feeling confident, but we hadn't done recent polling. People seemed supportive, but I wasn't sure," said the Fourth Ward councilwoman.
"We have accomplished our task - we are in the runoff election," Cammarano said to his supporters, which was met with cheers of "Peter, Peter!"
Jersey Journal endorses Councilman-at-Large Peter Cammarano for mayor of Hoboken in Tuesday's election.
This newspaper considers the 31-year-old attorney at the Newark law firm of Genova, Burns and Vernoia and the 2006 statewide legal coordinator for Robert Menendez's successful U.S. Senate campaign as Hoboken's best person for stabilizing local taxes and making certain the city's land use follows its Master Plan.
This election is a seminal moment for the Mile Square City. Voters will put a face on the government that they want to guide them out of a fiscal morass that requires state control of the city's finances and has led to a 23 percent increase in municipal taxes.
A major weakness in the lame duck administration of Mayor David Roberts has been its inability to find steady revenue streams. Rather than raise taxes or cut city services, the administration has relied on one-shot gimmicks, such as the sale and lease-back of the municipal garage. Worse, this past year's budget was badly underfunded and the City Council was kept in the dark about the state of the city's fiscal health.
I moved to Hoboken when Tom Vezzetti was mayor and who like all Hoboken mayors since then, called himself a reformer. While later crushed by an unfriendly City Council, his win was due to a combination of his own energy and anger against the incumbent.
“Reformer” has long been used to appeal voters who blame Hoboken’s problems on a corrupt political machine. Unfortunately, this movement has typically been better at saying “no” than persevering to creatively fix or improve a situation. Despite the best of intentions, “reformers” continue to come and go as their “causes” shrink against traditional barriers and/or challenges.
Dawn Zimmer, who won her Council seat less than two years ago from a weak Administration backed incumbent, is one of the “reformers”. Unfortunately, during her brief tenure on the Council she has relied too heavily on reformist rhetoric while being divisive and showing herself unable to take firm stands on hard issues. For Mayor, we need someone who can deal with change rather than simply talk about change.
Beth Mason, another “reformer”, has contributed useful dollars and dialogue on issues but unfortunately her new alliance with the Russo faction raises several serious concerns about her character and judgment. To summarize:
Access to government records can be as difficult as walking a high wire across the Grand Canyon. The public’s right to know must be balanced against the government’s obligation to keep certain records confidential.
The New Jersey's Open Public Records Act (OPRA) has made releasing records easier than it once was, but the law can be confusing. The New Jersey Press Association, The Record and the Herald News are sponsoring a one-day seminar that will help people walk the OPRA tight rope.
For everyone interested in government records: • Editors & Reporters • Elected & Appointed Local Officials • Municipal Clerks* • Attorneys • Citizen Activists * This seminar has been approved by the Department of Community Affairs for 4 continuing education units (CEUs) in Records for Municipal Clerks (RMC).
U .S. Rep. Albio Sires of West New York attended the Hoboken St. Patrick's Day dinner on Feb. 22, and he brought his own leprechaun who had no pot of gold for the Mile Square City.
Yet, as transcripts of the June 6, 2008, state Local Finance Board meeting reveal, the panel's chairman and sprite, Richard Turner, who also doubles as mayor of Weehawken, had offered the Mile Square City council members something better than a pot of gold. He gave them priceless advice - approve the municipal budget already. Unfortunately for Hoboken taxpayers, it was ignored.
City Council members Beth Mason, Dawn Zimmer, Peter Cunningham, Michael Russo and Theresa Castellano were all present, according to the transcripts released by The Jersey Journal's HobokenNow blog. After reading the transcripts, you come away wondering "what were they thinking?"
Six months ago, state fiscal monitor Judy Tripodi came to Hoboken to oversee the city’s finances, in the wake of the City Council’s last-minute budget passage. Since then, she has uncovered some problems and errors in City Hall’s financial initiatives that the taxpayers may have to pay for.
As the May mayor/council election approaches and city officials jockey for attention, several city officials said last week that Tripodi may be asked by the state to extend her stay in Hoboken from August 2009 to August of 2010.
Councilwoman Beth Mason filmed meeting, but refuses to release the video
Why was Hoboken taken over by the state? For not adopting a 2008 budget by June 6, 2008. We know, we know, the state takeover of Hoboken was a while ago. But we figured everybody should be able to read the following transcripts from when several Hoboken City Council people went down to Trenton last June to speak with the Department of Community Affairs regarding Hoboken's budget mess.
In 2005, Hoboken contracted with an outside accounting firm to manage the City's financial records at a cost of $300,000 per year. During the past three years, the City has spent almost a million dollars for outside accounting services which were previously the responsibility of the CFO and Finance Department employees.
The outside firm was brought in to enhance the overall efficiency of the City's accounting system and, if all went well, the City would move to privatize Finance Department after a one year trail period.
But the promise of readily available financial data, the competence to make decisions, and the ability to detect and correct problems throughout the budget year all fell apart when the recent audit found a serious lack of cash controls and the failure of the City's daily accounting system to detect millions of dollars in declining anticipated cash collections.
Watch this short video as Hoboken 4th Ward Councilwomen Dawn Zimmer questions City CFO George Destefano about his daily duties in the Hoboken Finance Department as he worked along side the private accounting firm.
Councilman asks.... Is a million bucks in cash, [that's FOUR MILLION quarters weighing almost 50,000 pounds], missing from the Hoboken Parking Utility "parking meter" collections revenue?
The town was buzzing when at the Hoboken City Council FY2008 Budget Hearing, December 6, 2007, Third Ward Councilman Michael Russo, who also serves as Chairman of the City's Finance Committee, asked if there was one million dollars missing in "parking meter" cash revenues. Russo reversed himself at the December 19, 2007 meeting by saying he made a mistake.
At the February 6, 2008 City Council meeting, the topic of discussion was the recently received FY2007 (July 1, 2006 - June 30, 2007) budget audit which was seven months late. Fifth Ward Councilman Peter Cunningham's reaction to the audit report comments on the City's control of cash was "For God sake, clearly, this audit indicates that we have got money going out the back door and something needs to be done about it."
Whether you voted for him or not, few Americans can honestly say that on January 20th, they were not anxious to see how the first Black President of the United States would perform as leader of the free the world After recently completing his first 100 days in the Oval Office, the Barack Obama approval rating is extremely high for a leader faced with so much adversity from a devastating recession to two wars in the Middle East
Watching the protests and riots staged to coincide with the G-20 Forum in the United Kingdom might tempt you to view this as another battle in the long-running war between capital and labor But, that's not true
January 20, 2009 will be one of those days in American history that the African American community will always remember—the day Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States of America The world watched as the 47-year-old man placed his hand on the same burgundy velvet-colored Holy Bible that Abraham Lincoln used when he pledged to “Preserve, protect, and defend the constitution” of a country that was about to be at war against itself
I returned to the UK in 2001 and it took me time to figure out what was going on in Britain If anything I was relieved to see the Labour party back in power: at least, I thought, they look after the people
The most important and historical decisions about Justice in Rome 4 November The Council of Europe took very important step to implement in every Country of the European Union reforms of legislation assuring the Court - impartiality - independence - and the first time concept of free assistance
This principle was implemented in all national E
a) Vested interests
Is possible for citizens to combat corruption to individual and systematic levels Actually is very difficult, including exposing oneself to personal and serious risks
Fifteen new cops will be sworn in tomorrow in an official ceremony at City Hall, said Public Safety Director Bill Bergin today.
At tomorrow's ceremony, 15 civilians will be sworn in as new patrolmen, five patrolmen will be promoted to sergeant and two sergeants will be promoted to rank of lieutenant.
Despite Hoboken's budget problems, Bergin says the city can afford to hire new cops as long as they don't exceed numbers allotted in the city's Table of Organization. Even with the 15 new hires, Bergin says the Hoboken Police Department is still short of patrolmen.
With tomorrow's promotions, there will be about 105 patrolmen and 33 sergeants in the Hoboken PD. There can be a maximum of 120 patrolmen on the force, said Bergin.
The new salaries and pay raises are already part of Hoboken's 2008 municipal budget, said Bergin.
Exactly how much do Hoboken cops make? Here's a salary breakdown:
The starting salary for a brand-new patrolman is about $34,000/year. It takes a patrolman seven years to reach the maximum police officer salary of $80,000/year, said Bergin.
The starting pay for a sergeant is $93,000/year and the starting pay for a lieutenant is $106,000/year. However, during their first year of their new position, sergeants and lieutenant will only receive $2,000 more than their old salary.
The ceremony will be Wednesday, Jan. 23 at 4 p.m. in City Council chambers of City Hall.
_thumb.jpg)
_thumb.jpg)