On December 23, 2011, embattled Hoboken Construction Code official ALFRED AREZZO filed a CEPA lawsuit in the Law-Civil Part division of the Hudson County Superior Court Docket # L 006490 "AREZZO VS THE CITY OF HOBOKEN NEW JERSEY ET AL".

More than a year after the city of Hoboken laid off 13 city workers in a well-publicized layoff plan, Mayor Dawn Zimmer and the city are spending hours fighting one employee’s appeal in the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) court in Newark. Testimony obtained exclusively by the Reporter shows that the laid-off employee’s attorney has sparred with Zimmer over many controversial political issues that have occurred in town over the last year, including raises for Zimmer’s two aides, and internet blogs that appear to favor Zimmer.

Zimmer recently testified for more than four hours in one day in the OAL court regarding the appeal of former city Public Information Officer Bill Campbell’s layoff.

A ST. PATRICK'S Day parade has been a tradition in Hoboken for a quarter of a century. The tradition ends this year, and it is a loss to all in North Jersey.

New Jersey is often overshadowed by New York. The St. Patrick's Day parade in Manhattan is bigger. Unfortunately, the people pouring out of bars and parties in Hoboken on the day of its parade are drunker or at least less controlled. The Hoboken St. Patrick's Parade Committee's decision last week to cancel the parade traditionally held on the first Saturday in March is an admission that Hoboken cannot guarantee the safety of the spectators who come from far and wide to celebrate.

Sadly, the Hoboken St. Patrick's Parade Committee announced that the much anticipated annual parade would be cancelled due to the "City of Hoboken's inability to protect our spectators, bands and participants."

The event is a Hoboken tradition held on the first Saturday of March and attracted hundreds of thousands of celebrants over the past 25 years.   

This year’s event, tentatively scheduled for Saturday, March 3, 2012, would have marked the parade’s 26th anniversary! 

Hoboken parking signs read 4-hour grace period -- how about a 20-minute disgrace?

I was ticketed $218 and booted for parking on Third and Grand just for picking up a report at Hoboken University Medical Center.

What favor is Director Sacs doing me? How out of touch is this guy with the community "doing us a favor"? It's a scam and we all know it. I wasn't puzzled, but disgusted.

On Nov 9, 2011, Mayor Zimmer testified in William Campbell v. City of Hoboken.  After three hours of testimony, Mayor Zimmer advised the Court that the FBI was at Hoboken City Hall and she needed to return to Hoboken.   The case was adjourned and rescheduled for continuation on January 3, 2012.  Attached is the 77 page Court transcript of Mayor Zimmer’s Nov 9th testimony.

New Jersey is set to clamp down on a North Jersey hospital that insurance companies claim is billing them as much as 3,000 percent more than its own outpatient surgery centers charge for the same treatment.

Part of the plan by Gov. Chris Christie’s administration to contain rising auto insurance rates targets the business practices of Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center in Secaucus, bought in December by the owners of three surgery centers in Bergen and Essex counties.

Since then, the new owners have been referring auto accident victims from their same-day surgery center to Meadowlands to take advantage of a fee loophole, according to insurance executives and confirmed by the Department of Banking and Insurance. The state limits what same-day surgery centers may charge, but it does not regulate what hospitals may charge for most outpatient care. And at Meadowlands, that difference can be substantial insurers and state officials say.

Senator Weinberg and members of the Senate Health and Senior Services Committee, thank you for the opportunity to address you today about the conversion of non-profit hospitals to ‘for profit’. JNESO, District Council 1 represents over 5000 nurses, techs and other health care related employees in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 322 of which are employed at Hoboken University Medical Center.
 
We are not opposed to the sale of this institution. We understand that the sale of this hospital to a well intentioned, ethical entity is vital to the survival of HUMC.  Quality health care should not be jeopardized for sake of profit or politics.   In light of recent news articles, that certainly does not seem to be the case.  In fact, JNESO collected over 3000 postcards from citizens concerned about the lack of transparency of this transaction.  It seems as if the instincts of the many thousands of concerned residents were correct. 

The contract, which covers from this past Dec. 9 through September 2014, was ratified by a local collective bargaining committee composed of HUMC nurses, JNESO executive director Virginia Treacy said yesterday.

Under the new agreement, nurses will receive raises for three years 1 percent this year, 1.5 percent in 2012 and 2 percent in 2013, Treacy said. After 2013, Treacy said, some will be eligible for a 2.5 to 3 percent raise that also serves as an "employee retention incentive."

Nurses can now use sick time as they earn it instead of waiting to accrue a year's worth of sick days, Treacy said. In addition, full-time nurses now cannot be sent home mid-shift without pay and nurses cannot be sent to units where they lack expertise, experience or practice, Treacy said.

The union, she said, made one painful concession.

"We lost our pension, which was a difficult pill to swallow," said Treacy. "It was a major loss well, it was already lost (even before the new owners took over)."

Treacy said while most of JNESO's nurses, who average about 50 years in age, will be hit hard by the loss, it will save the hospital more than $1 million annually.

The former head of the Hoboken Parking Utility is facing eight years in prison after appearing in Superior Court on Friday to admit his role in the theft of $600,000 from that city’s parking meters.

John P. Corea pleaded guilty before Superior Court Judge Francis R. Hodgson Jr. to official misconduct, a second-degree crime carrying a potential prison term of 10 years.

In entering his guilty plea, Corea, 45, a Hoboken resident, admitted steering three no-bid contracts to United Textile Fabricators, an arcade game manufacturer headed by a Toms River man, to collect and count coins from Hoboken’s parking meters.

Corea told the judge he made false statements to the Hoboken City Council about the company’s qualifications, and that he came to believe that the head of the company, Brian A. Petaccio, 51, of Toms River, had stolen a substantial amount of the city’s parking revenues.

On December 23, 2011, embattled Hoboken Construction Code official ALFRED AREZZO filed a CEPA lawsuit in the Law-Civil Part division of the Hudson County Superior Court Docket # L 006490 "AREZZO VS THE CITY OF HOBOKEN NEW JERSEY ET AL".

More than a year after the city of Hoboken laid off 13 city workers in a well-publicized layoff plan, Mayor Dawn Zimmer and the city are spending hours fighting one employee’s appeal in the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) court in Newark. Testimony obtained exclusively by the Reporter shows that the laid-off employee’s attorney has sparred with Zimmer over many controversial political issues that have occurred in town over the last year, including raises for Zimmer’s two aides, and internet blogs that appear to favor Zimmer.

Zimmer recently testified for more than four hours in one day in the OAL court regarding the appeal of former city Public Information Officer Bill Campbell’s layoff.

A ST. PATRICK'S Day parade has been a tradition in Hoboken for a quarter of a century. The tradition ends this year, and it is a loss to all in North Jersey.

New Jersey is often overshadowed by New York. The St. Patrick's Day parade in Manhattan is bigger. Unfortunately, the people pouring out of bars and parties in Hoboken on the day of its parade are drunker or at least less controlled. The Hoboken St. Patrick's Parade Committee's decision last week to cancel the parade traditionally held on the first Saturday in March is an admission that Hoboken cannot guarantee the safety of the spectators who come from far and wide to celebrate.

Sadly, the Hoboken St. Patrick's Parade Committee announced that the much anticipated annual parade would be cancelled due to the "City of Hoboken's inability to protect our spectators, bands and participants."

The event is a Hoboken tradition held on the first Saturday of March and attracted hundreds of thousands of celebrants over the past 25 years.   

This year’s event, tentatively scheduled for Saturday, March 3, 2012, would have marked the parade’s 26th anniversary! 

Hoboken parking signs read 4-hour grace period -- how about a 20-minute disgrace?

I was ticketed $218 and booted for parking on Third and Grand just for picking up a report at Hoboken University Medical Center.

What favor is Director Sacs doing me? How out of touch is this guy with the community "doing us a favor"? It's a scam and we all know it. I wasn't puzzled, but disgusted.

On Nov 9, 2011, Mayor Zimmer testified in William Campbell v. City of Hoboken.  After three hours of testimony, Mayor Zimmer advised the Court that the FBI was at Hoboken City Hall and she needed to return to Hoboken.   The case was adjourned and rescheduled for continuation on January 3, 2012.  Attached is the 77 page Court transcript of Mayor Zimmer’s Nov 9th testimony.

New Jersey is set to clamp down on a North Jersey hospital that insurance companies claim is billing them as much as 3,000 percent more than its own outpatient surgery centers charge for the same treatment.

Part of the plan by Gov. Chris Christie’s administration to contain rising auto insurance rates targets the business practices of Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center in Secaucus, bought in December by the owners of three surgery centers in Bergen and Essex counties.

Since then, the new owners have been referring auto accident victims from their same-day surgery center to Meadowlands to take advantage of a fee loophole, according to insurance executives and confirmed by the Department of Banking and Insurance. The state limits what same-day surgery centers may charge, but it does not regulate what hospitals may charge for most outpatient care. And at Meadowlands, that difference can be substantial insurers and state officials say.

Senator Weinberg and members of the Senate Health and Senior Services Committee, thank you for the opportunity to address you today about the conversion of non-profit hospitals to ‘for profit’. JNESO, District Council 1 represents over 5000 nurses, techs and other health care related employees in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 322 of which are employed at Hoboken University Medical Center.
 
We are not opposed to the sale of this institution. We understand that the sale of this hospital to a well intentioned, ethical entity is vital to the survival of HUMC.  Quality health care should not be jeopardized for sake of profit or politics.   In light of recent news articles, that certainly does not seem to be the case.  In fact, JNESO collected over 3000 postcards from citizens concerned about the lack of transparency of this transaction.  It seems as if the instincts of the many thousands of concerned residents were correct. 

The contract, which covers from this past Dec. 9 through September 2014, was ratified by a local collective bargaining committee composed of HUMC nurses, JNESO executive director Virginia Treacy said yesterday.

Under the new agreement, nurses will receive raises for three years 1 percent this year, 1.5 percent in 2012 and 2 percent in 2013, Treacy said. After 2013, Treacy said, some will be eligible for a 2.5 to 3 percent raise that also serves as an "employee retention incentive."

Nurses can now use sick time as they earn it instead of waiting to accrue a year's worth of sick days, Treacy said. In addition, full-time nurses now cannot be sent home mid-shift without pay and nurses cannot be sent to units where they lack expertise, experience or practice, Treacy said.

The union, she said, made one painful concession.

"We lost our pension, which was a difficult pill to swallow," said Treacy. "It was a major loss well, it was already lost (even before the new owners took over)."

Treacy said while most of JNESO's nurses, who average about 50 years in age, will be hit hard by the loss, it will save the hospital more than $1 million annually.

The former head of the Hoboken Parking Utility is facing eight years in prison after appearing in Superior Court on Friday to admit his role in the theft of $600,000 from that city’s parking meters.

John P. Corea pleaded guilty before Superior Court Judge Francis R. Hodgson Jr. to official misconduct, a second-degree crime carrying a potential prison term of 10 years.

In entering his guilty plea, Corea, 45, a Hoboken resident, admitted steering three no-bid contracts to United Textile Fabricators, an arcade game manufacturer headed by a Toms River man, to collect and count coins from Hoboken’s parking meters.

Corea told the judge he made false statements to the Hoboken City Council about the company’s qualifications, and that he came to believe that the head of the company, Brian A. Petaccio, 51, of Toms River, had stolen a substantial amount of the city’s parking revenues.

They Just Don't Make'Em
Like They Use To....

Political Parody: Corzine Budget Speech

Political Satire: Corzine, I AM THE TAX MAN!