Mayor David Roberts

DECISIONS, DECISIONS – Mayor David Roberts is trying to avoid massive layoffs by creating as many new revenue ideas as possible. Last week he criticized the City Council for tabling many of the proposals.  
Mayor David Roberts is taking the necessary steps to ready the city for layoffs, demotions, or other reductions in force, he said last week.

The City Council may have to make serious decisions at their meeting this Wednesday.

The city has an $11.7 million deficit to make up, due to a financial hole that widened in last year's budget.

Before any city workers lose their jobs, Roberts says he will ask the City Council to consider the few revenue-increasing options he has proposed.

Some city-proposed revenue ideas were put on hold by the City Council at their last meeting to further examine their feasibility or necessity.

Among them are controversial matters designed to increase revenue, including forcing local businesses to pay recycling fees - a measure the city attorney has said is very hard to legally implement.

Since it is uncertain whether the city will save money in other ways, the layoff plan is already in motion, according to Roberts.

Roberts met with the city's unions last week to discuss other ways to save money, as well as the effects of layoffs.

He said layoff notices will likely be sent to municipal employees in October.

City Attorney Joseph Pojanowski, who was sitting in last week for Steve Kleinman while he was on vacation, said that once notices are sent out, the city has 45 days to act, by law.

Selling the automated garage, laying off municipal workers, more parking meters -- Hoboken Mayor Dave Roberts introduced his plan to patch up Hoboken's broken budget today.

Roberts said he will introduce his Spending Plan for Fiscal Year '09 at tonight's City Council meeting. He'll need the state of New Jersey's approval before passing anything.

"Anything that I'm presenting needs the state of New Jersey's approval and needs the municipal council's approval as well," said Roberts. "We're not arrogantly ignoring the fact that the state is involved. We understand that all of this will have to be ordained by the state of New Jersey but there's no harm in rolling up our sleeves and creating some new ideas."

What are some aspects of Roberts' three-part spending plan?

Richard Tremitiedi's report on the FY2008 City Budget

To:  Honorable Mayor David Roberts   Report
From:  Richard Tremitiedi, Special Advisor

Date:  March 17, 2008

Subject:  Efficiency, Economic and Quality of Life Recommendations

Relative to my role as a special consultant to the mayor and after attending council meetings, budget workshops, and select discussions with professionals, administrative and elected officials, please be advised as follows:

Hoboken Mayor David Roberts promises a "fair and impartial" investigation. But the Mayor, Hoboken's Chief Executive, was also present at Kenner. Is he investigating himself?

The Jersey Journal quoted Hoboken Mayor David Roberts as saying "that he would be "extraordinarily careful" in picking a replacement" for outgoing Police Chief Carmen LaBruno and that problems for LaBruno began after the now disbanded SWAT team's post-Hurricane Katrina trip to Kenner, La., in September 2005 and a subsequent visit to New Orleans for Mardi Gras the following year. 

Roberts is also quoted as saying that “he knew that there'd be criticism that there was "going to be a whitewash" and moved to ensure that the city was fair and impartial.“

Wait a second, weren’t there “other” City Officials on the “humanitarian” trips to Kenner, La?   How about Mayor David Roberts and Councilman Michael Russo?

In the quest for a scapegoat, it appears that one important mitigating circumstance may have been overlooked, the CHAIN OF COMMAND and a LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY TO ACT.

HOBOKEN, N.J., June 21 — The Cave of the Sibyl, where Virgil’s prophetess received Aeneas before leading him to the underworld, was a vast cavern in southern Italy with a hundred mouths. When the Sibyl spoke, her words came in a hundred voices.

A cave today in Hoboken has a similar name, but lacks some of the grandeur. The prophetess is spelled “Sybil,” and the cave’s lone mouth was sealed shut this month with loose dirt.

Nearby, teenage skaters show off in a riverside park, and cars dash by on Sinatra Drive, mostly unaware that this 20-foot-deep cave has its own enthralling history, and possibly historical treasure waiting to be found. It was a 19th-century retreat for wealthy New Yorkers who drank from the fresh spring inside the cave, paying a penny a glass for water that was thought to be medicinal.

In 1841, the bloodied body of Mary Cecilia Rogers drifted to shore near the mouth of Sybil’s Cave, and into legend, the subject of a thriller by Edgar Allan Poe. By the late 1950s, the cave and its magnificent facade had disappeared into the rock and shrubbery.

Let's hear how mayor spins it

December 22, 2006 JJ
Letters to the Editor
 
My last letter raised a number of important questions.

1) How long have the apartments owned by Mayor Roberts on First and Monroe streets been vacant rather than be offered to needy families?

2) After all the grandstanding, how many dollars of the mayor's salary have actually been paid to homeless Hobokenites?

3) Exactly how much does Mayor Roberts get annually as his pension? And oh yeah, how much would that pension be if the less than five years he served as a firefighter weren't counted in his municipal service?

These are questions the city's public information officer should be answering.

Mr. Bill Campbell shouldn't be spending his time making legitimate questions about the mayor's finances into political sport. And while he's getting answers to those important questions, let me ask one more: Why does Mr. Campbell, who waxes poetic how wonderful it is to live in Hoboken, choose himself to live in Union City, in direct violation of Hoboken's residency requirement for city employees?

TONY SOARES UNION CITY

In this holiday season of peace on earth and good will to man, it is disappointing that Tony Soares would choose to write a scathing personal and public attack on Hoboken Mayor David Roberts.

Recently, Mayor Roberts made two stunning announcements. The first, that he will no longer accept his $124,000 mayor's salary - Hudson County's highest.

One thing Roberts left out was that he recently started collecting a very large pension from his time served as a firefighter. If my memory serves me correctly those years total about four years tops, the rest served as leaves of absence while he was 6th Ward councilman. But the public pension systems being what they are in New Jersey, Mayor Roberts can now cash out as 16 years served as a councilman. Nice spin.

When the mayor decided to save St. Mary Hospital, he didn't suggest a referendum in which the citizens would decide whether or not to foot the bill. Instead, the issue is now in the hands of our elected representatives on the city council.

So let me directly address the city council members:

In your hearts, you know this is wrong.  You know that you are getting us, the taxpayers of Hoboken, in too deep.  You know that you don't know enough about hospital funding, Medicare reimbursements, insurance schemes, or the future of the medical industry to make a sound decision. Admit it, you have a hard time deciphering your own health-care plan. You are buying a failing hospital and hoping and wishing and praying that the people you hire don't run it into the ground like the folks at UMDNJ did to that hospital.

In a recent column in a local newspaper, Mayor Roberts has indicated that he wants to change the process of selecting School Board members from an elected to -appointed Board. The reasoning given in the column is that the Mayor feels that the District is not responsive to the community. Apparently the Mayor thinks the public is incapable of making decisions facing our children. This is another not so veiled attempt by the Mayor to grab power for political gain.