Dear Editor:
An open letter to Hoboken United:
I will be supporting the Hoboken United ticket. It is my opinion that if the current administration wins another election the damage from over-development will be almost un-mendable. I live on the west side of town where I’m raising two boys. There isn’t a place to shoot a basket, toss a ball or sit in the grass and read. Nor is one planned. This is thought of as an east side prerogative.
Nor do I want to raise my children in a homogenous culture. I’d move to the suburbs if I did. But with the absence of any meaningful commitment to affordable housing, we are on our way to a simple haves and have-nots society in Hoboken.
And the “haves” are weighted toward people with no lasting commitment to Hoboken. That was my story once too, but it isn’t now. I don’t mind a substantial first-job-after-college population. They have their part to play. But the town should be seeking to keep a part of each wave of residents by providing reasons to stay as their lives evolve.
It isn’t.
Adding two parks while also developing thousands of new rental units is ultimately a wash, if not a net reduction in the available park space and time per capita. And if a generation of kids is constantly reminded of their unwantedness, a sense that assumes many other forms once the dye is cast, the town will have no future.
That is unless the only family life in town is to be that of real estate barons and well-to-do professionals who can afford to provide the missing (ordinary elsewhere) comforts to their children of a littler open space without broken glass and some leisure activities. That’s not a future.
When do you see a family of four eating in a restaurant in Hoboken? When one or both of the kids are in strollers. Before long the parents begin to feel painfully self-conscious raising kids in a town that isn’t “set up for it.” After that they’re gone. The mayor has never taken this seriously. An Easter Egg Hunt is fine, but more of a photo op than a policy.
So you may count me in the anyone-but-Russo camp. I signed the petitions for the entire slate today. I look forward to being for someone rather than simply against the administration.
In some ways I am already more positive than negative. Roberts and company have adopted more of a leadership position on controversial developments than the mayor’s more calculating wait-and-see then-act-like-I-was-against-it-all-along style allows for.
But I will still watch to see how the Hoboken United slate’s positions are manifest as policy. I speak for a minority that probably isn’t worth fighting over statistically. But the future of every town is heavily dependent on the belief that one can raise a family there in good conscience. What that means has changed over the years, mostly in good ways with the acceptance and even embrace of greater diversity. We can certainly raise families for less without having to move too far. We choose not to. Help us to believe that one of the most critical decisions we will ever make was not a foolish one.
On a more practical level, Hoboken United ran a slate for school board last year and lined up support from Congressman Menendez to help. If you want to say the glass is half full, there were some good showings and close races. For Mayor Russo, the glass truly is full: Hoboken United did not take one seat.
Whether you tell me or address the matter in other ways isn’t the issue. But we’ll all be curious to see what was learned from that particular shutout. That the mayor is a dirty player and enough people don’t seem to care is one conclusion. That letters written to the editor attacking the mayor’s opponents are not always signed by those who actually penned the letters is another. That people loyal to the mayor print up hysterical misleading flyers and stick them under residents’ doors, hundreds of them, and the never get caught, is yet another. The mayor does lots of things, and lots of things are done on his behalf. And he wins.
He wins.
This time he needs to lose. I hope and pray that you have the answer for him that Hoboken can and will seize as its own answer. Something to say yes to.
Mark Heyer