Six of the twelve candidates who are running for Hoboken City Council in the May 8 election were profiled by the Reporter last week (to read about them on the Internet, check www.hobokenreporter.com). Below are the profiles of the three candidates who are running on a slate with mayoral hopeful Dan Tumpson, and two independent council candidates. A third independent candidate did not return numerous phone calls.
The candidates are seeking three seats on the nine-member council. The outcome of the election will determine who votes on issues related to development, parking, affordable housing, and taxes. The three seats are council-at-large seats, meaning that the people filling them will represent the entire city rather than just one ward.
Last week, the Reporter profiled Mayor Anthony Russo’s and mayoral candidate David Roberts’ slates.
While most of last week’s candidates had prior city government experience, more of this week’s are community activists who have not had city government experience.
Dan Tumpson’s slate includes community activists Helen Hirsch, Cheryl Fallick and Alice Misiewicz. Independents include retired police officer Sal DeMeo and schoolteacher Terry LaBruno.
Candidate Carrie Gillard, who presently serves on the school board and would have to give up that seat should she win a council slot, was phoned several times over the past two weeks, but the calls were not returned. The Reporter will profile the three mayoral candidates next week. The Reporter and Cablevision are also sponsoring a mayoral debate May 2 that will air several times on Cablevision and be covered in the Reporter the weekend before the election.
Cheryl Fallick
Cheryl Fallick, 42, is a conference producer for the global financial industry in a private firm. She is running on mayoral candidate Dan Tumpson’s slate of council candidates. She is single, has resided in Hoboken since 1984, and graduated from NYU with a degree in acting. She is currently enrolled at Cornell University’s Satellite Branch in Manhattan in the Industrial Labor Relations Program.
In the past, she has been involved in fighting against potentially-harmful rent control changes. She also has been involved with a 1980s group called Save Hoboken from Overdevelopment, and with the Coalition for a Better Waterfront.
Because Fallick was overseas for business last week, she was unable to conduct an interview in person, but was able to answer a series of questions via e-mail.
Fallick said that she believes that the biggest problem facing Hoboken today is “overdevelopment.” “Parking, traffic problems, the lack of open space, elimination of affordable housing, and the destruction of community structure, are all symptoms of overdevelopment,” she said. She believes that solution to these problems is to have a moratorium immediately imposed on all development that violates current zoning laws, i.e. all zoning variances.
Fallick also believes that the tenant protections of Hoboken’s Rent Control Law should be maintained and strengthened. According to Fallick, Hoboken should lobby the state to require rent control on all housing built since 1987. Right now, rent control, which keeps annual increases to a few percent, applies only to buildings constructed through 1987.
She said the logic behind this is that if a tenant can afford to move into an apartment and that if that apartment’s rent is under rent control, then the tenant should be able to remain if he or she does not want to be displaced. She concludes that this protects tenants from gouging and displacement in a tight housing market, and thereby creates and maintains stability in our community.
When asked why she feels she is in the most qualified person to be elected to the City Council, Fallick responded that she has 10 years of negotiation experience with labor/management contracts, strong negotiation skills, and a strong sense of advocacy which can be brought to the government on behalf of the citizens. “I believe that government should represent the people, not the corporations or developers, thus my labor representative skills are appropriate,” Fallick said in her correspondence.
“My conference production experience has given me an acute understanding of economics and the role government plays, from the local to the national and international levels, in our changing world,” she said. “This gives me a vision of the big picture, which equips me to understand the economic incentives and the way government responds to them that allows development to have such a great negative effect on our community.”
When asked what the current status of the city is and where she would like to see it four years from now, she said that the city has gone beyond its capacity to accommodate new development, that rent control should be strengthened, and that a Stealth Highway (or a series of connecting roads from Bergen through Hoboken, which she and others believe is slyly being put together) should be stopped. “I believe we have gone way beyond our capacity to accommodate new development,” she said. “I believe that development should be curtailed until its impact is understood and that no future development which extends beyond the current zoning provision, be it through the granting of variances, changes to the master plan and zoning law, projects under the redevelopment law, planned unit developments, new road construction, etc., should not be permitted unless it is approved by a majority of voters in a binding referendum.”
On the issue of the Stealth Highway, she said “I am aware that a continuous roadway between the George Washington and the Bayonne, Staten Island Bridges is being built as a connecting sequence of ‘local improvements’ so that federally mandated environmental assessment of the impact of this roadway on communities along the Western side of the Hudson River can be evaded.” She went on to say that such a highway would be a menace to the health of citizens in the community and that no changes to traffic flow should be implemented until their impact is fully understood.
Helen Hirsch
Helen Hirsch, 80, is running on Dan Tumpson’s ticket. She is a constant fixture in the front row at City Council meetings, and frequently asks questions. She has been a Hoboken resident for four years and first got involved in the community by helping collect signatures to protest the new Shipyard building.
If elected, she said Thursday, her number one priority would be to “open a dialogue and to give people a choice to ask questions and to have them answered.”
“I was shocked at the number of people that would come up to me and say that they were afraid, they are afraid that they will lose their apartment or job if they speak up,” Hirsch said last week. “It baffles me that people would be afraid in 2001.”
Hirsch went on to say that her solution to break what she calls a “mantle of fear” is to “break the iron fist attitude of the incumbents and create a government [in which] people are not going to be afraid to talk their mind.”
When questioned about development in the city, Hirsch responded that she would like to slow down the issuing of variances, which are zoning board-granted deviations from existing laws. “If there is a master plan in town, it must be written on Saran Wrap. Right now the easy selling of variances [is creating the over development].”
When questioned if she would be able to help run a city government with little or no experience, she responded with confidence. “If it is run like a business, then the city will be able to succeed,” said Hirsch. Hirsch said that she and her husband ran a start-up business from around 1949 into the 1980s. The business manufactured small motors for machines.
But Hirsch was most proud of her success with a chamber music program she managed in Teaneck in the 1980s. “I started out with a budget of $1,500 and I set out to find young and talented musicians,” she said. “By the time I left, our operating budget was $30,000 to $40,000.” During her time there, she said, she was able to lure such classical music talents such as Yo-Yo Ma and the Emerson Quartet.
In Hoboken circles Hirsch might be best known for being a lead plaintiff in a lawsuit which eventually led to the city’s reclaiming of over $300,000 in longevity payments to some city employees. “It bothered me that we were paying others to do jobs in places,” she said.
Hirsch has also been a plaintiff on a lawsuit by state tenants’ groups against an agreement made by Applied Housing with the state government. Through the agreement, Applied was able to increase rents in some of its affordable housing buildings but was able to allow current affordable tenants to stay and keep paying low amounts. Hirsch’s side believes that because of the agreement, too much affordable housing might be lost when current tenants leave. Neither side is certain exactly what formula will apply to the units should the agreement be struck down.
Hirsch is also in favor of making sure that there are second opinions on issues such as traffic and development and that the same lawyers and developers should not be used over and over again.
Hirsch concluded her interview by saying that it is important to her to make sure that public information is accessible.
“I have been trying to find a list of all city owned cars, I’ve asked and I’ve asked, ” she said. “As of right now I still don’t have it. That should be in the public files and they should be easily accessible.”
Alice Misiewicz
Alice Misiewicz, 46, is a freelance book editor and is running on Dan Tumpson’s ticket for one of the three available City Council seats. She is married and has resided for the last 16 years in Hoboken.
She is active in Coalition for a Better Waterfront and the Hudson County Tenant Council.
“City Hall has to open up; that is really the root of all the evils in Hoboken,” said Misiewicz in an interview Thursday morning. “We have to ask the people what they want and we have to listen. We can’t have important decisions made in the dead of night in City Hall.”
Misiewicz also believes that the rate of development is alarming. She is in favor of a plan to assess the environmental impact of new road and building construction and feels that variances are handed out too readily. The example that she gives for development being big and overbearing is the Columbus Park project. “Yes, 10 years ago the city was in need of development, but does it need to be so big?” she said. “You have projects like Columbus Park, which is this huge building that is right next to a playground. You really think that people paying $300,000 for a condo are going to want a playground out their window, and vice versa?”
She went on to say that many of the city’s problems could be solved by having better enforcement of laws that are already in place.
“If [the municipal government] was to really enforce rent control we would have affordable housing in Hoboken,” she said. “That the key to making Hoboken livable. We can’t keep granting these variances and we can’t make it so easy for developers to skirt the law.”
As for traffic, Misiewicz said that it is a regional problem, and while the situation does include commuters, they are not the sole cause of the problems. “We caused this traffic,” she said. “Obviously the overdevelopment caused it in Hoboken and that greatly affects other communities. If police enforce the traffic laws we could fix a good deal of the problems. We can’t allow Hoboken to be a place that people feel like they can sail right through.”
Misiewicz would like to see improvement in the management of affordable housing. “Right now we have affordable housing, but affordable housing for whom? People in Marine View were force to spend the night in beach chairs in order to get their apartment. We need to make sure that it will be fair, will there be a lottery system or is it just going to be an afterthought like it is now. Why do some people get affordable housing and some don’t; we need to iron that out.”
She would also like to see taxes go down. “We need to hire a professional business administrator,” she said. “There are too many things in the budget right now that are inexcusable. We want to know what is in it and we want to understand why it cost so much to live here. Taxes are triple [in Hoboken] what they are in other municipalities.”
Sal DeMeo
Sal DeMeo, 52, is running as an independent. A lifelong Hoboken resident, DeMeo is married with three children and lives in a Jefferson Street Building. He is a retired police officer and a part time musician who plays oldies on this guitar and was once a backup player for the lead singer of the Duprees.
DeMeo graduated from Hoboken High School and went to St. Peter’s College and Fairleigh Dickinson, obtaining an associate degree in humanities. He has been active in the Elks Club and worked in the school system as a substitute teacher.
DeMeo believes that he is qualified to sit on the council because, “It is time to have someone who has the experience of living Hoboken for his entire life,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “I have seen all the changes the city has gone through. I will not look at only the small corners, but I believe I have a good grasp of the big picture.”
DeMeo went on to say that he is proud to be a resident of the city but that there is always room for improvement. “This is a wonderful little town with great restaurants, city parks and culture,” he said. “It’s the whole gambit of good living. But a lot of what makes Hoboken great is the people that live here. It has very little to do with the actions of government. But if we are not careful, the [the city government] could go a long way to unraveling what we have.”
That is why DeMeo said that his number one priority is controlling the number of variances given to developers. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” DeMeo said. “We need to curtail the number of variances given to builders. It seems like every project is getting variances to build higher and have more lot coverage. This creates a vicious cycle.”
DeMeo feels that future concerns with traffic and development can be avoided if the city is diligent in tightening up the zoning laws and if they are effective in enforcing them by not giving out as many variances. “We need a moratorium on variances,” he said. “Already a lot of the damage is already done but we have to make sure they we aren’t going to make the same mistakes in the future. You can’t blame the developer for trying to get variances. The [Zoning Board] and City Council are they ones who approved all of these variances.” (Actually, the Zoning Board is the body that approves variances; the City Council does not.)
DeMeo added, “If the zoning laws are followed properly, new buildings can blend into the community and not overwhelm it like they are now.”
DeMeo is well aware of the difficulty of running as an independent up against well-funded and well-organized political machines. He said that he does not take financial contributions and does not have a war chest. He is only relying on word of mouth for his support.
While he understands the obstacles he is up against by not forming political alliances, DeMeo also believes that there are advantages to staying independent.
“I believe that politics should be a position of honor and not a popularity contest,” DeMeo said. “If I’m elected, the city would have an average Joe who sees both sides of the fence and won’t be swayed by partisan factors.”
Terry LaBruno
Terry LaBruno, 44, was born and raised in Hoboken and has been involved in many activities in the community. She is the youngest of six children and is the mother of three daughters. She is married to Hoboken Fire Battalion Department Chief Joe LaBruno, and has been a teacher of high school mathematics for the past 22 years.
LaBruno began her public service in the 1970s when she served on the City’s Recreation Commission from 1979 to 1990. She served as athletic director and basketball coach at the Academy of Sacred Heart. She has also served as the CCD Coordinator at Saint Francis Church and as a Hoboken Housing Authority commissioner. From 1998 to 1999, she served as the Vice President of the PTG of John Paul II School. Currently, she coaches Girls Basketball at Saint Mary’s High School in Jersey City.
This is LaBruno’s third attempt to gain office at the City Council. She also ran in 1988 and 1993. This year, she is running as an Independent.
“I believe I have the ability to work well with others to help improve the quality of life for others,” LaBruno said in an interview Thursday. “If elected, I pledge allegiance only to the Hoboken residents who I would proudly serve. I would make decisions on the City Council with a clear conscience, an open mind, and respect for the quality of life for all Hoboken residents.”
LaBruno added that the most important problem to solve is that of affordability. “Right now, the middle class is becoming shut out,” she says. “We have the wealthy [residents], and affordable housing, but very little in between.” She feels that the city needs to come up with creative ways to entice developers into allowing spaces for middle class families. “All of us, newcomers and born and raised, know that Hoboken is a special place because of its geography and ethnic diversity,” LaBruno said. “Hoboken’s potential for greatness is endless, but we also know the problems.”
One of the problems she mentioned was that of congestion and overconstruction. She believes that zoning laws need to be strictly enforced and that there should be a moratorium on variances. She has also pledged commitment of limited open space in recreation options. She said that developers should be enticed to create parks and fields for the children of Hoboken.
“I believe we must be a community committed to keeping its families here,” she said. “And in order to do that, we must be committed to adding to our affordable housing stock, continuing to improve our educational choices, and providing our children with a healthy environment physically and socially.”
LaBruno also feels that it is important to be accountable and to make sure that government is open to all its citizens. Being an Independent who does not have a city related job, she feels that she does not have any outside strings pulling on her.
“I will not be beholden to developers and contractors,” LaBruno said. “None of them have financed my campaign. I will be accessible to the citizens. I will listen to the residents. And I will only represent them and their needs. Although we are different people, we are all one community.”
LaBruno’s campaign is self-funded and her war chest amounts to less than $7,000, she said.