Discord has reached new heights within the Hoboken Parking Authority (HPA) as Commissioner Alan Cohen submitted his resignation from the seven-member volunteer board Wednesday. Cohen is the second commissioner in the span of seven days to quit the board. Commissioner Daniel DeCavaignac submitted his resignation last week. Cohen and DeCavaignac were two of Mayor David Roberts’ very first appointments, on July 1 of last year. In a highly publicized political tug-of-war, former Mayor Anthony Russo squared off with the new mayor in court over who should sit on the board. Superior Court Judge Arthur D’Italia’s August 2001 ruling cleared the way for Cohen and DeCavaignac to sit.
Now, less than a year later, both men have announced their resignations effective June 30, and have left the HPA with criticism directed at Mayor Roberts.
In a statement supplied to the Reporter last week, DeCavaignac said the HPA will not be successful until the “HPA, City Council, and the mayor’s office work very closely together and share an agenda.”
While DeCavaignac phrased his resignation letter with a certain amount of tact, Cohen’s letter was a direct affront, criticizing the new administration’s record.
“Late last fall, during a meeting in your office, you [Mayor Roberts] told the new parking commissioners that ‘…it’s all about politics,'” Cohen wrote. “At the time I didn’t believe you. I thought I could rise above it. I was wrong. Everything in Hoboken is about politics, money and jobs – everything including the Parking Authority.”
In his short time on the board, Cohen had unleashed a series of profanity-laden tirades at fellow HPA commissioners and public officials.
At one public meeting, he called fellow commissioner Donald Pellicano a “slime,” and at another, he laid into Chamber of Commerce President John Parchinsky with expletive-filled criticism because Parchinsky had a different view of business parking regulations.
Mayor David Roberts said Thursday afternoon that he would not return personal insults. He did comment on the overall status of the HPA, which has seen some problems lately, including new delays of a proposed automatic parking garage at 916 Garden St.
“I, like many Hoboken residents, am frustrated over the lack of progress made by the Parking Authority,” said the mayor. “My administration has grown increasingly concerned over the lack of communication and their apparent lack of an agenda.”
In Cohen’s year on the HPA, the City Council and the mayor have clashed on an array of different issues. One confrontation was over the overhauling of the city’s residential parking program. Cohen went on the record criticizing the mayor for bowing to the local business lobby by mandating that the City Council weaken some aspects of the new regulations to give local business owners a break. Mayor Roberts defended his actions by saying that he was balancing as many city interests as possible.
Cohen and the administration also butted heads with the city over finances. Cohen, until he announced his resignation, was the chairman of the HPA’s finance committee. In the city’s 2002 fiscal budget, the city included as revenue a $1.5 million payment from the HPA to fill a gap. In past years the HPA has given money to the city because of the large amount of non-taxable land that HPA owns. Its payments to the city have never been contractually arranged, and in the past have been established via “gentleman’s agreements.”
This year, Cohen said that the tap has run dry. He consistently insisted that because of large construction projects at 916 Garden St. and St. Mary Hospital, the HPA did not and still does not have the money for that $1.5 payment.
In order to win the support of enough HPA commissioners to pass a resolution that would supply the city with $1.5 million, Mayor Roberts agreed to sell the HPA a plot of land on 11th Street and Willow Avenue. Cohen says the land is irrelevant because the HPA doesn’t have to money to purchase it anyway. The land purchase agreement was announced in January, but as of this past Thursday, no land or money has been exchanged between the HPA and the city.
For the past six months, Mayor Roberts has publicly blasted the performance of the HPA and has said that the Authority is in serious need of an overhaul. One of his biggest complaints has been the HPA’s handling of the troubled garage at 916 Garden St. and the internal name calling and bickering that has ensued.
Last week, Roberts said, “I wish the outgoing commissioners well, but that said, I think they made the right decision [in resigning]. I also have to respectfully disagree with their analysis of government in Hoboken. In our first 10 months in office, crime is down 10 percent, our street are cleaner, our tax rate is stable, the [Hoboken/Steven’s Partnership for Public Education] initiative is gaining speed, and we are working hard create new areas of open space.”
Bad timing
The resignation of two HPA commissioners could not have come at a worse time for the Parking Authority. The HPA is embattled in a public relations nightmare over the 916 Garden St. garage.
Last week the Reporter received a report from an engineering consultant hired by the HPA to observe tests being performed at the garage. The report by NetTech Solutions stated that the there were several major system failures during test on Friday, May 3. A conflicting report by RetroTech Inc, a engineering consultant hired by the project’s insurance company, obtained Wednesday says that the test were successful and that the times for storage and retrieval are acceptable (see sidebar).
With such glaring contradictions between hired experts, the HPA is in need of decisive leadership, but it has been four weeks since the original testing and the HPA is still yet to release an official statement.
HPA Chairman Frank Turso said the resignations put the authority in somewhat of a difficult position. “I’m in a little bit of a bind,” said Turso Thursday. “I have to sit down with the board and figure out exactly where we are.” He added that it would be unlikely that the HPA will make an official statement until its next scheduled meeting on June 10. Conflicting reports on 916 Garden
RetroTech Inc. of Fishers, N.Y. has issued a positive report in reference to the Performance Validation Testing (PVT) held on May 3 at the 324-car Automated Garage at 916 Garden St. The PVT was set up by the Parking Authority to allow Robotic, the company responsible for installing the garage’s automated features, to prove that they completed their contractual obligations.
RetroTech is an engineering consulting firm hired by Universal Bonding to monitor the completion of the garage. Universal Bonding is the insurance company that holds the performance bonds on the garage. The report states that despite not meeting the contractual required times for retrieving cars, the test should be considered successful.
“It is our opinion that the times recorded during these validation tests are the best possible average times this system is capable of,” said Charles Lawrence of RetroTech in his report. In the report, he blames a quarter to half-inch misalignment in the steel construction for the inflated times for retrieval. He wrote, “Since it would be financially impractical to recommend structural modifications to the building to compensate for this half-inch offset, we recommend that the contract specifications be modified in a manner to allow for the increased average retrieve cycle time.”
Commenting on this report and the testing, HPA Chairman Frank Turso, who has been an ardent supporter of Robotic in the past, said that he was “pleased with the results of the tests” and called the results “an important step toward getting this facility open to the public.”
In an official statement from Robotic released Friday morning, officials from the company said that the garage “may be able to open within 45 days.”
The RetroTech report is in striking contrast to a report from the engineering consulting firm NetTech, issued two weeks ago. NetTech was hired the HPA to monitor the testing. NetTech’s report states that there were several system failures during the test, and that one system failure involved a Robotic employee being accidentally lifted in a car into a parking space on one of the garage’s upper floors. Both Commissioner Donald Pellicano and out going Commissioner Alan Cohen pointed to the NetTech report as proof that there are still major problems in the garage.
Pellicano, who for the past two years has been the harshest critic of Robotic, said Wednesday that the Robotic is “lying through their teeth” when they say that there are no problems in the garage. – Tom Jennemann