Dear Editor:
Have you noticed that the days are gradually getting longer? We’re headed for Spring, and in Hoboken, that means elections.
Historically, it’s been difficult to get voters out for anything except a Presidential election. But times are changing. For the first time, in November, droves of Hobokenites went to the polls to elect County officials. Everyone was surprised. I wasn’t.
A few years ago I wrote to the Editor of this newspaper about our city’s changing demographics; that Hoboken natives were no longer in the majority. What an uproar! You would have thought I said that Hoboken natives had two heads. Friends feared that someone would fit me for cement galoshes.
But times are changing. About 40 percent of our population is comprised of young (under 35), affluent professionals who were born anywhere but Hoboken. They’ve rented expensive luxury apartments and bought expensive condos. They’ve filled restaurants and bars and parks, enjoyed festivals, jogged the streets and pushed their baby buggies along the waterfront walkways. They’ve sent their kids to our public and private schools. These young people have come to love the river city. They want to know how it ticks. They want to have a voice in its development.
Make no mistake. There are plenty of Hoboken natives around. There are also middle-aged empty nesters, single and with partners, and plenty of seniors. There are people who don’t make huge salaries and worry about being priced out of town. And there are those who live in subsidized housing, who worry where they will go if they’re pushed out as well. They too want to know how Hoboken works, and have a say in their own future.
Who are the real Hobokenites? We all are. And who is going to bring this city into the future, healthy and prosperous and beautiful, for our children and ourselves? We all are. How can we do this, given Hoboken’s history of machine politics, patronage, fear and favors? We=ll do it with our votes.
The times are changing. The past year and a half has been difficult for Hoboken’s government, which inherited a creaking, groaning square wheel, and has sweated to begin the process of change, each step hard-won. One doesn’t take a municipality that labored under Tammany Hall-style politics for 200 years and turn it around in a year or two. It takes time, a lot of support and work, and votes. If you ever thought that your one vote wasn’t worth anything, please rethink that idea. It is from “one votes” like yours that politics change, administrations change, government changes.
The biggest change that we will continue to see is in the people who come forward to lead Hoboken into its future. Where once we had people who were in office to be served, we will have people who are in office to serve. It will take courage and strength, and it will come at a high cost, but the times are changing, and it’s time we, too, changed.
Shelley Miller
Hoboken Taxpayer