Dear Editor:
After reading all of the articles, letters, and advertisements about the 2003 Hoboken municipal budget it seems to me that there are two alternatives. The first is that Mayor Roberts really believes that this $62.6 million budget is lean and mean. The second is that he really doesn’t believe it and that he is lying to the people. I don’t know which alternative scares me more.
Since I don’t want to believe Mr. Roberts is a liar, the only alternative is that he really believes that this budget is a good one. Talk about scary! His budget calls for $ 62.6 million of real money of which more than $ 8 million comes from Mr. Roberts raiding the Hoboken Parking Authority (HPA). It now seems crystal clear that all of the talk about the HPA being mismanaged, while perhaps true, was a smokescreen to grab the cash. After all, if the HPA was so badly mismanaged, why hasn’t Mayor Roberts replaced the executive director?
We’ve all read that when representatives of the City appeared before the Local Finance Board regarding disbanding the Parking Authority they testified that the City had no intention of using Parking Authority funds to balance the budget. Where did they think they were going to get the money to pay for Mr. Roberts spending binge if not from the HPA? Simply put, did the representatives of the City commit perjury?
I’m certain that for the next few months we will hear more from Mayor Roberts about how good this budget is, despite the record spending and perhaps a record amount of non-recurring and one-shot revenues. He’ll tell us how he is continuing to provide services without raising taxes while many of us will continue to believe there is more fat in this budget than there is on a hog’s rear end. Unquestionably the only way to deal with this situation is to make the people on the City Council who voted for this budget non-recurring Council members and to make Mr. Roberts a one-shot mayor.
Jonathan R. Gordon