Hoboken voters will have the opportunity to pose questions and hear directly from the candidates running for the position of mayor as well as those vying for three City Council At-Large seats in the May 12 election. Two moderated forums will be sponsored by People for Open Government and the Hoboken Quality of Life Coalition, and Our Lady of Grace/St. Joseph Parish.
The first forum will feature candidates for the three At-Large City Council seats on Tuesday, April 14, 2009, from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the school at Our Lady of Grace, corner of Willow Avenue at Fifth Street.
The second forum will provide a platform for those vying for the position of mayor. It will take place on Tuesday, April 28, 2009, from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., also in the school auditorium at Our Lady of Grace.
Both events will be moderated by veteran TV reporter, anchorman, and documentary filmmaker, Bob Bowdon, whose on-camera reporting encompasses interviews with personalities such as Donald Trump and Martha Stewart as well as six years with Bloomberg News. He is executive director of the Smith Family Foundation, which sponsors a monthly public policy forum that airs nationally on the Dish Network and also every Sunday night at 7 p.m. on Cablevision Network’s channel 18. He has been a Hoboken resident for 19 years.
Written questions using the cards and pencils provided will be solicited from the audience at both events. Since many questions will address the same topic, a three-person panel will select from among them the most clearly stated. The selection panel will consist of Eric Kurta, Liza Duval and Helen Manogue. The time-keeper will be James Castiglione.
POG and QLC are non-profit, non-partisan citizen organizations that have been active in Hoboken during the last decade and have organized previous candidates’ forums.
Our Lady of Grace/St.Joseph Church is joining in the sponsorship of these forums in order to make information available about the candidates in this important May election and as a means to urge citizens throughout the city to exercise their right to vote.
POG (www.hobokenpog.org) is known for advocating for passage of anti-pay-to-play legislation as well as ordinances requiring electronic access to local government documents. It produced a package of ordinances that ultimately were adopted as city law. The ordinances include requiring competitively negotiated professional contracts and developer contribution disclosures.
The QLC (www.qlchoboken.org) actively supported POG initiatives and was instrumental in forging the western alignment of the Light Rail route in Hoboken, and joined with several other groups fighting to secure 1600 Park Avenue as designated parkland. Recently, QLC worked with Hoboken Heritage to protect portions of the Holy Innocents site from demolition and construction of a mid-rise building. It also participated in the recent successful effort to save the Neumann Leathers building from demolition and in promoting scrutiny of plans before the Hoboken Planning Board for 65-story and 45-story buildings proposed for the Erie Lackawanna train yards in southern Hoboken. In March 2008 the Coalition and its Committee for a Green Hoboken secured the unanimous passage of the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement, a commitment to work for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions throughout the municipality.