Dear Editor:
Dawn Zimmer and her team are working hard to reduce Hoboken’s taxes the right way. Along with the rest of the council we’re gathering information, scrutinizing line items, making careful spending choices, demanding affordable union contracts, supporting appropriate user fees and avoiding gimmicks. Last week we held Hoboken’s first ever public budget workshop. Next week we’ll continue where we left off. Much more is going on behind the scenes. And we’re telling the truth about Hoboken’s financial situation: we simply can no longer afford business as usual.
Some criticized me for objecting to the statement “We were elected to cut taxes.” Yes, of course that’s part of the Zimmer mandate, but so is cutting them in a way that preserves public safety and acceptable levels of city services. Accomplishing that feat requires information. Remember the long promised “top to bottom” reviews and the operational audits? The reviews never happened, the Fire audit was never meaningfully started, and the Police audit never released. At last Saturday’s workshop the council forged a consensus to hire an outside firm to provide objective review of our Fire Department. Because the state won’t release the completed Police audit, her team stands shoulder to shoulder with Mayor Zimmer in her demand that the Governor intervene. And the Directors are working with the council to review their budgets line-by-line.
During the last election Mayor Zimmer pledged to work to achieve a tax cut. Has that happened yet? No. Could that have happened by now if she had been elected in June, and her team had been in place on July 1 of last year? Probably it could have. I know Mayor Zimmer is giving it her very best shot, but from the beginning that ambitious goal required citywide cooperation, from Mayor to the Council to the Directors to the workers to the unions to the public to the Fiscal Monitor. And, after a delayed start, that cooperation has too often been too little, and too late. If saying you were in favor of cutting taxes made you a tax cutter, our last three Mayors and our Fiscal Monitor would be in the “Tax Cutter Hall of Fame.” Every single Hoboken elected official the past 30 years has said they were opposed to high taxes and taxes are a bigger issue than ever. I’m not saying that some didn’t try. But the devil is in the details.
Mayor Zimmer and her team, in the end, were elected not just to cut taxes, but to bring competence and honesty back to city hall. Under her leadership, we are undoubtedly doing that. It been a long time coming and there is much to do, but we’re finally getting started.
Councilman Michael Lenz