Dear Editor:
Phil Cohen (Letters, July 6) says that the Hudson County Freeloaders (as a former “wacky mayor” called them) approved a budget that will raise Hoboken’s taxes by 14.5 percent. Mr. Cohen fears that those who have lived in Hoboken for years and depend on fixed incomes-
retirements, Social Security, etc.—will be forced out of town.
As if that isn’t threat enough, there is the recent “reval” hanging like the Sword of Damocles over their heads. Already their property taxes, paid quarterly to an insatiable City Hall, are the highest in the U.S., maybe the world. Okay, they worry, maybe the “revaluation” of their property has increased, but their incomes haven’t.
What to do? Ask an old timer: “City Hall won’t lower taxes. City Hall never lowers taxes. There’s always a cousin or a brother or a friend who needs a city job. Mayors come and go, but some things never change. That’s the way it’s always been in this town”, he said. “Maybe they’ll use the new hires to write more parking tickets to raise even more money for City Hall. If a little of your car sticks out over the yellow curb, they don’t give you a break, you get a $54. ticket, and who’s got the time to go to court to fight it? They’ve got me for 2 of them so far.”
What to do? Well, we can learn from the example of taxis and buses emblazoned with advertisements, and sports stadiums that have taken money from corporations in exchange for letting themselves be renamed. Two come immediately to mind, but there are more: Heinz Stadium, in Pittsburgh, and Safeco Field in Seattle. So why not sell ad space on our houses?
The old-timer lives on a street that conjures up an image of little backyard organic gardens, but so what! Maybe, in our New World (corporate dominated) Order, Monsanto Chemical would find it amusing to pay this tax-whipped Hobokenite on Garden St. the right to attach its logo, GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) to his old brownstone.
T. Weed