Dear Editor:
After 8 years of service, I remain as challenged, excited and motivated as ever to run for City Council. I love my City Council work and know I can still make a significant and positive difference.
During my tenure, we’ve accomplished a lot, overcoming many challenges along the way. When I first set out to run for City Council in 2007, the major issues to tackle included the City’s finances, flooding, securing additional open space and making sound development decisions that put community needs first. While we’ve made our share of mistakes, I am pleased to report that in each of these areas, we’ve made major progress. And it has been especially rewarding to have helped so many constituents with their individual issues of concern as well. I am very excited about the future of Hoboken.
As I have covered the 5th Ward in an effort to hear voters’ concerns and share ideas, the vibe has been very good, and I thank you all very much for the support and confidence you have placed in me as your councilman.
We face another critical juncture in this City’s history. Stable finances leads to many good things as it puts you in a favorable bargaining position on many issues. It can be, however, abused and squandered all too easily. I believe my experience in budgets and public finance remain essential to ensuring we stay on a sound fiscal path and continue to seek improvements to lower our cost of government.
Secondly, the market is hot and the demand by some for development is rabid. As chair of the community development committee, and having the responsibility to help choose Zoning Board members, there’s tremendous pressure from this special interest group – developers. And while I am by no means anti-development, we must make sure new projects work for our community and are of appropriate scale for Hoboken. One of the first things I set out to do was to craft redevelopment plans which diversified the tax base away from too much residential while seeking meaningful give backs to the community. The next four years will require my experience in handling these matters as I support smart, well thought out development in Hoboken.
When you do your due diligence, you will find my opponent is a surrogate of the developers, and wants to turn back the clock that puts political gamesmanship above good government. And that’s very troubling for Hoboken I’m afraid. The developers’ candidates will be well financed, and these candidates may exercise desperate measures to defeat us.
Like all Hoboken elections, this will be close. I ask for your support November 3rd, and please Vote C1 to keep Hoboken and it’s 5th Ward moving forward.
Sincerely,
Peter Cunningham
5th Ward Councilman