To my friends and neighbors:
Thank you all for your time and attention, for your patience, for your many courtesies, and (of course) for your votes, during the election season just past. Thank you for hearing me out and for sharing your thoughts with me. Thank you most of all for reminding me that I have more friends and supporters than I realized. That was a great and unexpected reward of this campaign.
To Pat, my wife of 32 years, and my family: Thank you for your patience, understanding, and support. At all times, and especially during times like these, I love and cherish you.As to why I entered the race, and will continue to pursue the 5th Ward Council seat in the June 12th runoff:
The Fifth Ward is the city’s largest, with the greatest remaining development potential. Its issues transcend the ward itself – I believe it is the future of Hoboken. If we are ever going to build adequate open space and public amenities, they will most likely be here. If we are going to establish business incubators to diversify Hoboken’s economy, they will most likely be here.
To reach such goals, our government must be responsive to public input. Right now, it is not, and so we have a notoriously dysfunctional and depressingly clandestine administration. (When one’s Mayor is compared unfavorably to Captain Queeg, as ours recently was, one has a problem.) City Hall must also properly oversee and manage Hoboken’s interests much more effectively than they have been.
It would take a far longer letter to list all our city’s ailments resulting from poor administrative follow-through. Suffice it to note that they are legion. What I hope and wish to inspire by my campaign, are at least the beginnings of a buck-stops-here mentality around City Hall. That won’t be easy, considering where we stand today, but it is where we as a city must begin.
Yours truly,
Perry Belfiore