Dear Editor:
Twenty years ago I moved to Hoboken. Steve Cappiello was mayor, the waterfront was a bombed out ruin, our very own bottle beach; buildings were burning and taxes were skyrocketing.
Sixteen years ago I bought a home in Hoboken and got involved politically. I was motivated by Hoboken’s potential, but distressed at the quality of leadership. I ran tax protests and stormed City Hall and wrote letters to the editor and along the way, I also got to know virtually all of the players involved in our current Mayoral election. I got to know them all and made a conscious choice to support Anthony Russo.
I made this choice because what I wanted for Hoboken was a waterfront I would walk on, taxes I could afford, streets that were safe and clean and a professional government that worked.
What I want for the future of Hoboken is what I’ve seen in the past eight years. I want a government that can set priorities. I want the government that reclaimed my waterfront and built me parks and walkways and greens space and planted trees and didn’t charge me a penny. I want a government that lowered and held the line on taxes even as the county raised them year after year after year. I want a government that doesn’t just point out the problems but offers the solutions. I want the government of Mayor Anthony Russo.
I want a government who eight years ago saw the potential problems with overdevelopment and passed the Zoning and Planning initiatives to ensure reasoned and reasonable growth so that we would not become Fort Lee, Edgewater or Weehawken. A government that understands that there are problems with parking, but offers real solutions, real parking spaces, real traffic planning and has the experience and initiative to find the funding to implement these solutions.
I urge everyone with a stake in Hoboken’s future to carefully consider the choice you will be asked to make on May 8 and join me in electing to a third term the man who brought you waterfront parks, lower taxes, safer streets, and did this while enduring surgery for brain and lung cancer, while undergoing radiation treatment and chemotherapy. A man who’s love for this City made him want to serve a third term when he could have just as easily thrown in the towel and retired on a tremendous record. A man we should all be proud to continue to call Mayor for four more years, Mayor Anthony Russo.
Suzanne (Warren) Manzi