Now that the election is over and the Hoboken City Council is not divided into 4 separate campaigns, the City can get back to business and deal with urgent matters- none more urgent to Hoboken taxpayers than what to do about our current SUEZ contract.
Under the current contract, which originated in 1994, was amended in 1996 and 2001, the City's maintenance and repairs are deeply underfunded. Our contract covers only $350K in SUEZ maintenance and repairs annually- the actual cost has been about $2M per year.
The fact that the City has only been paying SUEZ $350K has not stopped SUEZ from repairing and maintaining Hoboken's water distribution system, with an average of 2 water main breaks per month.
No, SUEZ has been providing necessary services to the City, and running a tab.
That tab is the notorious "$8.3M" which was unfairly used to beat up the mayor during the election. In fact, the City's tab continues to increase, and is likely closer to $10M now than the $8.3M it was 4 months ago when the campaigns turned it into a symbol of mayoral incompetence.
In fact, Mayor Dawn Zimmer spent close to 2 years trying to extricate Hoboken taxpayers from the lousy, old SUEZ contract. The Mayor's negotiations included erasing Hoboken's ever-increasing tab, increasing Hoboken's annual maintenance allowance to prevent (or minimize) any future tab(s) from accruing, and getting us "free upgrades" which included leak-detection technology (residents would receive instant notifications at 'first leak' of a water main, preempting an actual break.)
Yes, for all this residents will pay nominal increases in their monthly water bill.
Yes, for all this residents will pay nominal increases in their monthly water bill.
Mayor Dawn Zimmer accomplished this feat for Hoboken.
Mayor Zimmer's renegotiated SUEZ contract erased our 'tab' plus added $31M in capital improvements to infrastructure, plus raised our annual maintenance/repair allowance to $1.8M. On September 1, 2017. Zimmer urged the City Council, via Council President Jen Giattino, to bring it to a vote at the September 6 meeting. Zimmer practically begged Giattino for an "up or down" vote. If the vote were "down" then perhaps the mayor could salvage the renegotiated agreement in a form amenable to the Council.
What happened at the September 5th Council meeting?
The Council President, herself a candidate for mayor, did not allow SUEZ to make a 10-minute presentation on technology upgrades included in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), pulled the SUEZ contract not allowing an 'up or down' vote, at the same time there were suggestions of mayoral incompetence and calls to investigate her (the Mayor) along with the old and renegotiated SUEZ contracts.
Does anyone wonder what transpired with SUEZ after that?
GA is going to show you. On September 18, 2017, SUEZ sent a letter to Mayor Dawn Zimmer; their response following the Council's refusal to call a vote on the MOU.
On September 20, the Mayor replied to SUEZ. Then she forwarded the SUEZ letter and her reply to the City Council and copied Hoboken's Business Administrator Stephen Marks.
Do you peeps follow?
SUEZ is telling Hoboken that "negotiations of the amended and restated contract have essentially ceased."
Of course they have. The renegotiated contract never was put up for a vote- a political calculation made in a political season, which put Hoboken in SUEZ-limbo. And the MOU did not come back "mid-November".
Will it come back late-November?
Will SUEZ allow it back for a late-November vote?
Peeps, SUEZ has told us "take it or leave it." We can leave it. And then, we pay the 'tab' ($8.3M as of June 2017) that will accrue until the current contract expires in 2024- an estimated $17M.
As a consequence, taxpayers who will get mightily screwed know who to thank at the polls in 2019. They will have new choices because "more voices are better."
Those who delayed the signing of the Suez contract basically said, I don't know all the facts, or care about them, but I think I could have done better, so I am going to delay the inevitable and do what ever I can to politicize it to my advantage to try to get elected.
ReplyDeleteEveryone knew what the inevitable outcome would be.
Now it is time for you to do your job for the people of Hoboken.
i eagerly await the (looooong) Facebook post from someone who is good at math to explain their way out of this one.
ReplyDeleteI also look forward to more stupid discussions from unemployable morons who think they know better explaining all the ways they are right and the rest of us are wrong.
DeleteBTW, I'd bet the mayor shared that letter w/ folks on the CC a while ago and find it very curious they have been absolutely silent on this issue for over a month. Me thinks they all realize they were complete morons and wanted to bury this discussion until after the election.
Da Ojo Rojo-
DeleteSUEZ's letter is dated September 18 and stamped "received" on September 19.
The mayor replied to SUEZ, then forwarded everything (SUEZ letter, her reply) to the City Council on September 20- see above embedded email.
Ojo - think it's a current liability now? If so, this is a victory for Tiffanie! She's finally right.
DeleteWell, if she forces a tax increase, thank her for your tax increase next time she runs for office by voting for the "anyone but Tiffanie".
Deleteman, that sure would be some "victory" for tiff: stall and delay purely for political purposes during the campaign season, lose the election by a landslide, and then have the stunt come back to blow up in your face and bite you (and taxpayers) in the ass in the form of a wholly unnecessary tax increase. yup, she's a brilliant strategist: win the battle to try and prove a point but lose the war. a freakin' genius, she is.
DeleteI'll say it again -- perhaps slightly off-topic, but apropos in my opinion -- there is no excuse for any public reception to the election outcome by other candidates and high-profile supporters of other candidates than "Congratulations to the new mayor, I look forward to working with him in the interest of the greater good of Hoboken."
ReplyDeleteZimmer was abundantly gracious to Cammarano even after he spent the entirety of the runoff election waging an explicitly sexist campaign characterizing her as a housewife, a buffoon and an amateur, and ultimately won by a vote margin almost precisely equal to the number of "votes" mysteriously discovered in a shoebox under a desk at the county election office.
And yet she congratulated him, pledged to work with him and wished him well.
Political aspirants, take a page out of Mayor Zimmer's book -- she's won a few elections, you know.
Who didn't congratulate him?
Delete@indie, do you read yr pal tiff's Facebook page?
Deletefrom her now-infamous campaign postmortem: "But even knowing all of this, Team Bhalla and Mayor Zimmer sent out campaign mailers and simply smeared Jen Giattino in our community for their own gain knowing full well that what they wrote was a lie. It wasn’t right and congratulating their victory would mean condoning their actions which I can’t."
@me, you're wasting your time. If indie wants to play games with insinuations that "gee it would be awful if the new mayor-elect came into office with this cloud over his head," i.e. potential self-implication in the racist flier, she automatically disqualifies herself from serious discourse and can go back to the sandbox.
DeleteNext.
@me - I dont know - Bhalla and Zimmer did smear Jen, but with that said, it is my understanding that Ravi and Tiffanie had a cordial conversation at the veterans day event.
Delete@rbb - I didn't imply anything, it was Ravi that said all of the campaigns are being investigated, thus, all of them must be cleared and none of them have been absolved (Ravi's word, not mine).
Ahh the days when pointing out the flaws in a competing candidate were smears. I think the idea that Jen was smeared is just about as valid as the idea that she was surging.
DeleteI think Jen is a decent council person and I hope now that election is behind her we'll see some of her better qualities again. Moving on the Union Dry Dock was a decent, if needlessly delayed, first step. Another would be stepping up on the Suez contract update.
Folks, don't let Indie hijack this thread with her WAH-fest. Jen was as "smeared" as she (her campaign) "smeared" Ravi. Maybe Jen's constitution is too delicate for politics? I haven't heard a single "WAH" from Ravi, though he was maligned over and over again during the election. The election is OVER. Let's move on. Go cry on your Facebook page.
DeleteThe topic is SUEZ.
@indie, "a cordial conversation" is far from congratulating a winning candidate. you're stretching.
DeleteI wasn't there but, I think she did.
Delete@indie...ha! let me get this straight: you weren't even there and don't actually know what was discussed, but you'll stick to your guns anyway. LOL, ok.
DeleteI spoke with Tiffanie. Why is that funny?
DeleteSome perpetually angry members of the public seemed particularly nasty and angry at the last council meeting over issues that didn't seem likely candidates to generate such passion.
ReplyDeleteA divided disfunctional government is something all responsible people would like to avoid - been there done that - so I'm sure Mayor Elect Bhalla will attempt to build new bridges and rebuild old ones.
But bridge building is a two way street, and Monday's council meeting was not a promising sign.
not sure what you're referring to numbers, unless you mean the mayor trying to rob the citizenry of their right to referendum....again. (breaking the law) After having to pay out almost 100K for denying citizens their right to referendum in the past, I would think she'd stop it.
DeleteNC -I thinks some bridges were burned a long time ago and they were not set aflame by the mayor. Some of those bridges are not worth rebuilding as they have become irrelevant and counter productive.
DeleteUnfortunately some see advancing their own narrow personal political agenda by causing and leveraging chaos, it is more important to them achieve a small procedural victory than advance the general good of the Hoboken.
The video of the council meeting kind of speaks for itself Indie.
DeleteMaybe you should watch it.
That council meeting, and the Suez debacle council meeting, are permanent video validations for why Bhalla was the best candidate. Though there was comic relief from the incoherent Waiters, who expressed her support for "DelFrisco". Her confusion is understandable. One, a steak house, sells parts of a steer, the other sells a byproduct from a steer.
DeleteWhy does anyone bother to respond or engage with the village idiot, Indie? That fool left her credibility on the Willow Avenue Bridge eons ago. I still laugh at the insanity of her promoting “micro units” as a method to address affordable housing in Hoboken. She crawled so far up Jen’s butt on that issue she was tickling Jen’s tonsils. What a tool. But sadly, apparently she actually believes the shit sandwiches she tries to peddle on behalf of anyone that she thinks will get her something, principles be damned. And Indie, fuck off with any tedious response. I will not engage with you.
ReplyDeleteFortunately for the sake of affordable housing in Hoboken, those sincerely concerned therewith do not listen to, heed, respect or vote with their self-appointed spokeswoman, and most are unaware of her existence.
DeletePre-emptively striking her inevitable detail-oriented assertion of her authority on the difference between affordable housing and rent control, I'll just say that beneficiaries of both will fare well under Mayor Bhalla and will continue to have no idea who indie is.
You don't have to repond, QO, but my guess why you just did and others over here do as well is so that the folks over here, yourself included, can demonstrate their true character to anyone that happens to read the comment section. I'll admit it is also part of the reason that I participate, albeit less so more recently. The crew over here - 5 or 7 folks, continuously plays the same tune. Every now and then, in conversation, someone will mention the commenters on this blog - I think the adjective most frequently used is: vile. Id always be happy to have a reasonable dialog, but the default over here is the lowest of the low when it come to vile. Its actually an interesting, until it's not. Then it's boring.
DeleteI particularly love your suggestion that micro units are insanity...particularly since your better solution is more than likely no affordable units at all.
On a related note: H-Guy - there's nothing procedural about the law. Nor was there anything procedural about the Supreme Court ruling and the attorney fees that the city had to pay for violating the civil rights of it's citizens.
Civil Rights? Did I just type civil rights? Hmmm, and what kind of attorney is Ravi again?
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DeleteHowever many commenters post on here, 5,041 voters agree with the general gist of what we have to say, as opposed to the 2,537 voters who agree with those who think we are "vile."
Delete@indie, would you say a subtly racist whisper campaign about a candidate being "unelectable" and talk of how "hoboken isn't ready for a mayor who wears a turban" also considered to be "vile"? just wondering.
DeleteJust like Indie to dredge up this shitty, unproductive divisive topic, unrelated to how the Council will move forward on the SUEZ MOU.
DeleteIndie, Your usual cut and paste version of reality is often very far from the truth. In this case anyone watching the video will see the City attorney clearly advising the City Council that the law allowed the moving the vote up and that it was their choice how to proceed.
DeleteI honestly think that Councilwoman Giatinno lost a great deal of credibility and votes in the past election by allowing herself to be overshadowed and defined by negative and divisive people like you.
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ReplyDelete@me - racist comments subtle or otherwise are completely unacceptable and, of course, racism itself is abhorrent whether someone makes a comment or not as is prejudice, bigotry and classism. But with that said, I didn't personally hear any racism, etc. from anyone in any campaign (at least not related to the campaign - Ive seen offensive racist posts by a supporter of a candidate on FB and that supporter was shown in videos on this blog ). I did see comments about the racist comments aimed at Ravi on this blog and I take it at face value that it is true. I think that the 87% of this town that are white (including me) should be more willing to look inward on this one and always be ready to examine our own biases - whatever they might be. I don't, however, think any suggestion that not supporting Ravi as a candidate means someone is a racist and it is offensive to suggest it does.
DeleteExcept for those flyers - which the whole world saw - which disparaged Ravi & Muslims, I wasn't aware of racism being part of the campaigns...other than racism being attributed to others and I'm personally unwilling to attribute the flyers to any particular campaign (other than to illustrate a point when others do.)
@indie all that I’ll say is that based on Tiff’s Facebook post, she has been less than gracious. None of us, including you, were present for her alleged conversation with Ravi.
ReplyDeleteOne more comment. The bottom line is that an honest and professional Mayor, Dawn Zimmer, who is not running for another office, negotiated for us a way out of the mess that is the Suez contract, which is not her fault. Will the City Council accept that basic fact? Dawn is honest, professional, and not running for another office? She and her Directors have done what they can given the cards they were dealt. If the City Council acts as a Council as politically-oriented jackasses, trust me, based on what I saw this last election cycle, Ravi will clearly communicate these shenanigans, have the means of doing so, and make unprofessionals, policiL fools on the City Council pay a price for playing politics with our financial health. Just try him. I’m pretty sure Ravi will calmly, coolly, extract a deep price, without raising his voice, literally or figuratively even once.
ReplyDeleteSo, what you are saying is that we've elected a vindictive mayor. I don't think that is fair to him...even if you are.
DeleteWas Theodore Roosevelt "vindictive" because he spoke softly and carried a big stick? Good night, Indie.
DeleteTelling voters the truth is not being vindictive. But don't worry. I am sure Ravi will explain every stupid think you folks do to sabotage things in excruciating detail. I look forward to him making you folks look like fools.
Delete"I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell." - Harry S. Truman
DeleteIndie the obvious and sober truth is that this cycle you’ve worked with a delusional, losing campaign, implementing a losing, delusional strategy guided not by listening or data, but an out of touch echo chamber. Jen could not even win her own district and came in third in her own Ward. It’s the truth. Jen third place in her own Ward, her closest neighbors in her own District did not choose her. Sit in it and eat and absorb some old fashioned humble pie.
ReplyDeleteBased on past experience, Ravi will be thoughtful. He will be professional. Whether the City Council is thoughtful and professional is up to them. If they are not, no reason to jump up and down. Ravi’s style, like Dawn’s, seems to be to calmly, coolly do what needs to be done. We have a Suez contract that needs to be voted upon. Hopefully they will approach it like professionals.
You have no idea how glad I am that the election is over. I have lived in this great community for 41 years & was totally blindsided by the rhetoric from all candidates. Personally i like & have supported the mayor but do not believe that she should have chosen her successor. She is not the Queen & Ravi should never have been " the chosen one". Reform should have met & discussed their options, then chosen a candidate & then have gone on from there. Personally i have had contacts w the council members at diffrent times & do not have negative feelings towards any of them. They are all good people but perhaps imperfect, as we all are & for them they are are loyal to past influences. I finally voted for Ravi but would have preferred Jen but fully understood the she had no chance to win after the vicious attacks against her. Big issue was/is that she is a Republican & my response was "that so was Lincoln." as we go forward, i will find my voice & will speak out. I am thoroughly ashamed by what has transpired. Shame on all of you & especially our Mayor who began it all.
ReplyDeleteHob44, is it possible that the mayor did not see the council members as equally capable or motivated to carry out projects like Rebuild by Design, and she trusted Ravi more than the others to lead the city?
DeleteBased upon what I have seen this election, Jen''s campaign was chaotic, Ravi's was extroadinarily focused and well-run. So, I better understand why the mayor chose who she chose.
Um, so "attacks" against Jen were "vicious" but the ones against Ravi were... not-vicious? A whisper campaign that he was "not-electable", attacking him because one of his firm's clients is NJ Transit (though the work is unrelated to Hoboken and NJ transit is not his client ), alleging he is using Hoboken as a "stepping stone" to national politics, attacking him falsely as an "equity partner" in his firm, hanging the SUEZ liability around his neck, calling him "bad in math", a "bad administrator", and so on. Jen's campaign was nice? You should have voted for Jen if that is how you felt. Campaigns are not valentine contests.
It's over, and it's time to govern. You should speak out, if that is how you feel. I am not ashamed, I am proud to live in a city that elected Ravi Bhalla, I am proud our mayor cleaned up a municipality run by grifters,with 2 out of 3 mayor's who preceeded her arrested for corruption, she disinfected a City Hall rife with corruption, got Hoboken through Sandy magnificently, stood up to Christie when he tried to tie Sandy relief to greenlighting development, oversaw implementation of 2 flood pumps which have dramatically improve flooding... Zimmer is a great mayor in so many ways.
I agree, she could have been more considerate and respectful of the Council's feelings- and everybody's feelings, including mine- in the way she resigned. That said, hurt feelings are IMO a small thing compared with the good she has done for Hoboken, and the path she has set Hoboken on. So no, I don't feel shame at all. Not thoroughly, not even a little bit
WTF? You really believe an individual cannot have the freedom to endorse a candidate that they believe is best suited for office and should let other people decide who they should endorse? That is really screwed up thinking there buddy.
DeleteAs for Jen and her chances of winning - she never had a chance. And the simple fact that she couldn't figure that out kind of proves why the mayor picked the right person to endorse.
There's that imaginary reform convention to choose a candidate again. One of those notions that withers away to nothing when it makes contact with oxegyn. Pretty much the same as saying you don't have problem with 2017 Republicans because Lincoln was a Republican. I'm sure it's fun to say those things though. Lots of people do.
DeleteLet's take a minute to unpack the notion that Jen was the victim of a "dirty campaign." Off-topic from Suez, GA, I realize, but indulge me for a moment since Suez is, itself, a prop in a bit of campaign trickery that apparently will remain ongoing.
ReplyDeleteForgetting for a minute that all the Bhalla campaign said about Jen is that she's a Republican who's been less than forthright about many of her positions, which is 100% accurate, and that neither the DeFusco nor Romano campaigns had more than a word or two to say about her one way or the other (the aptly dubbed "GiaFusco Non-Aggression Pact" remains a legitimately curious element of this election). For the sake of argument, let's pretend the Bhalla campaign subjected Giattino to the sleaziest campaign imaginable. As I've previously stated, the highest-profile example in recent memory of a rock-bottom disgusting campaign move that effectively torpedoed its target is the "Swift Boating" of John Kerry. To repeat my disclaimer, I raise this not out of any partisan fondness for the bumbling Mr. Kerry but because the tactic was a perfectly executed specimen of everything that makes a ruthless campaign maneuver work -- it took the trait Kerry was touting as his greatest strength as a candidate, his military service, and subverted it into a liability by tarnishing its authenticity and raising questions about whether he even served honorably, thereby also neutralizing one of Kerry's core arguments against Bush, that he had not completed his military service despite running as a heroic war president. By having the ads disseminated by a third-party PAC, Bush established plausible deniability for the ugliness, insulating himself from any blowback.
Let's say something like this happened to Jen. One of Jen's core arguments for her candidacy was her reputation for high attention to constituent services. Let's imagine the Bhalla campaign targeted her strength directly by running ads and mailers featuring 6th Ward constituents alleging they went to Jen for help, and not only did she not help them but actually took advantage of them in some way, abandoned them and then used them as props in her claim to be attentive to constituents. These ads came from a PAC rather than Bhalla directly to establish the same insulative elements as the Swift Boat ads. The ads went far enough in their implications to leave the strong impression that not only is Jen not at all good about constituent services but has actually exploited and cheated constituents and lied about it, claiming to have helped them. Let's assume these ads were well-crafted and had their full intended effect.
Now let's look at the numbers. Kerry came out of the Democratic Convention at the end of July 2004 with a roughly 4% lead over Bush in most polls. He wound up losing the popular vote to Bush by 2.4% with most observers agreeing it was the Swift Boat ads that turned the tide (though other factors obviously played some role). That means one could argue the ads swung the election by 6.4%.
Jen got 16.5% of the vote, landing her in fourth place. The vote-getter above her was Romano, with 18.2% for third place, followed by DeFusco in second place with 29.6%, and the winner, Bhalla, with 32.75%.
Given the large number of candidates in the race, there's a number of different ways the race could have turned out if the hypothetical Swift Boating of Jen we're imagining for the sake of argument had not occurred, and Jen had received all the votes she "lost" due to Ravi's hypothetical smear campaign. I don't presume to have the mathematical acumen of some of Jen's teammates, but I will point out that in the most extreme scenario I can think of, with the entire 6.4% Swift Boat impact going back directly from Ravi to Jen in this scenario, which is pretty far-fetched, she winds up inching up to third over Roman, and he gets successfully spoiled into second after DeFusco.
Either way, there is no scenario under which she can plausibly argue to have been robbed of the mayor's seat by a negative campaign. Again, if Ravi had employed the most extreme smear tactic possible to sink Jen through the equivalent of a Swift Boat campaign, the most extreme possible effects of that campaign on vote totals, when reversed in the most extreme imaginable manner, move Fourth Place Jen to Third Place Jen and put DeFusco in the mayor's chair, which would have made her name mud in this town forever.
DeleteNow back to reality, where Ravi never attacked Jen as being a constituent-services fraud or said anything else inaccurate about her, and she got the vote total she got because she ran a sputtering campaign from the outset anchored around the notion that voters could be persuaded that Dawn Zimmer, and by extension Ravi, aren't who people think they are.
People weren't buying what she was selling, and the sooner Jen and her teammates accept that reality and try to learn from it, the sooner we can get back to the business of moving Hoboken forward.
Thanks for laying this out, RBB. I was beginning to think that I had missed the smear ads that Giattino's supporters keep referring to, but all team Bhalla did was state facts about her being a Republican and not owning up to it. Just like Cunningham. So if calling out that a candidate is a Republican is interpreted by them as being a "smear campaign", what does that say about how they feel about their own party? I'm grateful that being a Republican is now considered to be the bad thing that it is. Apparently, even by themselves.
DeleteOK @reformerbaseball can this somehow apply to Michael Defusco and how he claims he lost 500 votes because of the "terrorism flyer"?
DeleteDeFusco reminds me of Occhipinti in almost every way. Occhipinti's swagger and petulance on the council were insufferable, because he clearly didn't grasp what was plain to the rest of us - that he was a vessel and nothing more. He thought he won that seat out of sheer charisma and brilliance, pay no attention to those developer dollars and paid VBMs behind the curtain.
DeleteDeFusco is frustrated because he genuinely feels he came within striking distance of the mayoralty and lost out. He's partly right -- in truth, the Old Guard/developer coalition that faces off with Reform in every election DID come within striking distance of winning back the mayoralty. That DeFusco happened to be their latest in a long line of fresh-faced frontpeople was entirely incidental.
Very well said @reformbaseball. This is what folks can't seem to accept: "People weren't buying what she was selling, and the sooner Jen and her teammates accept that reality and try to learn from it, the sooner we can get back to the business of moving Hoboken forward."
ReplyDeleteThey based their campaign on: 1. Dawn is not popular as she/we think and so her endorsement does not carry much weight despite data to the contrary; 2. Peter, Jen, Tiff are popular and will carry their Wards for Jen; 3. Enough Hoboken voters will feel uneasy with Ravi's faith such that an election victory is impossible; 4. Jen is so great at constituent services that people will be attracted to her candidacy; 5. There is incompetence in City Hall (Suez) that will rile people up and get them to vote for Jen.
None of it turned out to be true. Based on the Tiffanie's Facebook post, I think this level of self-reflection is all but impossible. Someone in her life needs to close her social media accounts until safeguards can be put in place.
Turning to your topic GA, Suez is an opportunity to make rational choices. Again, up to them. What I have seen so far does not bode well.
Sadly, if current behavior any guide, many of them seem to be aping John Keim, who doubled down on Cammarano AFTER the arrest, claiming he was "ensnared in a sting operation" and that he would have made a phenomenal mayor but for the fact that "it's too bad he may have done what he may have done."
ReplyDeleteHere in the reality-based community, John Keim is a nobody, and those doubling down on Jen's failed campaign are heading nowhere fast.