People, my friend Planning Board Commissioner Gary Holtzman is honest and decent as the day is long. He is extraordinarily willing to give his time to educate and/or help others, before they even ask. Which explains why he has stepped in shit.
Nevertheless, he's got shit on his shoe.
What to do??? Throw the shoe out? Keep it on? Censure the shoe? Let the shoe decide its own fate? Exchange it for a new shoe?
Thank goodness, I am not The Decider of Shoes!
Note, craven council opportunists would like to investigate the shit out of the shitty shoe. What's to investigate? Everybody can see it. In fact, the craven opportunists peddled the shitty shoe to the media in order to embarrass the cobbler!
Indeed! The shitty shoe has become a media springboard for ambitious wanna-be cobblers to weaken the cobbler-in-chief. Oh, for the sake of a shoe.
GA suggests the council shoe-sniffers smell their own shoes first. Boy, do they stink. Especially those of Councilman Mike DeFusco.
Gary certainly should have checked with the PB lawyer before sending out an email like that. If he didn't, then it was certainly was bad judgment on his part. If he did, and the PB lawyer OK'd it, then we might want to hear from him why he thought it was OK and perhaps it was bad judgment on his part.
ReplyDeleteBut if bad judgment was a crime I can think of a few council members who would have been convicted on multiple counts.
If protecting the City was actually the goal of these Council Members, the first thing they would have done would have been to quietly let the PB lawyer know about the email so he could speak to Gary, evaluate the situation, and advise the Planning Board whether any remedial steps needed to be taken to walk back anything that might be construed as improper.
The last thing anyone genuinely interested in the protecting the City's interests would do is run to the press grandstanding.
The butt-hurts are all about scorched earth. They'll shit-can Holtzman's decades of service as if it never happened the same way they did with Doyle. What did you expect from Beth and 411?
DeleteSorry, meant to say, what did you expect from Tiff and MSV. Honest mistake.
Funny you should raise the Beth Mason comparison. I just watched about an hour of the council meeting. When I tuned in, DeFusco was pulling a line item from the budget (about $200) for croissants and coffee bought by the Office of Constituent Services. The croissants and coffee were served to the public at various constituent meetings the mayor has been holding around Hoboken.
DeleteDeFusco bloviated about wasting taxpayer money, etc. on coffee for the public. Now, one can assume this isnt the first time this expense has been in the budget, but it is the first time the Council has refused to pay it.
Do ya think it has anything to do with Councilmman DeFusco being barred from Marineview's residents-only meeting? Hmmmmmm?
Oh yeah-- Ruben, Tiffanie, Jen and Peter voted to pull that coffee/croissants line item. Oh boy... how Beth Mason-esque. So petty, petulant, nasty, bitter.
Get rid of the ones you can. 2,5,6. If nothing else the usual suspects can go back hanging with the other usual suspects instead of masquerading as good-government types.
DeleteI will reimburse the city if it means DeFusco gets to eat shit.
DeleteBingo. For all the years of service that Gary has given to Hoboken and to REFORM you would think that Jen Giattino and Peter Cunningham wouldnt shoot first and ask questions later. Tiffanie Fisher just plain sucks. She has no historical memory and will hop in bed with whomever will carry her political ambition forward. She's so far in the sack with Ramos and DeFusco she needs to come up for air. I had a glimmer of hope that the other two, Jen and Peter, might channnel their better angels.
ReplyDeleteYes, unless the PB counsel vetted it, the list was bad judgment. No question.
Clearly, the hyenas of the council majority rushed to destroy the guy in the press before trying to understand what happened or what the proper statuatory procedures are to address this before rushing to the media.
I hear there are good candidates waiting in the wings in the 2nd, 5th and 6th. Revenge-based government has had a nice run but it's winding down. It's a little like trumpism. Even people who were on board in the initial, heady, butt-hurtest days seem to be slowly tiring of having to keep a chip on the shoulder at all times and turn every story into a Bhalla organized crime fantasy. Some of these people know Gary and they know better than this narrative.
DeleteUm, the mayor has NO statuatory power to remove a Planning Board member. .. idiots.
ReplyDeleteDeFusco's ethical issues have been well covered here, so I won't bother repeating them. But here's some stuff folks may be less familiar with. I've heard that back in 2015, Peter Cunningham was caught red handed using an illegal parking permit belonging to a senior that had moved out of Hoboken. And rumor has it that after Sandy damaged her brownstone, developer Hany Amed did Jen Giattino a solid and rented her a great apartment near her home for a "fair" price, and Jen has been "sympathetic" to Hany's interests on the Council ever since. Because of their very real contributions to the City and a belief that even with these lapses they were fundamentally honest, people aware of these issues gave them the benefit of the doubt, held there noses and their tongues.
ReplyDeleteGary made an honest mistake and used poor judgment. He also has served his community for years in a volunteer position and has made important if unsung contributions to the progress our City has made.
Jen and Peter, for political reasons, are trying to mischaracterize a mistake as corruption. Perhaps they should consider reflecting on their own glass houses.
I fail to see how sending out an email is corruption. All sending an email out indicates is his mind is made up already. That isn't corruption. That is just an indication he is an honest person who cannot be bought.
DeleteDa Ojo Rojo, the email was an unfortunate and a serious mistake. That's a fact. It is also a fact that those on the council who have known Gary for decades, know he is a straight, honest progressive who worked WITH them on the good govt side for YEARS, are now playing Beth Mason low road politics to turn him into Al Capone. They ran straight to the media, did not give Gary the courtesy of a phone call.
DeleteOkay, I finally tracked down the article on Holtzman. SMH
ReplyDeleteThis is not a controversy worth wasting one ounce of energy on. It is not uncommon for people to ask for recommendations for professionals. So long as the list allows for sufficient choice and he gets not so much as a penny in consideration from anyone on that list, what the hell is wrong w/ providing recommendations for competent professionals? This sort of thing is entirely common and it might even help to make sure everyone who comes before the planning board has a competent attorney representing their interests. It also might help if we had competent people on the planning board (as in "not Mike").
You are correct. State, county and local boards are often asked by applicants for such lists. On certain types of projects where public funds are used, the state provides lists of those contractors who are qualified to bid, saving time and money for the taxpayers. As long as the planning board doesn't favor one over another, this is not the problem DeFuckup wants to make it. It's also ironic that any of those five council members think they have an ounce of credibility when it comes to ethics, morals, honesty and the best interests of Hoboken in mind when they pull shit like this. Can't wait for them to be replaced.
DeleteLots of comments on MileSquare411 about Holtzman's past association with Beth Mason. As far as I'm concerned, Beth Mason is yesterday's news, but to the extent she's still relevant, so is her chairpersonship and significant sponsorship of a political campaign of Tony Soares.
ReplyDeleteOh, MeanSquarePoo? The venue for poetry about dead pets? Even Klaussen wouldnt go there. But, like Klaussen who repeatedly posted the ugliest pics of (then-heavy) Mike Lenz, Roman Brice does the same to yours truly. Like a psychotic toddler. Tony Soares correctly called the site a "train wreck."
DeleteHe’s irrelevant. As if to prove the point he goes around talking about people who left public life years ago. Nobody cares what that fossil thinks.
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ReplyDeleteI think you've got the wrong site.... this isn't the one that makes fun of people's physical appearance (and hosts poetry about deceased pets).
DeleteOver in Horseshitland, one person commenting mentioned Gary and Ann Holtzman's comfy relationship with the company formerly known as Fields Construction. Not sure if that's true, but it always troubled me that Ann is our zoning officer, and Gary was the chairman of the planning board, though he's now just another member. This lapse of judgment aside with the list of attorneys, that doesn't look too good.
ReplyDeletePlease don't bring that trash over here. Brice is Perry Klaussen, withyours truly starring as Mike Lenz (Lenz, Lenz, Lenz... cant stop talking about Lenz, Lenz, Lenz... time to post a fat-Lenz pic) and Ravi starring as Zimmer, Kurt Gardiner starring as Lane Bajardi, Tiffanie Fisher starring as Beth Mason. Tony Soares is Tony Soares-- a Hoboken original.
DeleteThe only thing you might pick up over there is cyber-clap. I won't host false and malicious rumors. Thank you for your cooperation.
Prefacing the post with the phrase "over in horseshit land" was, I suppose, an owe so clever tactic to gain credibility with folks here.
DeleteThe issues surrounding the retirement of Bob Matule have been swirling around the real estate community (legal and developer) since he announced his retirement. Bob did represent a huge slice of the applications - that was his specialty and he was good at it. And, by the way, not every application for development is bad or sleazy or needs to be stopped; not every application is for a 300 plus unit developments. And an application does not get approved just because of the attorney who is representing the applicant. Not in Hoboken in 2018. However, that is apparently the absurd assumption underlying the attacks. Are they really suggesting that somehow Gary is getting a “kickback” from an attorney who was on the list? Be careful of accusing someone of a crime. I would have thought that people would have learned from the Bajardi debacle. And attorneys do not take lightly to having their professional reputations questioned and smeared; it is their livelihood. Does anyone really believe that in 2018 there is any hint of the Cammarano and Russo 15k per approval corruption going on in Hoboken at this point? I am not being naïve; just the realistic viewpoint of someone who knows the ropes in the current Hoboken land use environment. But then again, I am not a conspiracy theorist who lives and breathes paranoia.
ReplyDeletePlenty of folks in town want to extend, remodel or otherwise seek permission to make improvements to their homes and need a good experienced attorney to represent them. It is natural to ask who is the active land use attorney in town. I did not see that Gary in any way shape or form try and steer business to any attorney - he was simply responding to (what I know to be) the spate of inquiries as to who is capable of handling a land use application. An application gets approved on the basis of its merits; if not, there is always the right to appeal to the courts, which generally take a dim view of any board denying (or approving) an application for no valid reason. Land use legal requirements are highly technical and, if a practitioner is not careful, an application can get botched and then everyone has egg on their face; the attorney has legal liability to the applicant and the board is likely facing litigation from a disgruntled applicant; litigation, which, by the way, costs the taxpayers money.
Bob’s retirement left a hole and it is natural and to be expected to discuss who will take up the slack by those people who are actively participating in the land use process. The same issues and concerns are presenting an application to the ABC Board, and the stakes are just as high. Even before Bob retired there was plenty of legitimate inquiries regarding who are the active and competent land use attorneys who regularly appear before the planning and zoning boards. Nothing new and absolutely nothing unethical or sleazy about the inquiries and discussions whatsoever. It happens in every municipality in NJ and even across the river in NYC. The people who sit on the ZB and PB are volunteers who willingly give their time to the community. Do you think that any one of them wants to sit through applications and watch and listen to an inexperienced attorney struggle to put on an application, which will invariably take too much time from the agenda and likely lead to multiple hearings? It is actually in everyone’s best interests to have competent and experienced attorneys appear before the board. This is merely a manufactured issue being touted by inexperienced and conspiracy laden politicos who need some issue to try and make points. Do they really think that any intelligent people who are involved in real estate development are buying this crap? It is especially sad to see a dedicated volunteer professional’s contributions to the community be trashed needlessly. I have never heard anyone question Gary’s integrity before in any manner whatsoever. The whole discussion is silly and to the professionals and grownups in the room, just tedious and annoying.
And, I am not on "the list."
Couldn't an applicant turn to the NJ Bar Association and ask for referrals to attorneys who specialize in land use?
DeleteIf you want a random list of people who practice a particular type of law - you can go to the bar association or the yellow pages but all that will get you is a list of names of people who may or may not do a good job. That isn't how you find a good lawyer, doctor or professional in any field. To find someone good, you ask for recommendations from other people who might be able to point you in the right direction (like the professionals who worked w/ the planning board over the last several years).
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