5 CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS NO-SHOW FOR VOTE ON COVID-MITIGATION SAME DAY 17 RESIDENTS TEST POSITIVE
Yesterday, Hoboken recorded its sharpest one-day increase of covid cases since last April: seventeen... an alarming uptick in regional covid infection has triggered the State of New Jersey to mandate new restrictions in order to slow covid spread, with Newark, Paterson and Hoboken enacting their own: bars and restaurants now must close at midnight.
Also yesterday, Hoboken was poised to take covid spread-mitigation one step further.
Anticipating 'super-spreader' Halloween house parties, a Special (pre-Halloween) Meeting of the Hoboken City Council was scheduled at 6PM on Zoom. The agenda: a resolution enabling the Hoboken Police Department to ticket 'super spreader' party hosts a hefty $1,000 fine. The resolution was designed to untie the City's hands, enabling police to stop 'super-spreader' house parties, a public health menace during a pandemic.
COUNCIL DERELICTION OF DUTY REPORTED ON NETWORK TELEVISION NEWS
Several media outlets came to Hoboken yesterday to report this on their nightly news programs.
Only the media left with a different story: the unexplained absence of 5 Hoboken councilmembers on an urgent matter of public health, denying a quorum for a vote.
WPIX11 News put it this way: "the wheels of government came to a screeching halt."
The news story reported on at least three network broadcasts last night is the Hoboken council's unexplained absence from a ZOOM call on a measure to contain the rapid spread of covid in Hoboken on the day our city suffered the most cases we've had since April.
FISHER, RAMOS, DEFUSO, FALCO AND RAMOS DENY QUORUM fOR A COVID MITIGATION VOTE
The Council's emergency ZOOM meeting would have been quick. In what smells like a coordinated scheme to deny a quorum, only Councilpersons Jim Doyle, Jen Giattino, Phil Cohen and Emily Jabbour attended, along with Hoboken Police Chief Ken Ferrante.
One Councilwoman had an actual reason not to attend, but did she did attend; Councilwoman Emily Jabbour called in to the ZOOM meeting from the hospital in Washington D.C. Why?
Jabbour replied, "I called in from a hospital because that's how important this is to Hoboken- on a day where there were 17 new cases. And the rest of the Council members couldn't be bothered. My uncle had heart surgery yesterday. It's an appalling abdication of responsibility."
Emily's uncle is 85 years-old, and recovering from valve replacement surgery
FISHER MADE TIME TO WRITE A 2,418-WORD SCREED 30 MINUTES BEFORE BLOWING OFF THE COVID ZOOM CALL
About 30 minutes before the start of the Zoom Call on mitigating covid spread in Hoboken, Councilwoman Fisher emailed a lengthy response to the Hoboken BoE Statement sent to the Council. Where no response was required, Fisher expectorated a vomitorium-full of indignation, re-hashing her bizarre, bean-counting theory on her "20 cents to the dollar" theory, how the mayor and his "divisive" support for the Hoboken District "hurt" charter schools. Hey, Corporation Council Aloia, isn't it time to tell Fisher to stick her proboscis out of Hoboken's Board of Education business? I can opine about her stupid and ill-informed her opinions are, but from a legal persepctive, Hoboken's BoE is a duly-elected, independent governing body that does not answer to local government.
Sure, I digress.
The takeaway is that Councilwoman Fisher made time to write lengthy self-serving screed, endorsing her theories on allocation of PILOT monies 30 minutes before blowing off an urgent Hoboken public health matter.
There are no excuses for Fisher, Falco, Ramos, DeFusco and Russo to have blown off this Zoom call, leaving four Council members, City Professionals and HPD Chief Ferrante stranded without a quorum.
And that's why this stunning abdication of duty to Hoboken residents was televised to the tri-state area on three network broadcasts last night, and is spreading to local media outlets.
And Hudson TV reported:
Total abdication of their responsibility, and yet most of them think they're mayoral material. Not one council member in the group of no-shows is capable of managing a dry cleaners in a strip mall, let alone managing a city of almost 60,000 people.
ReplyDeleteFor starters, we need to dock their pay and fine them when they have unexcused absences, three of which means you lose your seat, which almost happened to Mason, and before the next election, eliminate compensation and benefits for city council seats.
Question: if the fine had been in place, would DeFusco's party last Monday received one?
Can we see the full Tiffanie Fisher email manifesto? What nonsense did she have to say?
ReplyDeleteIt's never advisable for an elected official to write a screed after a box of wine, causing them to miss public meetings.
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