Hoboken

Councilwoman Beth Mason

HOBOKEN – It's Achilles' heel time here as the candidates have to ask questions of one another and it’s two against one as Beth Mason fends off two of her chief rivals.

Dawn Zimmer wants to know what issues Mason and her running mates agree on, and Peter Cammarano pursues a similar line, arguing that the councilwoman ditched her self-styled reformer image when she assembled a ticket of old school Hobokenites.

“My slate has been active in Hoboken for quite some time,” answers Mason, who says Raul Morales has spoken out on affordable housing “because we need all levels of income here,” and Anthony Pasquale is strong in the business insurance area.

“The reason I chose my slate is you have to represent all of Hoboken,” she says. 

Councilwoman Dawn Zimmer

HOBOKEN – Ryn Melberg tags Dawn Zimmer with a jab, straightening some of the slumped over figures in the audience. 

Melberg says Zimmer supported the New Jersey Transit Project, then backed away from the plan when it ultimately failed.

Zimmer objects.

“Ms. Melberg, I never said I supported the New Jersey transit project, I was very concerned this council was going to pass this project, and I went to the meetings to try to (make sure the proposal did the least damage possible),” says the councilwoman.

Zimmer then goes after Mason.

Councilwoman Beth Mason

HOBOKEN – They kick around the development issue. Peter Cammarano comes across as the moderate, while Dawn Zimmer stakes out the position of the grassroots neighborhood activist.

Now it’s Beth Mason’s turn.

An infamous quote attributed to her served as the buildup to this discussion topic: “develop or die.”

She wades in.

“Really what it all boils down to is an economic development plan,” says Mason, who supported the Chruch Towers project because it contained 400 affordable housing units. 

At-Large Councilman Peter Cammarano

HOBOKEN – The candidates dissect this year’s $123 million budget, 80% of which consists of personnel costs.

Peter Cammarano voted for it, Beth Mason voted against it. Cammarano plans a budget under $100 million in year one. Mason says she can saw it down to $90 million.

Tom Vincent pans the Council in general.

“I want to reorganize the thing right from the bottom up, we can do more with half the resources,” Vincent says. “A system review should be part of rebuilding it.”

His own budget? No idea.

Ryn Melberg says she would have modified the budget and then passed the budget prepared by the state monitor. She wants a new strategic plan and a new economic development plan.

“We need to get back to focusing on what makes this city great,” she says. “People should not have to be millionaires to live in Hoboken. (But) that is the redevelopment our city is forcing on us. …We can’t afford another politician as mayor.”

HOBOKEN – The candidates for mayor get two minutes apiece to make their respective cases.

Database system designer Tom Vincent goes first. He anchors his candidacy on improving the city’s technological infrastructure.

He also injects a desperate tone of civility.

“The public dialogue is built on rumor and innuendo,” he complains.

Next goes Frank Orsini, a commercial mortgage broker and 19-year resident with compliance and operational experience in New York financial firms.

HOBOKEN – If you see CIA types wearing abbreviated Burger King head-sets idling in front one of the hipper fitness joints here, that probably means the governor’s inside, pumping iron. He lives here, of course, and that’s an unstated given in this urban yuppie pleasure dome that still has some harder core, untamed edges in the span of its crunched together six wards, where several mayoral candidates now gather to face off in this debate at Our Lady of Grace Church.

“Will the candidates please come to the stage?”

“The mayor wants to have it both ways; he wants to withhold information from the public and then he gets angry when someone resorts to the courts to get the information the public is  entitled to.”

HOBOKEN - Councilwoman Beth Mason tabled her proposed salary Assemblyman/Councilman Ruben Ramos: Politicker file photoand benefits ordinances at tonight’s council meeting, a move that likely did nothing to diminish the prolonged stare-down from now until next year’s mayoral election between Mason and her opponents.

Broken into two reform pieces, the freshman councilwoman’s proposed ordinances would scrap benefits and limit to $1 the council salaries of council people who hold more than one public job.

She sent them to committee tonight, but not before rousing her opposition.

Mason’s antagonists see the prospective mayoral candidate’s measures (backed up by Councilman Peter Cunningham) as an attempt to bait At-Large Councilman Peter Cammarano and humiliate Assemblyman/At-Large Councilman Ruben Ramos, the governing body’s lone dual elected office holder.

Cammarano was out of town. Ramos fought back.

At-Large Councilman Peter Cammarano: Politicker photo 

HOBOKEN - Even members of his inner circle swear that they don’t yet know whether Mayor Dave Roberts plans to run for a third term in 2009.

Whatever his intentions, other Hoboken diehards are surfacing. No one’s announced yet, but fierce political battles now will undoubtedly have political consequences next year in this city stung by the embarrassment of a state takeover of its finances.

There are all of the usual speculations surrounding possible candidates. A sighting of former Councilwoman Carol Marsh at a municipal meeting provokes the conclusion in come corners that she’s definitely running. A recent inundation of photos of Mayor Roberts on the Hoboken website prompts someone else to opine that Roberts is running - bet on it.

Businessman and neighborhood kid made good Frank "Pupie" Raia?

Of course, he’s running, say Hoboken insiders. He always runs, and no doubt he will perpetuate his longstanding animus this year with Councilman Michael Russo, who clubbed him last year in their 3rd ward showdown.

This is a victory for New Jersey citizens' rights to access to government information