In an editorial, former Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer explains why she believes Hoboken Mayor Emily Jabbour and Jersey City Mayor James Solomon should not be blamed for the finances they inherited from their predecessors.
As the Mayor of Hoboken from 2009 to 2017, I’ve watched the budget crises facing Hoboken and Jersey City with a sad sense of deja vu.
I became mayor during an extremely turbulent time. My opponent in the 2009 mayor’s race had been arrested for taking bribes, and the fiscal irresponsibility of the preceding administration had resulted in a takeover of Hoboken’s finances by the State of New Jersey.
The State fiscal monitor had imposed a 70% increase in Hoboken’s municipal taxes (yes, you read that correctly!) to close the structural deficit.
Even that was not enough. Over the next few years, we did the hard work needed to put Hoboken back on a sound fiscal path. We were able to reduce taxes by 10% by cutting spending and brought Hoboken from junk bond status to AA +.
Sadly, Mayor Ravi Bhalla returned to the old fiscally irresponsible budget practices that had led Hoboken into this crisis, as did Mayor Steven Fulop in Jersey City. In both cases I believe this was because their highest priority was their ambition for higher office.
As a result, both Hoboken Mayor Jabbour and Jersey City Mayor Solomon face huge fiscal crises caused by the irresponsible budget practices of their predecessors.
Mayors Jabbour and Solomon deserve credit for honestly exposing the full scale of the problems their cities face and proposing real solutions.
Unfairly, but not surprisingly, they are being blamed for the pain associated with any honest solution. This is the equivalent of blaming the doctor who diagnosed your cancer for the fact that radiation and chemo are painful treatments.
Mayor Jabbour and the Hoboken City Council should be commended for working together to adopt a budget with an 11% tax increase that will provide some breathing room for more sustainable solutions.
Mayor Solomon, facing an even more severe crisis than Hoboken, deserves enormous credit for negotiating with the State for unprecedented assistance, allowing Jersey City that breathing room as well.
Given the breathtaking scope of the crisis Mayor Fulop left behind, the arrangement also apparently requires a 15% to 20% tax increase this year. It’s understandable that the Jersey City Council would need some time to digest the harsh reality the city faces.
Given the scale of the problem, there is simply no painless way to dig Jersey City out of the hole that Mayor Fulop left behind, and Jersey City taxes are going to have to increase substantially as part of any realistic solution.
Imagine what the tax increase would be without the $120 million in State aid, since a 15% to 20% tax increase is necessary even with that aid!
Without the assistance that Mayor Solomon worked so hard to obtain from the State, Jersey City taxpayers might have been facing a 70% tax increase or more, just as Hoboken did in 2009.
Unlike Jersey City today, Hoboken did not receive any financial assistance from the State of New Jersey.
I hope the Jersey City Council will look to Hoboken’s example – both back in 2009 and now, and work with Mayor Solomon and the State to put Jersey City back on the fiscally responsible path its residents, employees and taxpayers deserve.
Dawn Zimmer was the mayor of Hoboken between 2009 and 2017.
Why is Dawn piping in about JC? Is she looking for another contract from them? And it’s comical for her to point a finger at Bhalla when she handed him the keys. One difference between Solomon and Jabbour is Solomon voted against Fulop’s budgets. Jabbour voted for Bhalla’s and every bad and costly piece of legislation he put threw.
Let me get this straight.
Dawn Zimmer decided not to run again for a third term because she was going to work on climate change initiatives in light of the United States pulling out of the Paris accord.
She sold her home and moved out of Hoboken.
She hasn’t really been heard from in eight years except for recently, where Shannon and her husband came to town to Campaign for marry Jabbour.
That’s all well and good but she can’t keep blaming Ravi Bhalla unless she blames herself
She blocked out everyone else with her midnight announcement that she wasn’t going to run for a third term just a month or so after she held a big Fundraiser and the HHA settling a major lawsuit that involved accusations by its former director and convicted felon Carmelo Garcia.
That scandal had everything to do with her husband having a private lunch with Garcia.
Also, Garcia obtained emails where zimmer‘s husband was giving hypothetical strategies on ways to deal with Garcia on the HHA.
Garcia filed complaint. Garcia walked away with a six figure settlement.
Zimmer and her husband walked out of Hoboken
And now they’re back, dipping their toes and political retention pond!
Just go away we don’t need your help. Hoboken’s budget was worked out between the city Council and the mayor quite harmoniously.
Why is she doing this? Is she looking for a consulting job? Has the Paris accord resolved all our climate issues already?
BTW Camilo Garcia has plead guilty to multiple felonies and is currently awaiting sentencing
This is entertaining if the costs weren’t so deadly to residents. Here, the former mayor of Hoboken almost a decade back parachutes in to defend the Big Govermen people who aided and abetted the financial spending crisis in Jersey City and Hoboken. Every.Step.Of.The.Way.
No, Solomon and Emily Jabbour are not outsiders inheriting bad municipal budget scenarios. There were long time council members in their towns who had a direct and sizable role in their town’s finances. Emphasis on sizable and direct.
Emily Jabbour never saw Bhalla’s reckless spending budgets as problematic. She rubber-stamped all of it. She sat back as others would carve into the Bhalla ballooning budgets and cut them back facing his hostile wrath every step of the way. Solomon is equally at fault no matter the gamesmanship deployed here.
It’s sad that Dawn Zimmer who was excellent on spending foolishly and many good governance reforms ruined her legacy backing the detestable Ravi Bhalla, (Terror Flier anyone?) and the not so financially adept Emily Jabbour. She made two miserable choices, her reasons are personal if not largely driven by petty personal beefs. No need to detail that here.
A guilty conscience takes one to dark places and poor public rationalizations. Poor Dawn. Poor Shadow. Now collect the parachute, roll it up and take the next boat up the Hudson or however you wish back to the Catskills. Nice try.
Those five thousand dollar solar powered garbage cans, speeds bumps out the yazoo, curb marking pylons every where, come on Dawn, these are only the things an average uninterested citizen can see. Dawn you are defending the indefensible. Municipal government has become predatory, and the voters and tax payers know it.
It should be noted that Mayor Zimmer when she bowed out of her reelection campaign basically anointed Ravi Bhalla to take her office bypassing Emily Jabbour and everyone else on the Hoboken City Council.
She also left the City in a fairly good finical place.
Two terms as Mayor left both Bhalla and Hoboken almost bankrupt and buried under failed real-estate deals.
Remember too the financial mess former Mayor and convicted felon Anthony Russo that forced the State of New Jersey to take over Hoboken’s finances and subsequently drastically raised taxes and cut City staff.
Hoboken has aways been a mess.
How did Zimmer “bypass Emily Jabbour” when Jabbour wasn’t on the Council then? Jabbour was elected in 2017- with Bhalla, on his slate. She wasn’t on the Council when Zimmer stepped down and endorsed. Zimmer picked Bhalla because she trusted him more than the others with her legacy project, RBD. Let history be the judge if that was right.
Yes, Dawn endorsed Bhalla, but at the end of the day the good people of Hoboken voted for him. Twice. Solomon, from what I can see, has really never managed an organization in which revenues must equal or exceed expenses. Jabbour voted in lock step with most, if not all, of Bhalla’s major intiatives – -who is she, really?
Term limits, spending limits and a legitimate two party system — which means no maga, please.