The Hoboken City Council unanimously approved (9-0) a resolution urging their labor unions to renegotiate their contracts, though some of the elected officials sitting on the dais thought it was a much more significant move than others.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
“You know this one, let’s just call it what it is, it’s pretty much theatre at this point. If those unions don’t come to the table and open their contracts, there’s absolutely nothing we can do,” began 3rd Ward Councilman Mike Russo, the runner-up in last year’s mayoral race.
“So, my question here is, what’s plan B? If the unions don’t come to open contracts, what’s the next step? Where are we going from that point, and I don’t know if that’s coming from the administration or the sponsors of this but I think, I most certainly want to know, and I’m sure the public wants to know … so I just want to know what that plan B looks like.”
5th Ward Councilman Phil Cohen, the council vice president and the primary sponsor of the measure, said this agenda item before the governing body was political fact, not theatre.
“We have a 17 million dollar structural deficit: Councilman, I know you want to interrupt me, just let me …,” Cohen began.
“I didn’t interrupt you! So you anticipated something and you made a fool of yourself,” Russo exclaimed.
Council President Ruben Ramos then advised Cohen that no one was going to interrupt him and he should therefore proceed.
“We have a 17 million dollar structural deficit, I think we all support collective bargaining, I think we all think it’s important, and most of us voted for it because we thought it was something that the mayor negotiated in good faith across the table,” Cohen explained.
“But just to pick up on what [1st Ward] Councilman [Paul] Presinzano just said, I think we should be looking at things with a hard eye and I think that we should encourage them to come back to the table and have serious discussions rather than talk about a plan B.”
The Mile Square City has six labor unions, two for the police department, two for the fire department, and two for their municipal workers.
The eight-year deal the council passed for the Hoboken Policemen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) just over a year ago by a vote of 6-0(2), with Presinzano and 2nd Ward Councilwoman Tiffanie Fisher abstaining, has faced the most scrutiny, as HCV first reported.
“So it’s just a good faith effort to try and see if one of the largest line items that we have, in terms of personnel and expenses and costs that are not negotiable, right, I mean they are fixed in our budget, whether there’s some flexibility. And I hope there is,” Cohen added.
He also acknowledged that the resolution is non-binding and that negotiating the contracts is up Mayor Emily Jabbour and the administration, not the council.
Russo said that he understood, that he would support the effort, but he reiterated that he feels it’s “political theatre” since there’s no guarantees any union comes to the table, which is why a Plan B and C are needed.
Councilman at-Large Joe Quintero said this was a matter of using all the tools in their toolbox in a dire situation before Fisher expressed that she agreed with Russo.
“This is more grandstanding than anything … This relates almost very specifically to one main contract that last March, after it was approved, I had COVID, I was home sick, and the business administrator called me … and said how could I not have gotten my colleagues to vote no for this contract,” she said about the long-term PBA agreement.
“I was earlier speaking with our most recent business administrator, called me, and said ‘we want you to know that we are not supportive of this contract. It is too expensive, it locks us in healthcare, it locks us in a costs for eight years, this is 100 percent the mayor not negotiating in good faith to give away some good things to the PBA.”
Ramos, a Paterson public school teacher, noted that he’s in a union and their board of education recently also experienced a budget shortfall where layoffs were projected. As a result, the union was asked to open up their contracts to renegotiate their health benefits.
” … By renegotiating our healthcare portion, we were able to save union membership jobs, by making those adjustments, we saved a couple million dollars in that school year so hopefully we’ll be able to be successful here as well in doing that.”
Prior to the vote, Presinzano had a lot to say about the current predicament.
“Again, I thank Councilman Cohen for reading my social media post. He reached out to me and said ‘I’m putting up a resolution,’ which was music to my ears because many of you [who] know me, whether I was sitting on this dais or sitting in the seats with you guys, I’ve been screaming this for a while,” he declared.
“Now leadership is not pointing out the fact that you were right, leadership is actually fixing the problems … Now, many of my colleagues up here who ignored that are now suddenly turning, it’s like the Prodigal son in my religion: Coming back and saying ‘I’m sorry we spent all the money daddy, I’m coming back home, can you help me?”
Presinzano also insisted that while he and Fisher often criticize expensive endeavors by the city, that it’s their job to sound the alarm when it’s going to be a detriment to taxpayers and that has been largely, if not completely, ignored up to this point.
The resolution was approved unanimously (9-0) and Jabbour expressed support for it on Monday, as HCV first reported.
The CEO at a company I once worked for often said — “you never see things more clearly than on your first day on the job,,,,” The only people we should be listening to on this are Imus, Firestone and Layson — the others are complicit in some way – pariticularly Jabbour, Quintero and Cohen. New Jersey is now bursting with revelations about inept, self serving municipal governance; lending more credence to the need for term limits and election spending caps.
Did Bhalla funding Jabbour, Quintero and Cohen political campaigns buy their silence ?
The cops probably know that the mayor will lay off other workers – not them. The current mayor made quite the speech when she voted in favor of this ridiculous contract during campaign season (hoping to ensure the votes of some of the rank & file, I’m sure.)
Why didn’t Phil and Joe know that this is where we’d end up? Obviously, Russo is more interested in taking care of his buddies on the force than the city as a whole.
We all saw this coming and politics got in the way. Paul and Tiffaney were right to not support this contract but, we’re stuck with it.
Just read a story about how Jersey City is addressing its fiscal crisis (taxes will go up, insurance carriers have changed, capital projects have been scrapped etc.) — and the administration is STILL crawling down to Trenton begging for money. Perhaps Emily et. al should consider similar cuts/changes and have a sitdown with Jersey City Mayor Solomon.
What a mess……
Watching Emily lie about being Ravi’s in house poon is like watching Kamala’s debacle of a “Turn The Page” 2024 campaign. “The city is a mess. I did it. Let’s not look back, Hoboken. We need change.”
Ridiculous.