I believe Hoboken’s most pressing concern is it’s finances. As your elected representative in the sixth ward my top focus will be eliminating wasteful spending. This is because we spend too much in Hoboken and get too little in return.
Sometimes we fall for a profitable movie theater building owner feigning a loss so they can have a deed restriction and the required use of the property changed to allow them to sell the building at an enormous profit on our backs. (https://hudsoncountyview.com/op-ed-heres-why-the-loss-of-hobokens-movie-theatre-was-a-universal-failure/)
We also buy property from a privately owned ferry service for $7,000,000 more than they had recently paid and then rent them back use of the property (thousands of square feet) for what a 1200 square foot apartment in the neighborhood rents for. (https://betterwaterfront.org/court-documents-reveal-details-of-settlement-agreement-between-city-of-hoboken-and-ny-waterway/)
We promise a developer they can build a certain height building with a certain square footage, then retract that promise costing the developer millions and then finally agree to let the developer build an even bigger building with less benefit to Hoboken residents. https://hudsoncountyview.com/hoboken-council-oks-partial-western-edge-settlement-despite-union-citys-opposition/
And that’s just three examples. Sometimes these follies are money right out of our budget. Sometimes while NOT a budget loss, it leads to spending elsewhere needlessly or less tax revenue collected. As the sixth ward councilperson: I’ll do everything I can to put an end to these mishaps.