Two flowers emerged from the manure bed of 2009’s dirty Hoboken mayoral race, but only one continued to grow after last summer.
Peter Cammarano, a councilman and young attorney, emerged the winner of the election last June, but was arrested a mere three weeks after his inauguration in a statewide FBI political corruption sting.
Runner-up Dawn Zimmer, a political newcomer on the City Council, was barely ready to blossom. But she was sustained to the end of the zany campaign due to the green thumb of local activists and supporters who wanted to see change in Hoboken.
Zimmer became acting mayor after Cammarano resigned late in July, then won the seat outright with another campaign in November. And then the real work began.
“I don’t need training wheels.” – Dawn Zimmer
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Broadening her shoulders
During her 35 weeks in office (16 of those as acting mayor), Zimmer been dealt an extraordinary set of circumstances.
Soon after she took over last year, a plane and a helicopter collided in the Hudson River near Hoboken. She was forced to give information at a nationally broadcast press conference.
A string of other calamities followed: the city piers began seriously collapsing into the river in September; information from state-controlled audits of the police and fire departments was withheld by Trenton; and Zimmer was held accountable for a $99.8 million city budget with a miniscule tax break put forth by state Fiscal Monitor Judy Tripodi and later honed by the council.
Even if not all of the control over these crises was in her hands, she was the mayor.
“My mother-in-law told me, ‘You need your shoulders to be broader,’ ” she said during an interview last month.
Zimmer is trying to broaden her shoulders, but the space is not being given up easily by some of the other politicians in the crowd.
Behind-the-scenes political struggles
According to two sources, Zimmer is vying for the position as head of the Democratic Party in Hoboken, a power position currently held by state Assemblyman and former City Councilman Ruben Ramos.
She may be a neophyte politico, but she has some established political roots backing her in Hudson County.
A 25 percent budget reduction for next year? She won’t make that guarantee.
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While Zimmer has worked with the council majority in restocking city boards with activists and reformers, some were heavy campaign supporters or contributors, raising questions from critics (see sidebar).
Taxes and parking
Politics aside, the taxpayers are looking for tangible results in a mile-square city that has suffered for years from corruption, high taxes, and a dearth of extra parking.
“We have so many issues that have set us back as a city,” Zimmer said last week.
Zimmer has worked hand-in-hand with her City Council allies – President Peter Cunningham, Vice President Carol Marsh, and councilpersons Michael Lenz, Ravi Bhalla, and Dave Mello. They have rewritten some of the city laws, clarified regulations, and have so far worked in lockstep to push their initiatives.
These have included measures such as unifying how residents can get a parking permit, clearing up laws that were confusing before. They also included updated permit fee schedules and a closer look at taxi and shuttle bus regulations.
Zimmer has appointed city directors mostly without having prior relationships with them, instead of only looking at long-time friends. Some of these directors are being praised for their creative initiatives, like Parking and Transportation Director Ian Sacs, a young transportation engineer living in Hoboken. But the verdict is still out on others, like Environmental Services Director Jennifer Wenson-Maier, a city councilwoman in Rahway whose public works experience was called into question by local critics when she was hired.
The laundry list
A slew of issues were before the city when Zimmer took office, and the severity of some of those issues Zimmer claims went undisclosed by the last mayor.
One Zimmer supporter criticized her administration for handling the city’s problems “linearly,” or one at a time, but the mayor said her whole staff is attacking many of these problems at once.
One problem that has lingered from the past is the issue of the city lacking a new garage for its vehicles.
The municipal garage on Observer Highway was sold by the city and leased back to fill a budget gap, before being sold again to a developer two years ago. Zimmer said the relocation of the city garage should have been completed before she came to office; now the city’s back is against the wall because their vehicles have to leave the land by the summer and there is nowhere to put them.
She’s putting two options in front of the City Council in the coming weeks, both of which are 5-to-10 year solutions.
Regarding the collapsing piers at Sinatra Park and Castle Point Park, Zimmer said they should have been no surprise; the city received a report about their deterioration in 1995. Instead of the past administration being proactive, Zimmer said the taxpayers are paying the price for negligence in the past.
Another problem: The city’s financially shaky hospital. During the administration of Mayor David Roberts, Roberts rallied the City Council, who voted to bond for $52 million so they city could take over the facility. This kept the hospital from closing, but taxpayers are worried about what happens if it can’t succeed financially.
Zimmer has recently voiced her support for selling the hospital to a private company who would keep it open, thus relieving the taxpayer burden.
Zimmer was more forthright with her accusations regarding a sticky situation Hoboken found itself in last fall. The city’s former parking head was indicted for allegedly stealing money from the city’s parking meters. He allegedly split the bounty with the contracted collection company, which had a an alleged former mob-connected man as president, who has since been convicted of theft. The indicted former director, John Corea, had recommended that company, which was vetted by the city attorney and approved by the council.
In a recent interview, Zimmer accused former Mayor David Roberts’ administration of “looking the other way” while Corea did his deeds.
“Why did [the Roberts administration] bring in a company that had the reputation that it had?” Zimmer asked.
She said that her administration is putting in “muni-meters,” which centralize coin collection and reduce the risk of theft. The cost of the pilot program, $85,000, has been built into the budget and should pay for itself in six to nine months, Zimmer said.
On the previous administration’s botched early retirement plan that ended up costing the city $4.2 million, Zimmer claims that Roberts and Corporation Counsel Steven Kleinman were advised by another city attorney to clear the plan with the state, but never did so.
However, Zimmer was among those who voted for the plan.
“If I knew then what I know now,” she said, she would have never voted for it.
At the behest of the current council, Zimmer has set up a conference call with officials and professionals to review the $4.2 million bill to the state, hoping that it can be reduced to some extent.
A source close to the proceeding said that is unlikely.
Falling short on a promise
But Zimmer has fallen short on one main campaign promise. Zimmer promised a 25 budget reduction during her campaign, but she fell far short: less than 1 percent.
“I didn’t have the tools [in time],” she said last week, referring to the police audit that was kept covered by the state for months, and other matters. She said that the audit could have helped the city realize savings by recommending staff reductions.
Zimmer said the city could have also found savings by negotiating better union contracts, but that job was being handled by state Fiscal Monitor Judy Tripodi until very recently.
Zimmer petitioned a new state administration to allow the city to take back control of the negotiations, and the state agreed; Tripodi was removed, the council voted down Tripodi’s offer to the unions last month.
Going forward, the council, according to Zimmer, will have a say at the negotiation table.
“I’m very proud that this is happening,” she said. “I worked very hard to make this happen.”
The steps are in place to return financial control back to city officials, removing Tripodi from the mix altogether.
Is she promising a 25 percent budget reduction for next year?
Well, she won’t make that guarantee.
“There’s a lot of variables here,” she said, promising only some reduction to the city budget next year. “We haven’t moved as far as we could have.”
A local political insider claimed Zimmer was aided by the state control, calling her ability to pass the fiscal buck to Tripodi the equivalent of “training wheels” for the mayor.
“I don’t need training wheels,” Zimmer shot back. “I’ve been riding a bike for a long time. If you want to call it training wheels, all it did was slow me down.”
Zimmer was one of the deciding votes to bring Tripodi here, and now she is happy to see her leave. She does give Tripodi credit with helping the city find solid footing to begin the uphill climb out of fiscal disarray.
Pedaling ahead
Along with finding a new business administrator, to replace Tripodi, Zimmer is focused on tackling some redevelopment issues in the near future and rolling out a citywide car-sharing program.
Zimmer, who grew up in New Hampshire before moving to Manhattan and then Hoboken, had one thing going for her – she was in the right place in the right time. She inherited a city that is full of amenities, new parks, and wealthy citizens cultivated by the previous administrations. It was the work of her sometimes-criticized predecessors (and longer-term activists) that saved Hoboken’s crumbling waterfront and made the city a desirable place where she and her husband moved only seven years ago, and where they are raising a family today.
At Zimmer’s inauguration on Nov. 21, 2009, Zimmer said, “I went from speaking out at my first City Council meeting [three years ago] with my voice cracking and my hands shaking, to standing before you today.”
Now, she said, “We’re bringing in people who have innovative ideas. I think we’re on the right path.”
Timothy J. Carroll may be reached at tcarroll@hudsonreporter.com. The new cronyism?
City boards like the Zoning Board of Adjustments, the Hoboken Municipal Hospital Board, and the Hoboken Housing Authority Board play an important role in representing the public interest in various sectors of the city.
Is Mayor Dawn Zimmer staying true to her promise to look throughout the city for members, and to not just hire cronies?
A few appointments have been given to people politically unconnected or friendly with Zimmer’s political adversary, Councilwoman Beth Mason. Even a former Cammarano backer, Eduardo Gonzalez, has made his way onto the Housing Authority board.
Cronyism, according to the dictionary definition, means handing office to unqualified political supporters.
Zimmer said she’s not giving preference to campaign contributors, and denies that a familiarity with someone could give that person an edge when being considered for a board appointment.
“It’s not like you get more points if you worked for my campaign,” she said. “I will strongly consider anyone.”
Zimmer supporter and former Councilman Tony Soares, who was elevated from an alternate member of the Zoning Board to a voting member under the Zimmer administration – then elected president of the board – said he doesn’t think it is fair to compare what is being done to some sort of corruption. Appointing campaign contributors to non-paying community boards, Soares said, is completely different than handing out paying jobs to contributors.
However, past mayors have been criticized for doing the same thing, since serving on an unpaid board can give one a lot of power. Still, the qualifications of some of the past appointees were not made as transparent.
None of the paid city employees that have been hired by Zimmer contributed funds to her campaign, Zimmer said. She also pointed to one hiring in particular.
The city’s new zoning officer, Ann Holtzman, was working as a paid personal assistant to Mason until recently, but her qualifications jumped out at new-to-town Community Service Director Brandy Forbes.
Zimmer said Forbes didn’t know Holtzman’s political background when she recommended Holtzman to Zimmer.
“I told her to find the most qualified person for the job,” Zimmer said. When Forbes said it was Holtzman, Zimmer agreed that she would be very good at the job, even though “We’re from opposite sides of the political spectrum.” – TJC
The constant sniping and attacks from Elizabeth Mason and those who were behind Peter Cammarano short lived administration have been shown to be either untrue, petty or both.
It is time to lead, follow or GET OUT OF THE WAY !