Did you know there is a 5% tax increase on tonight’s City Council agenda? -

"Our gap right now is close to $20M in my estimation excluding steps the city has already taken and any further funding for lost revenues.  If we use ALL of our surplus, that would only be  about $9M.  A 5% tax increase would fund only about another $2.8M.  We are not at all confident that we will get more federal funding, but will know more over the ensuing couple of months.  Regardless, even if this was the $5M equal to our revenue loss, and although we will still try to find additional cost savings, especially in unnecessary overhead, I am confident that the tax increase for this year will be much greater than 5%"

MUNICIPAL BUDGET DEFICIT - A decade of zero tax increases in a rising cost environment has caught up with us.  " I have repeatedly asked that the administrations to provide five year projections each year to no avail.  After last year’s scrutiny over the budget and tax increase I would not have been surprised to see another increase this year, but a gap of this magnitude was not expected at all."

"The budget that has been proposed by the mayor has an almost 3% tax increase and includes depleting our surplus.  Our job now is to determine if there is any further opportunity for us to reduce the burden on taxpayers, yet still support the necessary services to improve (or at least maintain) the quality of life of our residents."

"If you are one of the many who have asked me about how we are funding the maintenance of all of our parks, cleaning our streets and sidewalks or enforcing safety on our intersections and sidewalks, then you should come tonight and ask our these questions directly!" 

This week has been intense as you may have seen if you TUNED IN to the beginning or read any of the press coverage of our City Council meeting Wednesday night. 

The cause?  Parking, Taxes and Politics.  After a lot of discussion and aggravation, we ultimately:

• Voted 5-3-1 to repeal recent Dynamic Pricing changes to parking meters (1st reading) and
• Asked Mayor Bhalla to revisit his 2019 Municipal Budget taking into consideration the parking revenue changes before the Council introduces it.  

A number of people have reached out trying to understand what the heck happened and why and how including why I voted the way I did.  And I will address this below in more detail (grab a drink...), but first, I want to give you my views on Dynamic Parking and our 2019 Budget.

The 2018 Amended Municipal Budget passed with a 0% increase. 

"On a less heart felt topic, Hoboken taxes… I am the chair of the Finance, Administration and Infrastructure subcommittee for the third year in a row and we are amidst budget season.  I know that everyone would like to see their taxes go down as would I.  But I also know that people would like to see improved municipal services like cleaner streets, safer intersections, more policemen walking in busy areas, an improved recreation department and better management of our considerable public works projects...."