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Fiscal Responsibilty

Taxpayers in Hoboken are victims of a dysfunctional relationship between the Mayor’s office and City Council. The immediate result is an utter failure to control spending during the last several years coupled with an estimated 47% rise in property taxes. All residents, renters and commercial property owners are impacted by property tax increases. A landlord may pass on increased property taxes through a tax surcharge for rent controlled tenants or a rent increase for non-rent controlled tenants. The conduct of our elected officials directly led to state takeover of Hoboken’s municipal fiscal operations. We can do better.

Although the Mayor and City Council each blame the other for this situation, both share responsibility. The Council shoulders substantial responsibility for this State takeover because of their failure to exercise statutorily mandated oversight responsibilities under the Faulkner Act. The Council’s conduct over past several years demonstrates tacit acceptance of overspending rather than genuine concern about fiscal management. The victims are taxpaying residents and city employees. We can do better.

Here are some basic measures we should strive for when balancing our budget in order to stabilize taxes in coming years:

Adhere to the basic budgeting principle that recurring expenses must be matched against recurring revenues. We cannot spend more than is coming in and then look for one-time solutions to fill gaping holes in the budget, as we have done in the past.
Conduct a complete review of every city department to determine where cuts in spending can be made and efficiency can be improved. Unfortunately, this may include considering lay-offs, pay cuts or demotions if necessary.
Consider a citywide revaluation of property taxes to stabilize tax rates and develop a more equitable tax base in the long term. However, a revaluation must be fair to all and avoid undue financial hardship upon residents that may be adversely impacted, by no fault of their own, by a citywide revaluation.
There should be an evaluation of the Police and Fire Departments to determine where expenses can be reduced. When contracts are renegotiated, the City must ensure that salaries and benefits for public safety employees do not represent a disproportionate proportion of our city budget. Best practices for compensation should be relied on from data available nationwide.

The focus of the Council and the Mayor should be issues, not politics. If city government is to move into the 21st century we must place the operations of city government under a microscope and implement innovative solutions to persistent problems.

Transparency in Government

Hoboken residents have no way of knowing, without significant time and expense, exactly how their tax dollars are spent and how spending decisions are made. Most members of the City Council do not know such basic things as how the City chooses which light bulbs to purchase for its buildings and roads.

One means of creating greater citizen access to our local government would be through an Ordinance that mandates the Hoboken Finance Department to maintain a free and searchable website – a “Google for local government” — that would enable residents to type in key words to learn details about where tax dollars go, and judge for themselves whether taxes are being spent wisely. All supporting documents for the municipal budget should be available and searchable. The online search engine would allow a Hoboken resident to look up any company, contractor, developer, organization or other entity receiving a city contract or other financial assistance, to determine how tax dollars are being spent.

This is a good-government initiative, already implemented at the federal level, designed to give average citizens access to information previously known only to insiders. This initiative would shed light on how our tax dollars are being spent and provide a powerful disinfectant to corruption and cronyism. An open government should be an inclusive government that brings the citizens into the decision making processes that affect themselves and other Hobokenites.

Modernization

A 311 call center is a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week access point for certain city services and non-emergency public safety services.
The system would be fully transparent and allow residents to track the progress of complaints. Through a combination of one easy to remember number, a staff of trained operators, and specialized software to automatically route service requests to the proper department, Hoboken can work to make city government more effective for its citizens.

Other benefits of the 311 call center program include allowing the city to oversee the performance and efficiency of individual departments through the system’s regular reports. Additionally, the 311 system can be used by the city to take preventative measures against future problems. For example, in Chicago, the city was able to track “water in the basement” complaints during heavy rainstorms to targeted geographical locations, thereby identifying areas of heavy flooding to adjust the sewer system to prepare for future rainstorms. Similarly, in Chicago the system was able to track tenant “no heat” complaints and in subsequent years send warning letters to landlords in the fall.

The 311 call center program has been successfully implemented in New York City, Newark, Chicago, Baltimore, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. and many others. Why not Hoboken?

Unfortunately if you've visited the Hoboken city website recently you know that you are immediately confronted with a cluttered website that offers no easy means to access the information on the site. Not only that, there is no meaningful automation of service delivery through our website.

There are quick, simple, steps we can take immediately at low cost to do things like:

Offer full local transit information, including maps.
Offer Hoboken Parking Authority services such as renewals for lots and tags.
Allow citizens to resolve parking citations online.
Present full city department contact information.
Allow citizens to resolve appropriate municipal court matters online.