BETH MASON has the longest, strongest record for change of any mayoral candidate - by Phil Cohen
To the Editor:
Please consider this response to a recent critique that you published attacking Beth Mason and her ticket for city council.
1. Beth Mason has a longer, stronger record for seeking real change in government in Hoboken than any other mayoral candidate. It's a fact. She's been at it for 10 years. She's worked on the city council for no pay and has spent her own money suing the Roberts Administration for transparency and filing more requests for public records than the clerk’s office could ever imagine. There is a reason why Beth Mason is ahead in all the polls, the people of Hoboken know what she has done, and they like her record.
She has accomplished what she has done despite incurring the wrath of a then-popular Mayor Roberts, a hostile Councilman Cammarano, and other hostile members of the city council who actively debated censuring her for pursuing her agenda of seeking transparency. Mr. Dziman is being provocative by stating, “a vote for Beth Mason is a vote for the status quo”, but to even suggest for a moment that Beth Mason is an insider in Mayor Roberts’ administration is laughable.
2. What happened to Beth? Mr. Dziman asks. Nothing has happened to Beth. She is the same person she was all these years. What has changed is that she had run to be councilwoman of the 2nd Ward against Richard Tremitididi, but she is now running to become Mayor of the City, against Peter Cammarano and Dawn Zimmer, and they need to try and define Ms. Mason, who is the front-runner in this election, and Mr. Dziman seems to be doing his part to try and define Beth Mason.
3. "Let's start looking at her slate for City Council." Beth could have gotten people who had moved to Hoboken in the last 25 years, like herself, to fill out her ticket, as Dawn Zimmer did. I didn’t know Tony, Vinny or Raul when Beth announced her ticket, but unlike Mr. Dziman, I’ve spent some time meeting them and discussing their vision for Hoboken. I like what I have heard. I understand that Mr. Dziman has not attended any of the meet and greets and other opportunities to meet Beth’s ticket, but it hasn’t slowed him down for a moment to condemn these three good men. I guess when you are supporting “agents of change” like Dawn Zimmer, you are free to attack the character of Ms. Zimmer’s opponent’s running mates without fear.
Here’s what I’ve learned about Beth’s ticket:
Tony Pasquale spent most of his career not in Hoboken politics, but working for AXA insurance supervising AXA’s billion dollar budgets. Tony did serve on Hoboken’s Housing Authority, and, I understand, did a really good job working as an unpaid volunteer, assisting residents in Hoboken’s public housing facilities. He continues to have a nice relationship with residents in the Hoboken Housing Authority, who remember his service with appreciation. I suppose what Tony did as a commissioner isn’t important to Mr. Dziman. What’s important is to Mr. Dziman is that Tony was appointed to the job by then-Mayor Anthony Russo, which makes Tony the wrong man to run for public office. I think Mr. Dziman owes Tony the benefit of a conversation before jumping to this conclusion. (I suspect Mr. Dziman believes the fact that Dawn’s running mate Carol Marsh was Dave Roberts’ running mate in 2001 does not disqualify her from being “an agent of change” and I would agree with him.)
Vinny Addeo served on the City Council for approximately one month in 2003, and based on Mr. Addeo’s one-month record as a councilman, Mr. Dziman has incredibly concluded that Mr. Addeo’s service, along with eight other members of the city council, amounts to a legacy of unimaginable horror for Hoboken taxpayers. Mr. Dziman’s conclusion is absurd. In fact, Mr. Addeo is an experienced union official, born and raised in Hoboken, who understands the need for Hoboken to get its labor costs under control. His knowledge of labor issues will be invaluable to the city’s next Mayor as she tries to reign in our budget.
Raul Morales, Jr. is a 27 year-old graduate of Hoboken High School, Brown University and my alma mater, Rutgers University School of Law in Newark. Mr. Morales passed the New York and New Jersey bar exams on his first shot. Raul has a bright future ahead of him in public service. He has been a leader of Hoboken’s Puerto Rican community and brings great energy and knowledge to the campaign. However, because Mr. Morales is the “son of the senior vice president of Applied Housing”, this young man is nothing more than the personification of “the old power structure of Hoboken”, unqualified to be an “agent of change”. I think graduates of Hoboken High who go on to graduate from an Ivy League College, return to New Jersey to become lawyers and want to serve the community are inspirations to all our children. People like Raul Morales, Jr. represent the kind of change that we all believe in.
4. I understand that you think that the Church Towers PILOT should not have been renewed. Unfortunately, without Beth Mason’s involvement, the administration introduced a resolution to extend the Church Towers PILOT another 8 ½ years and had 5 votes to pass that resolution. Rather than be on the wrong end of a 5-4 vote extending the Church Towers PILOT, with a resolution with no guarantees of continuing affordable housing for the residents of Church Towers, Beth Mason showed real leadership, and sponsored a revised resolution that required the owners to adhere to a federally administered program maintaining low/moderate income for the remainder of the 8 1/2 year time period. Beth got consensus from the Church Towers attorney, the City attorney, the administration and six additional yes votes on the council, to revise the resolution provided it be executed without further delay. She showed leadership and protected 400 units of affordable housing in Hoboken.
5. I held the first Kids First house party at my home just days after the Kids First team’s “kick off party”. At the time, I was known as someone who was also supporting Beth Mason for Mayor. I know many other supporters of Beth who also worked hard to do everything we could to get the Kids First team elected. As someone who also worked for the Kids First team, Mr. Dziman knows what a true “grass roots” effort the Kids First victory was. Indeed, I noticed today that while one of the three candidates on the Kids First ticket endorsed Dawn Zimmer’s candidacy, two of the three winning candidates did not endorse Dawn. I suspect that the reason Maureen Sullivan and Ruth McAllister did not endorse Dawn was because they believe, as I do, that Beth Mason’s mayoral candidacy represents another real hope for change for Hoboken, and that while Dawn’s endorsement of their ticket was appreciated, it is not the crucible against which we should measure the ability of the next Mayor of a city that is in the midst of an extraordinary fiscal crisis.
For me, the key question each voter should ask is:
Which candidate has the longest, strongest record for seeking real change and transparency in our city’s government?
The answer is Beth Mason.
Beth’s 10-year track record speaks for itself. Beth is our fighter. She has fought hard for us as a citizen, she continued the fight as a councilwoman, and she will keep on fighting as our Mayor. Beth has done excellent work fighting for transparency at City Hall and trying to get to the bottom of the mysteries of Hoboken’s fiscal nightmare. In my opinion, Beth’s skills are the right skills set that we the people of Hoboken need in the Mayor’s office now, more than ever.
-Phil Cohen ◦
