Dean Kemph has yet another letter to the editor to share his thoughts to the readers of the Hoboken Journal. I for one was not surprised by the selection of Michael Lenz to temporarily fill the Fourth Ward council seat vacated by Dawn Zimmer. You had a number of promising reform minded candidates but ultimately one candidate was chosen with experience, skill at a conference table and above all a shared vision of 4 members of the current council and the current Mayor Dawn Zimmer who acted as the tie breaking vote. There will be a special election to fill that seat and then the voters can decide who will best fill the vacancy permanently. Here is Dean Kemph in his own words......
“That’s why they pay me the pretty lousy bucks. To sit through this….”
- City Attorney Steve Kleinman, unaware that his microphone was on, during the Fourth Ward vote on 11/16.
OK, sorry, THIS is my last one. I have to flush the system.
My, what a lively time! Even without the recuperating Lane Bajardi, this one was a humdinger! I really missed Lane at the last council meeting; I could almost hear echoes of his paradoxically shrill baritone firing an endless barrage of accusatory smug salvos at his favorite stalkee. I could allow him ONE meeting off, maybe, of lick-your-wounds retreat; perhaps to go into a despairing huddle with Perry Klausen to rework the numbers for a Mason victory. But TWO? With his Great White Whale in attendance to cast a deciding vote that would seal, at least temporarily, the irrelevance of the clunky, misfiring wanna-be Mason Machine? Sure, Lenz the Enlivener is now on board, but that makes Lane even more invaluable! I prevail upon this council to bring him back! With six hour meetings now the norm, couldn’t you use a Council Mascot? It would cost next to nothing, perhaps a small stipend for a brocaded jacket with epaulets and a tassled cap. I can see him wildly jumping up and down, re-setting his infamous watch, and booming “Time’s up!” when speakers exceed their allotted five. Come on people!
Well, I’ll put that dream aside for the moment and talk about the council meeting. Since I only browse through the recaps, I was lucky to catch Kleinman’s unexpectedly hot mike at 1:37:20 of Part 2. It stayed that way through the next break, with Steve grumbling about the council’s bull-headedness in ignoring his advice and commiserating with Nino about the speed of the new majority freight train. And things were happening quickly. For a while there, any bathroom break might cause you to miss at least one oath of office. Nino was more typically reserved, but the rest of what is now a clearly delineated minority were squawking like wet hens. President Pete paid scant attention to their complaints, including one particularly deft deflation of a bombastic Beth bubble when he forced her into condensing her “all kinds of questions” into a simple concise pair for the potential appointees.
The Lenz choice surprised me, despite the reported out-of-town back-room diner sightings of Michael & Marsh huddled in apparent strategy sessions. Some like to call him a polarizing figure, but you really need two sides for that. He’s more of a unifying figure, since he seems to annoy allies and enemies pretty equally. I’ve sighed through my share of his pregnant pauses of pontification, and I know that he’ll always loudly and unhesitatingly fill any thought voids left hanging perilously in the air. But I always regarded these as little more than more pronounced examples of the nettlesome quirks we have all demonstrated, to one degree or another, during campaign efforts. I learned quite a bit from him and emphatically rejected at least as many of his theories, too, so I don’t really understood the rants of the fervent anti-Lenzites and their solemn pledges to avoid future gulps of the kool-aid that they begrudgingly acknowledge had so befuddled them in the past. While they continue to blame Michael for their unthinking thirsts of yore, I prefer to focus on the one enduring aspect of this guy that I’ve recognized over 20 years. Despite his cringe-worthy zeal for the tiresome machinations of political intrigue; despite the not entirely unfounded claims that he’s frequently positioning himself for public employment opportunities; when it counts, Michael invariably lets integrity get the best of him and winds up on the right side of things. And that comparative rarity in these parts forgives (or, at least, proportionately minimizes) a multitude of style sins. He is unquestionably qualified for the seat, and, although critics will claim that Zimmer et al have once again been mesmerized and hoodwinked by his Merlinesque maneuvers, his appointment bespeaks the growing confidence of an entrenching majority willing to absorb some potentially negative perception for the greater goal of fair and knowledgeable government.
I won’t spend much time on the hospital here, one of the supposed showpieces of Monday’s dysfunction fest. I just don’t know what to say. David Roberts’ Most Enduring Monument To Fiscal Irresponsibility And Lasting Tribute To The Misguided Effort To Please Everybody, the University Medical Center without a University, lost $23,000,000 in 2008. No one argued that this was good. It may only have lost $11,000,000 in 2009, assuming state officials spend their holidays filling Hoboken’s stocking with once-promised grant money. No one argued that this was good, either. Cash on hand was expected to last, maybe, through the end of the council meeting. No one thought that was good news. However, the CEO generously agreed to keep the doors open for at least a couple of hours after the meeting for any taxpayers seeking treatment for sickening feelings in the pit of their collective stomach.
Bulletin. Old Beth is dead folks. I have no idea what New Beth did with the body and/or soul, but it appears unlikely that we’ll see her again short of a soap-opera-styled denouement which reveals that an evil twin has been standing in for her long-comatose sister. Shortly after the election, I had conversations with a couple of Mason supporters, disheartened by the tenor of the absurd campaign conversation and lamenting that there wasn’t some way to repair fences between erstwhile reform allies. I started to ponder this possibility in increasingly warm and fuzzy ways; convincing myself that maybe the insanity was only temporary, and a return to good sense would ultimately be irresistible to the sparring parties. But here comes New Beth. After a necessarily subdued day-after council meeting, she resumed the obstructionist mantle with renewed vigor Monday night. Armed with pages of research highlighting electoral technicalities, she dismissed the opinion of counsel to trumpet her superseding alternative, assuring her colleagues and the public that a late December Fourth Ward election is actually the way to go. As usual, her finger was firmly on the pulse of the townsfolk clamoring for yet another election to enjoy during the holidays. Her sanctimonious insistence on swearing in speakers at a moment’s notice at the podium actually kind of appealed to me; I wouldn’t mind asking Beth a few questions under oath myself about the widely rumored hazard-filled late-night mission assignments apportioned to the denizens of Camp Mason, that kiddie corps of giddily overpaid children dominating her campaign landscape.
Not that Beth shouldn’t feel deservedly looney. During a 10 month odyssey of self-destruction which would make Lindsay Lohan blush, she managed to somehow litter her rose-petal-covered runway-light-illuminated path to City Hall with a series of increasingly powerful homemade land mines. Perhaps, Beth, the reason things didn’t fly so well was that the voters you were imploring to recognize your OBVIOUSLY SUPERIOR FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SKILLS were the same ones watching the contradictory image of you blowing close to a million bucks on two vulgar and spectacular failures that left you in a much worse place than where you started. And now Beth and her gutted influence get to writhe in the self-created irony of spending every Wednesday fortnight two seats away from the ultimate representation, cavorting happily with the majority, of the “old” reform movement remnants of inconvenience she so brusquely attempted to excise. Well done, Ms. Mason, and don’t think twice, it’s all right.
So now the Majorityettes have a free year to twirl some magic. I know that power corrupts; I know that County influences are omnipresent and generally malevolent; I know that personalities and agendas even of allies inevitably clash. The current challenges paired with the clean-up demands are almost unfathomable. Still, on the surface, this looks like the most conscientious, determined and unified ruling class in my memory, and they’re complemented by a school board majority to boot. Cunningham looks good with the gavel as an efficient diffuser of minority grandstanding. The Fourth Ward election next fall will be problematic, as always, but that’s a year away. If it’s lost, barring other defections it can probably be recouped in the Second a few months later over the now eminently deposable Mason. And if someone strong gets out early enough (which they never, inexplicably, seem to do), and people see at least the foundation elements of progress, the incumbents in the First, Sixth, and even the Third will be scrambling for cover. So start preparing candidates in those wards now, reformers! Have a plan! This may be the best chance you’ll ever see to substantively alter the paradigm of patronage and profit that has stolen, from your fair city and from you, far too much for far too long.
Best of luck to my beloved and adopted Hoboken!
Dean Kemph
