He was for it, before he was against it, before he was for it?
Hoboken has a severe shortage of Open Space. We’re a small city (1.4 sq mile) with very little active (baseball, soccer fields) and passive (parks) space available for our residents. One of the big arguments towards adding more open space has been the cost associated with purchasing the land.
In 2007, the city council approved a resolution to allow voters to decide in the November 2007 election if they thought Hoboken should create an Open Space Trust Fund. The Open Space Trust Fund was to create a new tax of $.02 per $100 of total of total municipal equalized real property valuation and used exclusively for:
- Acquisition of lands for recreation and conservation purposes
- Development of lands acquired for recreation and conservation purposes
- Payment of debt service on indebtedness issued or incurred by the City of Hoboken for any of the purposes set forth above.”
There was some controversy when the referendum was voted on at a city council meeting on August 20, 2007. Some council members wanted the fund to have the ability to pay for “maintenance of lands for recreation and conservation purposes,” in addition to the acquistion of new land. If maintenance was included as an acceptable way of using the funds, the city would been able to spend the money collected to fund annually operating costs in the budget, opposed to just exclusively on acquisiton and development of new park land. The Roberts’ administration has used these budget tricks in the past, for example by selling city assets to plug budget holes and changing the parking authority from an independent agency to part of city government so it’s multimillion dollar profits could help fund budget holes rather than improve city parking.
Mr. Cammarano voted against placing the referendum on the ballot with (resolution 07-1007) or without (resolution 7-1006) the maintenance allowance on August 20, 2007.
In the video below, Mr. Cammarano visited Cablevision and discussed the Open Space Trust Fund. What’s most absurd about Mr. Cammarano on this issue is his opinion that open space throughout the city only benefit residents that live in the same ward as those open space. Do only people in the Second Ward use Sinatra Park? How about Pier A Park on the waterfront? Is that only used by and for First Ward residents? If Mr. Cammarano had gotten his way, the city would have been able to use revenue from the Open Space Trust Fund to fund budget holes and continue the practice of overspending, rather than truely build a fund to buy new land for open space.
Luckily for the residents of Hoboken, the resolution that didn’t include maintenance was passed by the city council and in November, 63% voted yes for the Open Space Trust Fund.
With the budget mess we’re in and the lack of fields and parks for our children, we need more Open Space than ever. We’re running out of land we can use and Mr. Cammarano’s behavior makes it clear he’s not interested in non-pro-developer ways to get more open space.
