The Beth Mason Saga

Recently the defender of the Old Guard who are infamous for perp walks, bloated budgets and piles of patronage jobs, mentioned the “good works” of Beth Mason.  Unfortunately, all items cited were years old. Yes the “good” Beth cut the costs of OPRA requests from 75 to 5 cents per page, allowed council meetings to be televised and even showed out the box thinking by trying to lure an experienced Police Chief like Howard Safer. She and her husband Ricky were in the forefront of trying to prevent what I believed to be (mistakenly) an unwise takeover of HUMC.

This is why when 2009 started I had not made my mind up on who I would support for Mayor, Beth or Dawn Zimmer. I remember at the end of 2008 speaking to Hudson Reporter (now working for PolitickerNJ) reporter Tim Carroll about who would be better for Hoboken’s future.

Then something strange happened. The Beth Mason that I knew suddenly decided to be all things for all people and in doing so (in my opinion) became something that I could not or ever vote for. That form of pandering to everyone disgusted me.

First was the Church Towers vote. It would have passed anyway (there were 5 Old Guard votes) and I was confused to say the least why Beth became the 6^th vote. As I stated publically at the time, federal moderate income programs under which Church Towers operated were never supposed to be permanent. Take a look at Clock Towers or the Applied buildings and you can see that when the units are vacated by moderate income tenants the units revert to market rate. Church Towers had operated for 40 years and the original program had expired. To date I believe that is still not operating under a valid program.

Since I believe in affordable housing my suggestion was to allow all residents who still qualified to remain at the current rates. Those whose incomes exceeded the previous guideline should see a rise in rate closer (but not up to) market rates. I believed that a 10-15% discount from market rate would be fair to those who work or worked for the city of Hoboken.

In this way, many higher income tenants would vacate their units and those units would then be available for new qualified tenants. The way the program works, once you are in you are grandfathered. If your income exceeds the threshold, there is a 10% surcharge. Now, Beth did not have to agree with my points, but when you have 6 figure incomed people paying around $1,100 for a two bedroom unit it perverts the basis for affordable housing.

The second action was her famous “build or die” megalomaniac statement that included a 16 block northern redelopment zone. All I could think of was it being anchored by a 40 story Rockefeller Group (actually the Japanese company Mitsubishi) building. That was the final straw for me. That next day (Thursday) I went to Zimmer headquarters and told Dawn that I had made my mind up and would support her.

The third was her unwillingness to support Kids First. Mayor Zimmer took the courageous effort to effectively shutting down her campaign for two crucial weeks to allow Kids First to use her headquarters and supporters like me to bring Kids First to victory. Only then did Beth Mason run an ad congratulating them. Call me cynical if you wish, but I do believe she had two ads ready to go depending on who won. This only reinforced my belief that I had made the right decision.

Then she came up with an alternative uptown plan that would be anchored by a minor league baseball park that could seat 7,000-10,000 fans. It would probably be able to attract some concerts or events but I could not envision how it could break even, let alone thrive. Beth was talking about an AA team from the Yankees, Mets or Red Sox. The problem was the Yankees had just renovated the Trenton Thunder stadium; the Mets Binghamton and the Red Sox have much closer Portland, Me. The plan was grandiose but I could not see how it could work.

There were also other bewilderments like her continued lying about the true budget surplus (see Curious Gals post last week on perpetuating the Hoboken 411 “slush fund” lie).

Then it was her lie about an all-expense paid taxpayer sponsored trip the Indianapolis Super Bowl. In fact Councilwoman Jen Giattino, Director Leo Pellegrini and a member of his staff went to Indianapolis, not to see the game, but to meet with the Super Bowl committee to see if Hoboken could become a host city for the 2013 Meadowlands Met Life Super Bowl. That game is expected to generate over $500 million in economic activity. See: http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2012/08/hoboken_jersey_city_secaucus_.... Jen and the Zimmer administration want to make Hoboken a true destination- witness the NJ Symphony (two years in a row), the Mumford Son’s concert and an upcoming Red Bulls match all on Pier A. Beth Mason by her actions clearly does not care about Hoboken’s reputation or the survival of our local business’ during these tough economic times. She also voted against an engineering study which could have “paved” the way to receiving grants as opposed to your hard earned tax dollars to repave and upgrade Washington Street, Sinatra Drive and remake Observer Highway into a complete street Observer Boulevard.

Yes at one time Beth Mason was special. But that train left Hoboken Station years ago.