Hoboken Mayor Vetoes Ban On New Parklets, Which Was Intended To Fight Rats

HOBOKEN, NJ — A day after a majority of Hoboken City Council members voted to prohibit new "parklets" for outdoor dining at restaurants, Mayor Ravi Bhalla vetoed the measure, saying he favors less restrictive strategies and isn't sure such a measure will help combat the city's rodent problem.

Earlier this month, the City Council had voted 8-1 to introduce an ordinance to ban future "parklets," or outdoor dining spots built on top of street parking.

However, existing parklets would be grandfathered in. And the ordinance would not stop "streateries" — cordoned-off areas with tables and chairs — which are easier to pick up and clean.

The city has recently passed other measures for rat mitigation, and various council candidates have also floated anti-rat initiatives.

But the Hoboken Business Alliance (HBA), a group that supports the business community and its initiatives, said Monday that they would ask all nine members of the Hoboken City Council to consider concerns they have about the anti-parklet proposal.

“We believe that the city already has all of the tools it needs to address the concerns cited as driving forces behind this change through either existing regulation," they said in a release on Monday, "like the stronger cleaning and rodent mitigation standards for parklets that the council only just passed last month."

On Thursday, Mayor Ravi Bhalla agreed.

In a veto statement, he wrote:

Over the past several months, I appreciate the City Council's partnership with my administration in mitigating rodent activity in Hoboken through measures including a containerized garbage ordinance, increasing funding available for rodent extermination, an ordinance allowing the City to exterminate on negligent properties, the purchase and distribution of over 2,000 garbage containers with tight-fitting lids, and requiring new extermination and sanitation requirements for parklets, among several other initiatives.

I am generally supportive of the ordinance sponsored by Councilmembers Phil Cohen and Mike DeFusco issuing a five-month moratorium on new parklet applications, to allow our staff to continue to enforce our existing rules and regulations for existing parklets. Nonetheless, I am respectfully vetoing the ordinance adopted by the Council that bans all future parklets. In my opinion, the ordinance does not effectively address the issue it aims to resolve and simultaneously hurts the business community, to the detriment of our broader Hoboken community.

I share the sentiments of the Hoboken Business Alliance in the letter they sent the council last week which I believe has accurately summarized the issue.

Back To Business

“I saw nearby businesses thrive during the traditionally slower summer months thanks to their
structures, and from day one our plan was to do something similar in time for Summer 2024,”
said Andrew Martino of GTK on Washington Street.

But residents have been clamoring for more strategies to fight the city's rodent problem.

In recent political debates and in Q&A's given to Hoboken candidates for City Council, even some allied with the mayor said that they thought the administration did not do a good enough job addressing the rat problem.

This was Bhalla's second veto of the year. The other veto was related to rent control amendments. After that veto was issued, members of the City Council agreed to further discuss the issues surrounding rent control.

Got a letter about the rat issue, rent control, or anything else? Post it using these instructions.