Hospital Authority Still in Negotiations; Discussion Heats up at Meeting

It's still unclear when the city-owned Hoboken University Medical Center will be sold to a private entity, officials said Wednesday night. The Hoboken Municipal Hospital Authority , according to Chairwoman Toni Tomarazzo.

And although the public and more information about the process,

"I would like to stand here and shout from the rooftops how hard we’ve been working and that we’ve reached a sale," Tomarazzo said."But my interest is in the long term and we’re not going to announce anything until this is right and until we do the best thing for this institution and for this city."

Tomarazzo said she hopes to call a special meeting for next week, where the sale will be discussed.

But news that an announcement of the sale could come in a matter of days struck one member of the audience as insincere.

More than a dozen people watched the meeting from folding chairs as it took place in a conference room at the hospital. Frequenter of meetings and harsh critic of the Zimmer administration Lane Bajardi was the sole audience member to address the Hospital Authority on Wednesday night. Bajardi accused the board of not being transparent in its negotiations to sell the hospital and claimed that individual board members had conflicts of interests that should preclude them from being part of the process of deciding the multimillion-dollar hospital sale.

"The secrecy here seems to grow by the day," he said. "And conflicts with bidders are coming forward."

In particular, Bajardi took issue with board member . "This is the politicization of this discussion," Bajardi said.

Tomarazzo fired back that the hospital was "very visible" in its hiring of attorneys to work on the sale, and that it went through a "public process" to select a financial advisor. She said that under law she is not able to immediately disclose certain details, but added that she is, "looking forward to when we can talk with specificity with how these bids played out."

She called Bajardi’s suggestion that there were members of the board with conflicts of interest "unsupported."

"There are no conflicts of interest," she said. "Just rumors and innuendoes that are completely unfounded."

Members of the board have been meeting almost daily to comb the final draft of the sale agreement, Tomarazzo said. She said that the board will call a special meeting when the deal is ready.

"We expect it to be done as soon as possible," she said. "Hopefully in the next few days."

Tomarazzo made similar statements at previous meetings. 

"On March 3 we heard that you only needed a few more days," Bajardi said. "That’s something we’re hearing again tonight."

Apart from Bajardi and Tomarazzo’s testy exchange, the meeting unfolded without drama. Hospital CEO Spiros Hatiras reported that the number of pregnant women who have come to the hospital to give birth has gone up since last year.

"Are people more happy this year or were people more happy last year?" he asked to chuckles in the room. "Mothers are more confident coming here and giving birth here."

The night ended in an executive session closed to the public in which board members discussed further details of the impending sale of the hospital.