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Letter: Paterson council ‘shamefully capitulated’ to mayor’s retaliatory measures | Paterson Times

Letter: Paterson council ‘shamefully capitulated’ to mayor’s retaliatory measures

letter-to-editor-hq

The city is awash with anger over the city council’s decision to raise taxes at its last meeting.  People outside the city are excoriating Paterson’s municipal government and its citizens. When the mayor initially proposed the tax increases, the council wisely rejected his proposed budget and demanded additional budget cuts. The mayor retaliated by closing down part of the recreation department for the latter part of the summer, putting Patersonian children out on the streets.

Unmoved the council demanded even further cuts, especially amongst the mayor’s presumed political patronage positions. But the mayor refused and failed to present a budget that would pass the scrutiny of the state’s Dept. of Community Affairs, currently in charge of monitoring the city’s finances. He instead returned to the council with a budget that if not passed, would shut down some ethnic parades at the end of the summer. So essentially the mayor called for the community to absorb increased taxes to pay for, among other things, parades while turning many of the city’s children out onto the street. Facing groups of parade organizers, and the further threat of shutting down the city, the council disappointingly passed the budget.

Rather than hold out and forcing the mayor to trim his administrative budget, the council shamefully capitulated, allowing the parades to go forward, while many of the city’s children saw their summer recreation cut short.

Soon the municipal government must approach the DCA for funds to cover a future budget shortfall. They will have to explain why raising taxes for parades was possible, indeed more important than the needs of the city’s children, but impossible to raise for the necessary future function of the city. No intelligent person can articulate a rationale that defends that position.

People outside the city are laughing loudly and harshly at Paterson and its collective leadership.  This disgraceful episode calls into serious question the values of a community that will sacrifice its children in favor of a group of parades. While I do not blame the parade organizers, they have a right to demand what they want, and the mayor most definitely created this conflict, the needs of the children and the pockets of the taxpayers should have resonated louder in the minds and thoughts of the city’s leaders. Shamefully they did not and everyone is laughing, everyone except the city’s near desperate taxpayers and the children cast out onto the city’s streets.

Jonathan Hodges, MD
Child Advocate and Taxpayer

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  • Yogi Zuna

    Right on target Dr. Hodges, and they never seem to learn the error of their ways.

  • Paterson Pulse Paterson Pulse

    Maybe St. Joe's should open the records and show why Hodges had leave that hospital, and not renew his Medical lic. Maybe we should OPRA his voting records when Councilman sigh was on the school board and see the million of dollars they gave to a charter school, who's president gave Saygeh a $40,000 a year job at the Paterson Alliance. Shortly after that. Now he wants to talk.
    This letter was from Sayegh via Hodges, looking to target the mayor so he could be elected for mayor.
    If Torres ever leave and Sayeg and Hodges get their hands on City Hall, God help Paterson. Don't fall for this crap. It all political motivated, to let corrupt Sayegh win.

  • Jonathan Hodges MD

    It is disappointing that such a serious discussion has to be interrupted by childish and malevolent allegations that the pretend journalist cannot and has no intentions of trying to prove. After all these years of using the same lies, Mr. Sirrano Baldeo, you have had ample time to prove these lies but only find them useful in your attempts to smear people and the truth you cannot stand. The letter above speaks for itself. And your warped perceptions of the truth speaks for itself.

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