Parking in Hoboken is as much a part of its reputation as its flourishing nightlife, diverse restaurants, spectacular views (the skyline is pretty impressive too) and safe streets. However, parking has become one of the towns's few cons (literally and figuratively) to its numerous pros.

In recent years, one parking lot after another has been replaced with apartment complexes. Local businesses don’t reach full earning potential because people from outside of town are, without sounding hyperbolic, petrified to come to Hoboken out of fear they may not find a parking spot or even a garage to park their cars, particularly on weekends.

The language selected by Hoboken’s drivers when finding a parking spot manifests an assorted array of artistic articulation SO profound and disgusting, the decorum prohibits listing them here. Considering Mayor Roberts made resolving the parking issue one of the central themes of his campaign last year, it’s odd that circumstances haven’t improved at all.

Or is it? After reviewing the revenue stream created for the city government by parking tickets in this town, it’s easy to see why Roberts is making sure the cash register continues to have a robust ring to it.

Roberts’s spokesman was courteous enough to not return phone calls for an interview request with the Mayor to discuss this situation. But after checking the calendar, it appears it isn’t an election year, which may explain it. Still, the Mayor’s staff decision to not inject the city government’s perspective for this story only forces a writer to draw his own conclusions on some findings concerning parking—and the lack of it—in Hoboken.

…And it ain’t pretty.

When our own Francis Albert Sinatra sang "Zing go the strings of my heart" he never added a cha-ching after the zing part. But parking ticket revenues continually allow the city government to sing all the way to the ATM, with the Authority designed to tackle the problem falling apart quicker than the NASDAQ. To exemplify just how contentious matters have become between the Mayor’s office and the Authority, two of Roberts’s own appointed Commissioners—Alan Cohen and Daniel DeCavaignac—both resigned within a week of each other, citing the Mayor as the problem. That’s tantamount to Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams telling Joe Torre to take a hike.

"Late last fall, during a meeting in your office, you [Mayor Roberts] told the new parking commissioners that '...it's all about politics,'" Cohen wrote in his resignation letter to the Mayor in June. "At the time I didn't believe you. I thought I could rise above it. I was wrong. Everything in Hoboken is about politics, money and jobs - everything including the Parking Authority."

All told, according to a spokesman in the city government’s financial office, Hoboken generated $3 MILLION in parking tickets and other parking-related revenues—such as towing and parking meters—in fiscal 2001.

Say it again, doing your best Dr. Evil imitation complete with pinky to mouth: Three million dollars.

Considering the city is one square mile, and not all Hoboken residents’ own cars, generating that kind of number through tickets and towing is quite impressive for a town no bigger than Walnut Grove. (OK, as a kid I watched Little House on the Prairie and may have had a thing for Mary in her pre-sight loss days… it’s called an analogy-let it go). The question is, how is this money being allocated to improve the city's paramount problem?

The Mayor is only now calling for an independent task force to determine what has caused a much-needed 324-robotic car garage at 926 Garden Street to fall a mere 36 months behind schedule to complete. The real question isn’t why this monstrosity is taking longer to build than, say…Rome…but why Roberts has decided to wait one year after taking office before becoming proactive on the issue? Are the pressing initiatives of rules to not form lines outside of bars, or thoughts of turning Hoboken into the Gaza Strip by threatening to impose earlier curfews on said bars, putting the Mayor’s time at a premium?

The town continues to bulldoze existing garages and lots only to replace them with apartments that are mandated to provide parking but in the same breath charge its residents money in order to park in them, ranging invariably from an additional $150.00-$250.00/month to already ridiculously high rents. Consequently, this tactic scares some residents and their cars off into the street with the willingness to take a chance on finding free parking as opposed to dropping hundreds and even thousands on building-provided parking per year.

More residents, more cars, less spots…Not exactly what the "perfect together" marketing people had in mind for New Jersey. But if that unsavory combination keeps the city government, its contractors and tow yards happy, then why put an end to a beautiful friendship? Maybe it is all about politics, money and jobs, like former Commissioner Cohen observed when he was smart enough to get out.

Now if you’ve excuse me, I need to go drop some f-bombs while I attempt to move my car away from that ambiguously marked faded yellow line on the sidewalk to the last open spot in the city back on 15th and Monroe.

Joe Concha is a Hoboken-based columnist for The New York Sun and a contributor to Hobokeni.com. He is currently enjoying the Summer of Conch in Sea Girt, New Jersey, where parking is easy like Sunday morning.

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