Fifteen days after the attorneys for Appellant CAMPBELL (WILLIAM D. CAMPBELL vs.
CITY OF HOBOKEN) submitted an OPRA (Open Public Records Act) request to the City of Hoboken, the law firm finally received two response packets.  The first packet, dated October 14, 2010 City OPRA LOG # 10-1696, consists of 10 pages while the second packet, dated October 15, 2010 City OPRA LOG # 10-1695, consists of 29 pages.   

For the record, there is no question that the law firm faxed the OPRA request to the Hoboken City Clerk’s Office on September 29, 2010 @ 4:02pm and entered into the OPRA LOG file the following business day, September 30, 2010 @ 9:36am. 

The recent layoff of Hoboken’s Assistant Public Information Officer has added yet another lawsuit to the growing and costly list of Hoboken legal challenges.

The Law Office of C. Elston &Associates, LLC, Wall, New Jersey filed a Notice of Appeal with the New Jersey Civil Service Commission on behalf of WILLIAM D. CAMPBELL ("Appellant “ or “Campbell”) for his recent layoff from the permanent position of assistant Public Information Officer in the Department of Administration for the City of Hoboken.

In August, the [Hoboken] City Council voted to kill the sale of the municipal garage on Observer Highway to S. Hekemian Group, stating the developer was in breach of contract for attempting to lower the price.

But now the developer says it was actually prepared to buy the property for the original $25.5 million.

SHG is also accusing the city of having "engaged in a charade," said the developer's attorney Doug Cohen.

"Their allegation that we were in breach was really a pretext to the fact that they were in breach," said Cohen. "They tried to fire the first shot."

At the December 13, 2007 Hoboken City Council meeting, Hani Ahmed warned that the Hoboken Municipal Garage deal would be challenged in court.

During a meeting last August, Developer Michael Kasparian, the owner of MDK Development, which previously placed two bids to purchase the city’s Municipal Garage site last year, questioned the city’s planning consultant Gordon Litwin over why earlier bids were disregarded by the city. MDK filed a lawsuit against the city earlier this week in which it alleges the city’s actions in the bidding process to be in violation of the Local Redevelopment and Housing Law.

THE GARAGE – Hoboken’s Municipal Garage, at the corner of Willow Avenue and Observer Highway, is costing the city $102,000 every month to lease, and if the current agreement survives the lawsuit, will one day be home to a 12-story, 240-unit residential complex.  
Just over a month after a divided City Council designated a developer to build housing on the Public Works Garage Site on Observer Highway, a competing developer and a Hoboken resident filed a joint lawsuit challenging the city's bidding process and choice of developer.

Developer MDK Development LLC, which bid $5 million more than the winning bidder for the site, is asking the Superior Court of New Jersey to order Hoboken to undertake a new RFP (Request for Proposals) process and force the city to return any bid security it has received from the chosen developer.

ENGLEWOOD, N.J., Sept. 8— For years, the Englewood School District has spent thousands of dollars in a court fight to create a school intended to draw students from wealthier communities. Now it is going to great lengths to weed out students from outside its boundaries.

There is no proof that students from outside the district are enrolled here. And school officials say privately that the district's low test scores are not much of an inducement for students to enroll here illegally. But largely because of complaints from an influential citizens' group, the school district over the last half-year has insisted that all families reregister their children.

The school board acted after conceding that the district had not been consistent in the last few years in asking all new parents in the district for proof of residency.

Even parents whose children have been attending Englewood schools for years had to present documentation, including deeds, tax returns and utility bills, to prove that they lived where they said they did. If they did not, district officials said, their children would not be allowed in school, and they would owe past tuition.

When school began Wednesday, officials said they ''disenrolled'' about 300 students whose parents had failed to properly reregister them. Total enrollment in the district's five schools is 2,665.