Toni Tomarazzo Wins QLC's Civic Award 2009

HOBOKEN THANKS
Toni Tomarazzo
with the
Civic Award 2009


Toni Tomarazzo truly embodies the spirit of the QLC’s Civic Award. On learning that she was chosen to receive this year’s Civic Award, her first response was that she didn’t deserve the award, citing the group effort involved in the many causes she’s helped move forward over the years.

Rallying other people to a cause comes naturally to Toni, whose “day job” is as a lawyer for international banking giant, UBS, where she’s a regulatory counsel. Her legal training has honed her skills in digging into technical material, analyzing legal regulations and making a persuasive case. These skills – along with her gracious manners, tenacity, and sense of humor in dealing with local officials – have made her an invaluable member of several Hoboken community groups, including Hoboken Heritage, Hoboken Revolt and Friends of the Y.

These skills were first put to the test for a cause when a family member’s care in a veteran’s nursing home was threatened by Governor Whitman’s plan to privatize a number of state services, including nursing homes. Toni talked to other relatives of the nursing home’s residents and rallied them to fight against the measure. She organized a group of them to go around to American Legion halls to talk to other veterans, and also secured meetings with high-ranking state and federal officials to persuade them of the bad consequences of such a plan. Sure enough, nursing homes were excluded from Whitman’s plan.

That experience taught her how much a group of people organized around a shared goal could accomplish, as long as
there are open lines of communications,
everybody in the group contributes ideas and time, and
the group is advocating for a principle, not simply against some group or individual.

Toni carried these skills and guiding principles into her involvement in local community groups, including Hoboken Heritage and the Friends of the Y. But most notably, she has been a founding member and driving force behind the Hoboken Revolt, a group that formed late last year after the state fiscal monitor raised municipal taxes sharply to cover an unanticipated budget increase. She was one of about a dozen people who responded to a letter about the tax increase that was written by Jonathan Metsch and published in the Hoboken Reporter.

The original members of Hoboken Revolt quickly organized into a steering committee and created a website that encourages dialogue among local residents. Some 750 members have signed up on the website, and maintain a lively online conversation about a variety of topics, generally having to do with fiscal responsibility and accountability in local government.

Toni is quick to point out that the steering committee is made up of a very diverse group of people, with very different political leanings, who agree to put aside political differences to act together to advocate for the shared goals of greater transparency and fiscal responsibility in local government.

This conscious effort to keep the conversation about the issues and not personalities has been instrumental in the group’s early success at raising awareness and mobilizing people for political rallies and various subcommittees. These subcommittees research and explore ways to improve the management of the city’s finances, as well as the county’s and schools’ budgets, among other topics.

Toni has personally tackled PILOT agreements, using a combination of OPRA requests, research on other communities’ PILOTs and polite but firm commentary at city council meetings to force information out into the open for public discussion – for the first time in a holistic manner. She discovered that many agreements aren’t being managed properly, some had expired, and most are not delivering the promised benefits of ensuring the availability of affordable housing or community benefits.

For keeping the tone of political discourse civil, and for her countless hours of research, public advocacy and behind-the-scenes cheerleading for civic involvement by average citizens in the cause of transparency and smarter solutions to the city’s fiscal woes, the Quality of Life Coalition is pleased to recognize Toni Tomarazzo as the 2009 recipient of the Civic Award.

Thanks to Ines Garcia Keim for the photos.