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A River Rolled Through It
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Dawn Zimmer '90 with Hoboken city staff
Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer '90 meets with city staff. Photo by Perry Smith/UNH Photographic Services

On a cold morning one month post-Sandy, lines of sleet pelt the line of weary travelers that stretches for blocks from Hoboken Terminal, inching forward step-pause-step. The dim light tints the scene sepia like an old photograph. The commuters huddled beneath umbrellas could be immigrants waiting a century ago, when Hoboken Terminal was the first stop for Ellis Island arrivals taking the train west. Slowly the 21st-century migrants trudge down the city streets, through the dark, freezing train station, and finally onto the ferries that will take them to their jobs across the Hudson.

Convenience to New York, with lower rents, is Hoboken's big attraction. With 56 percent of the city's residents commuting on public transportation, it's the most transit-dependent community in the country. After the storm, Hoboken's PATH train station—made infamous by a video of floodwaters bursting from an elevator shaft with frightening force—stayed closed for seven weeks, long after service to every other city had resumed. Without the train, buses and cabs to Manhattan got stuck in endless traffic, and buses back to Hoboken filled up and left people stranded. The ferry company added runs and reduced the fare, but it was still high, and the lines were intimidating.

Immediately after the storm, the items on city government's to-do list were as visible as those lines of frustrated commuters. People needed generators, food and medicine. A new pumping station managed to drain the streets of the toxic water/fuel/sewage mix in three days. But close behind the liquid came the trash, a Kilimanjaro of it, as residents gutted their soaked homes and businesses.

For a while the city was averaging 300 tons of trash a day, five times more than normal. But on this day, Sandy plus one month, only occasional pieces of soggy drywall sit outside next to apartment building trash cans. Now the city's challenges are harder to see, and Zimmer has convened a morning meeting of department directors to discuss them. She's already been on the phone with New Jersey Transit, lobbying for another tweak to the interim transportation arrangements. Finally, exasperated, she told the administrator that she was simply going to announce the change to reporters. When he didn't object, she quickly shot him an email to confirm.

Dawn Zimmer '90 outside City Hall in Hoboken, N.J.
Photo by Amanda Procaccino Prunty/Star-Ledger

Much as Zimmer loves mingling with Hoboken residents, most of her days follow a short indoor trail. She moves from the computer corner of her big drafty office, near the huge window with the City of Hoboken seal, to the adjacent conference room, where she meets with staff or reporters or the latest group of volunteers. Back and forth she strides, over and over, grabbing papers from tables as the old steam radiators hiss a workday song. A walkie-talkie and flashlight still sit amid the files on her desk. The green canvas cot where she slept during the storm has been pushed into a corner, serving as a drying rack for the mementos that got wet on her window sills.

City Hall itself illustrates the needs confronting the staff: Though it seems undamaged, many departments still have no phone service. The salt water that swamped Hoboken from two directions has wreaked havoc on the old underground copper wires all over the city. "So in other words," Zimmer says after listening to staffers' reports, "we're going to wind up with a much better, more resilient phone system—but nobody can say when?"

This is her mayoral M.O.: Hire good people, ask them lots of questions, then summarize and propose a plan. Occasionally, when pressing for clarification, she'll smile and say something like, "Yes, I know, I'm a pain." Mostly, though, she speaks quickly in a deep voice that's friendly but all business. No time for chat, her demeanor telegraphs; we've got too much to do.

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