We used statewide for a countertop in our bathroom and then a few years later in our kitchen. Found their prices fair and their design advice excellent. Talk to Linda.

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No one really cares , so dont let the door hit you in the A$$ on the way back to Crooklyn.......

See Ya!!!

New Jersey - only the strong survive

at least he won't forget us.

On moving day, don't forget to pack your gloating attitude.

All the best to you.

RECALL ALL COCKROACHES!

Census Day, which is the date of the deadline for filling out and mailing your Census form, was April 16.

If you haven't received your forms by now, you will not be counted based on a mailing. Your best bet is to inform the Census Bureau so your building, or home, is added to the list of places that needs to be visited by a volunteer during the next phase.

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Do you work in the city?

If so, enjoy paying city taxes on your income... which none of us do.

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Are you really only going to pay $204 a year in taxes ? I don't think you moving will put a dent in the population trend here in Jersey City but this town probably isn't for you. You had to have lived here all your life to understand the logistics of the way things are done around here. If you were originaly from Brooklyn and you did say "heading back home" then you should have survived living here in J.C. Good luck and let us know how you made out.

+1 slacky.

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Prediction: You will never, ever be happy.

^ he's just jealous.

Sounds like you're moving to a better place, in a better neighborhood, in a better city, and paying less. Congrats.

What was the report about?

As a bonus, you'll be surrounded by a bunch of hipster transplants. If you thought parts of Jersey City were populated by yuppie douches, you ain't seen nothing yet. Sounds like you'll fit right in over there. Goodbye and good riddance to you.

The Jersey City Museum in Dire Financial Straits
POST BY PADDY JOHNSON

Jersey City?s only museum showcasing the work of local emerging artists is in dire financial straits. Artists such as Martha Colburn, Amy Wilson, Louis Cameron, Damien Catera have all exhibited at the Jersey City Museum, a public institution with a now uncertain future. On March 30th the museum announced it would slash its hours to only one day a week (Saturday 12-5) to reduce operating costs. That?s not a good sign.

A worse sign is that only a week and a half after that announcement was made someone mailed me a letter from the museum staff directed to the museum?s Board of Trustees, expressing a lack of confidence in the museum?s future. From the document:

As per our last staff meeting with Nathan Sambul on March 3rd, we were told of a 90-day plan to save the museum. Less than two weeks later, we have not been paid for this past pay period and have growing concerns about the future. In spite of this, the JCM staff remains fully dedicated. We deserve to know if the 90-day plan is still in affect and, if so, under what conditions we are expected to serve.

We the staff of Jersey City Museum are concerned about the museum?s well-being and financial situation for the following reasons:

?Jersey City Museum has not made payroll in a timely manner seven times in the last nine months: July 2, Sept. 30, Oct. 9, Dec. 8, Feb. 12, Feb. 25, March 15.
?As of today, March 17th, Jersey City Museum employees have not been paid for the March 15th pay period.
?Jersey City Museum issued bad checks to its employees three of the last five times. Employees were penalized by their banks and employees? personal credit has been affected.
?Jersey City Museum is using revenue generated from program partnerships to supplement payroll.
?Jersey City Museum has encouraged its part-time staff to work unpaid, ?to volunteer services,? in order to oversee and manage its programming.
?Jersey City Museum has encouraged its salaried staff to forgo compensation days to manage and oversee programming.
?Jersey City Museum has not secured new funds since April 2009, and we are concerned that no new funds are on the horizon.
Yikes! This is pretty serious business, so I called everyone I knew at the museum and wrote virtually every staff member who?d ever worked there for statements. Strangely almost no one wanted to talk. The few who would either gave me canned PR responses or would speak only under the condition of anonymity. I also talked to a number of trustee members including the chairman of the board, Nathan Sambul, about whether they had received the letter. No one could confirm its receipt. In response to my questions about the museum?s financial health, Sambul simply said:

The Jersey City Museum, like many other nonprofit institutions, has seen a decrease in its funding, and we have taken appropriate action. On our website, we have clearly laid out our course of action. If you like to report on the Museum, I would hope that you would recommend to your readers to come to the museum and see our fabulous shows.

Although no link was provided, the page Sambul refers to discusses the Museum?s reduced operating hours and a June fundraiser titled ARTrageous. The event asks donors to give between $5 to $5,000, using an artist-designed golf course with the holes as donation markers. This isn?t exactly a plan, though meeting the event?s $90,000 target won?t hurt the museum. When I asked Sambul to confirm that there was no 90-day initiative to save the museum, he refused to comment.

According to many sources, the question of why the museum?s suffering such hard times begins with long time Executive Director Marion Grzesiak and ends with her ineffective replacement Laurene Buckley, who was relieved of the position after just six months.

Grzesiak worked at the museum between 2001 and 2008, and is now at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey. Nearly everyone I spoke to who had worked at the museum during this time complained about ?rampant nepotism?, one anonymous source decried, ?the museum was run like a family business?and most of the staff were not a part of the family or the business.? Said source was speaking specifically of Grzesiak?s hire of her son, James Congregane who was brought on as the front desk manager and soon promoted to Director of Operations. Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, a respected curator at the museum would later marry Congregane, placing three top positions at the museum in one family.

I was told all three received raises in the face of the 2008 cutbacks and over $250,000 in loans but 990 forms for 2005-2008 only list the loan and highest paid positions. Aranda-Alvarado received a nominal raise for that year, totaling $3,158. According to these same records, from 2001-2004 Grzesiak?s pay remained at 90,000, but over the course of the next four years was increased by $32, 263 in salary and benefits. This doesn?t strike me as wholly out of line ? Grzesiak?s salary is still well below any museum executives name recently in the New York Times ?Major Earners? ? though any pay increase in a year of cutbacks and bank loans doesn?t look good. In 2008, Grzesiak received a raise of over $7,500. I was unable to reach her for comment.

Grzesiak?s departure was unfortunate timing for the museum, as it is now burdened with over $250,000 dollars in loans and no experienced fundraiser to pull them out of those straits. It?s unclear why the Board of Trustees appointed Laurene Buckley as her replacement, as I was told she had few contacts in Jersey City and a resume that included being fired from The Queens Museum of Art - according to some - for failing to adequately increase attendance. It was under her leadership, that the Director of Development position was eliminated in January 2010, for a part time grant writer. You know a museum?s in trouble when they lay off the people who ensure the place has enough money to operate. Buckley was let go only three months later according to sources, for failing to raise any money for the museum during the course of her six-month employment.

Buckley also did not return my emails, though one former staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the museum?s troubles were not the result of one person but a perfect storm of events: losing a long time director, weathering the financial crash, and a myriad of other unspecified problems. ?Any not- for-profit who has a successful director for many years, when the director steps down? they fall apart,? the source told me.

Of course, with almost no staff, and no development plan past a $90,000 fundraising campaign it?s hard to know how this is going to happen. The museum hasn?t had a full time curator since Aranda-Alvarado?s departure in 2009, nor, according to sources, an exhibition budget. Not to state the obvious, but that?s a problem. So are the tales of mysteriously disappearing funds and failure to meet payroll that ran though my correspondence with former staff. As of today the Jersey City Museum has not released all employee pay-checks from March.

Still, almost every staff member I talked to spoke with deep commitment to the museum even in the face of murky financial management. ?I am saddened by the thought that the museum might be in trouble and I hope something can be done to save this important community institution,? former employee Sandy Martiny told me over email, later acknowledging her statement was canned. ?It?s actually how I feel about JMC. Call me Pollyanna.? Another spoke with great remorse about the museum?s strong education program. At one time the museum provided tours and workshops based on the museum?s permanent and temporary exhibitions, exposing students to artists such as Xenobia Bailey; Papo Colo; Raphael Ortiz; Chakaia Booker; Ben Jones; William Pope L; Melvin Edwards; Rodriguez Calero. The permanent collection reflects the demographic of Jersey City. Closure would be a huge loss to the public.

Reflecting the dedication I witnessed when speaking to JMC employees, the apparently unsent letter to the board makes these suggestions for moving forward:

We feel employees should be able to confidentially contribute our input to the Board. In addition, here are some of the staff?s suggestions that may help us remain open.

?Jersey City Museum could move to the Beacon location.
?Sell the museum?s third floor to an independent contractor and staff offices can be relocated to the first and second floor.
?Gala committee should expand outside of museum staff to help with fundraising efforts.
?Sell off naming rights for the museum?s galleries.
?Sell off naming rights for seats in the Caroline Guarini Theatre.
?Hire a professional fundraiser who will take a small cut. At this time, there is no one on staff fundraising for the museum.
The JCM staff?s position is that we are not giving up. We do not believe that this situation is the result of one person?s actions. We maintain that this problem is fixable with the right steps and appropriate leadership.

One month later, it?s unclear whether any of these steps have been explored let alone taken.

Anne Johnson contributed reporting to this piece.

http://www.artfagcity.com/2010/04/28/ ... n-dire-financial-straits/

Its been a great few of years here in Jersey (5yrs) total but I will gladly be heading back home to Brooklyn in a few months. Sold my place and bought a larger place in Propsect Heights. Great neighborhood with a multitude of great restaurants, Prospect Park 9 blocks away (which has plenty of shade trees), beautiful brownstones for blocks and blocks that Downtown JC cant even hold a match to.
My taxes here in JC for an 850sf 1 bed, 1bath are almost 5K a year, (ridiculous), my new abated taxes in BK will be $17 per month for 25 years. NY does abatements the way abatements should be done, not this stupid ass payment in lieu taxes crap which are property taxes by another name. So HAPPY, will never, ever, ever return to NJ to live.

Shine the light on the cockroaches and watch them run.

Anyone not not familiar with what a real Irish pub can learn so here:

http://www.ricksteves.com/plan/destinations/ireland/ire.htm

Cat, great first post. Are you affiliated with a particular JC bar?

This also happened at the intersection of Grove and Montgomery one night in 2006. My husband was sitting with my brother and a friend at Merchant, and witnessed the actual explosion. I was on my way to meet them and saw the flames come up from the manholes (yes, plural). Fortunately there were no cars above the manhole at the time of the explosion, but it's very disturbing to think that this has happened twice (maybe more?) over the past 4 years.

EDIT: It looks like it happened in 2007 and 2008, too!

WTF is going on? Is the city going to do anything about this?

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They just gave $8 million to a patron last night in front of a room full of witnesses. You think the internet scares them?

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Good point. What comes to my mind is 2 differences today. We have far more educated & empowered people living here who won't sit still for that crap, and we have the internet to link them to each other and the information.

I've been looking at the tax records of anyone I want from my home, when you used to have to go to the county offices in Journal Sq and pull out big books. Hopefully information availability will make a big difference to discourage politicians who think they can get away with such nonsense because they'll know it's not going to be a secret to anyone with a web connection just what their well connected neighbor is paying in taxes.

Judging from your avatar you appear to be Russian. Whether or not, I have no sympathy for your effort to erase history.

As someone who is neither Polish nor Russian, I see the Katyn monument in a very different way. I see it as a depiction of the danger of Totalitarianism, which we barely escaped becoming a world-wide ideology; whether in the form of Nazism or Communism. Furthermore, Communism is much more tolerated, despite having resulted in many more deaths at the hands of Communist regimes. For example, ignorant college kids walk around with Che t-shirts while only the dregs of society display Nazi images. When 5:1 social science college professors self-describe as Marxist than conservative (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=amjn_0feDpcM) there is something wrong. Similarly, nobody is critiquing the many Holocaust Memorials in the U.S., such as the one in Battery Park, on the basis of them being foreign or ugly.

In short, I love the Katyn memorial and miss no opportunity to explain it to visitors to our city.

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There are some really good new doctors at Portside Medical. Dr. Marquis (used to be Fabrikant) and Dr. Kimble are great. They have limited hours, but if you are lucky enough to see one of them you will probably be very happy. They both do women's health as well as all the general practioner stuff, so I can get my pap done there, which saves me an extra doctor's visit. Good luck finding a new Dr.!

Did the Mayor seem quite "tipsy" to anyone besides me? And during the day when he's supposed to be at work?

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My head hurts reading your post....

So you're arguing it is *supposed* to be a dog run, but they neglected to build a fence when they built the "dog run"? You're also arguing that at the dog run their should be a "no dogs allowed" sign up?

I don't get it, do you think it should be a dog run, or not? As it is now, it's just a tree surrounded by rocks where people can watch boats go by....Is that such a bad thing?

In short: What is the point of this thread?

Just watched it. It was great

Best coverage that Arnold ever had. Truly shows the face of those scumbags.

I think he got one fact wrong, Flood also voted for the emblem right?

Anyway, 7 people on the same list.

Yep, great piece.