More of the same. I don't know how Steve Fulop can even stand to be in the same room with those people on the council, he's got more patience than me.

If you want to help, please write and offer to volunteer:

info@BetterJC.com

Because assuming they've got enough signatures, once these 2 referendum ballots come up for voting it's going to be tough sledding - the corruption in city hall has been there for a long, long time and is not going away without a fight.


I figure I can either move out of JC, or I can try to make it better - and I hate moving.

SallyGal, sorry to about that - I had my car ticketed for street cleaning in another part of town 5 days *after* it was stolen - not only did the Parking Authority miss the chance to recover it, but I then had to spend half an afternoon in court 30 days later to get the ticket removed from my record - so I think you can expect the same (although you might be trying to recover the money you'll spend tomorrow get your car out, which will probably entail badgering them after the fact)


my sympathies, for what it's worth

caj11, you're new to Jersey City, aren't you?

I would suggest revising your plans to include 3 rent-a-cops for backyard patrol during the construction phase of your deck.

That's a good one about the Lojack people being amazed that they wouldn't track it, you officially have me beat. For me, coming up against that nonchalant attitude was as much of a drag as actually getting the car stolen was.

People who haven't had to go through it yet wouldn't know, so as a public service:

As far as your car goes, you are on your own in Jersey City - the system seems to have given up on stressing over car theft some time ago.

Maybe they've had to prioritize on drugs and violent crime, I can understand that. But for car theft it's like the wild wild west here, anything goes. At least that was my experience.

I don't commute by car so now I'm thinking of going with Zipcar, because I don't want to either own a total beater or have to wonder each morning if my car's still going to be there.

So one more parking space for the rest of you.

Yeah... on the phone they told me there was a form they would send me, but instead they just sent a notice to go before the judge.

When I called back to ask about why they weren't sending me the form, they said really it's just better I come in before the judge, because the mailed forms are handled by a different judge, it's a slower process, the ticket might not get cleared correctly, things tend to go wrong, etc etc. They just really were pushing hard talking me out of doing it by mail.

I don't know if the person was trying to give me good advice or was just pushing me towards coming in because it was less work for them, but at that point I took their word for it as far as things going wrong, and I went before the judge to get it cleared up.

Is it a few days later when you need a copy of the police report for your insurance and you discover the city has decided this is an excellent opportunity to make another $5 off you, the crime victim, by *charging* you for the copy?

No.

Is it when, since you don?t happen to know the report number, you find out that the additional effort of looking it by your last name costs an *additional* $5?

No.


It doesn't come until about a month later, when you get a notice from the Municipal Court and find out that your car was indeed found in Bergen-Lafayette 5 days after it was stolen! Yay!

?.and ticketed for a street cleaning violation.

Oh, it wasn?t recovered, of course - the Parking Authority, which does nothing but drive around looking at cars and license plates all day, has no connection whatsoever to the database of stolen cars, even after a ticket goes all the way through their system and on into the Municipal Court system for non-payment. So instead of having your car recovered, you now owe the city $42 plus a $10 late fee or you can plead not guilty ? which means an hour or two at Municipal Court going before a judge and getting the thieves? parking ticket taken off your record...



You might think the thieves would have to be pretty stupid to let a car get a parking ticket 5 days after stealing it ? but it?s like that old joke ?I don?t have to run faster than the tiger, I just have to run faster than you? ? the thieves don?t have to be smart, they just have to be smarter than the city.




ah well.

?Forget it Jake, it?s Chinatown?

?The exposure of the local government of Jersey City has been very shameful to the inhabitants of that town."

Could this be in reference to our municipal ?judges? and the recent traffic ticket fixing scandal?



?The people who are not the beneficiaries of the corruption in the government seem to be quite hopeless and helpless, and have no more remedy to propose than mobs and vigilance committees."

Could this be in reference to Councilman Fulop?s referendums and the neighborhood associations?



Probably not, this article is from back on April 14th.


April 14th, 1890



Click here for NY Times article


the more things change, the more they stay the same...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/nyr ... 3judges.html?ref=nyregion



If this keeps up, Jersey City municipal government could get a reputation for corruption or something....

I was by there a few weeks ago, they were ready to go. I'm confident they were waiting for our joke of a local government to get it together and do the inspection.

This is exactly what caused the delay with Ibby's reno, btw.

Furthermore, maybe they felt they couldn't go public on their website (or here for that matter) as to the real cause of the delay for fear of pissing the city off and slowing down the process even more - I know Ibby's was smart enough not to say a word about it.


This municipal government is a sad, sad joke.

I used to sublet in this building in the West Village... this roof was amazing..

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/20/gar ... 0roof.html?pagewanted=all

it also mentions an organization that (I guess) has some info on green roofs...

earthpledge.org

Emergent, what have you heard?? If you go to their website, zzom in on their GPS tracking and you can see it going in circles all of a sudden, does *not* look good....

http://www.abora3.de/index-eng.html


Brian

Hadn't I also read that she refused to do any debates, and that Manzo was left to show up to them alone?

I (as has already been established) was remiss in getting my voter registration in place in time for the primary, so I'd just like to implore at least somebody to get out there next week and vote against her, in my place...

Let 's get some better government!

saw that coming - thanks for info anyway

is this a setup, will I get flamed for not registering sooner? :)

...2 years....

I'm sure this has been asked before - I'd like to vote next week but haven't registered - am I too late? How would I do it? (I'm in the Van Vorst Park area).

thanks!

Yeah actually I kind of agree with you - I like it too, it was so cool to come across it right there in front of Bubby's... the only thing is, they didn't look official (I didn't think I saw uniforms, but who knows...)

I was just curious if someone around here actually had horses!

So I'm walking home a few nights ago, Jersey and Varick, 8:00 PM - right up there on the list of unexpected things to see would be 2 white horses being ridden up the street - but there they were, coming back from Liberty State Park at the end of Jersey I guess. That was kid of picturesque.


Then today I'm riding my bike to the park to enjoy the comfortably globally-warmed December weather, and on the foot bridge over that little canal/industrial swamp thing, were several mounds of horse-sheet. Less picturesque. (not that the pristine natural beauty of that foot bridge was ruined or anything).



So 2 questions:

who's got horses in downtown JC? (now *there's* some gentrification for ya)

if you happen to know them, could you ask them to buy a large pooperscooper?

This'll probably inspire Healy to volunteer for a pub crawl.

Troy's chief of staff. oh great.

I hear the mayor is looking for a local Hooter's Employee Retirement Home to donate to.

yes, the finances behind PILOTS and abatements are conveniently complicated/obfuscated, but to find the truth, just follow the money... in the NY TImes article, the only supporters of Mayor McTipsy they could find to cite were the big developers coming into town. That in itself speaks volumes to me (a point missed by the NY Times cub reporter assigned to the JC beat).

...I mean, especially now, who doesn't believe the phrase "candy from a baby" *hasn't* crossed the lips of the developers seated in their Manhattan boardrooms?

...it's a drag this guy is and will continue to be a self-deprecating JC joke for the next few years, but the mishandling of the current ongoing development deals will have much more of a long-lasting effect, and last on long after he teeters off into the sunset.

mark my words.

the new official jclist.com signature....

yeah, let's start a movement!


credit where credit's due... thanks, brewster

I got here after the election - stil trying to figure out how this guy got elected.


It's even worse, the timing of this administration, that it's coincided with all the developers coming to the city to make deals. The 20-30 year PILOT giveaways they've been handing out will be hurting Jerseey City long after Mayor McTipsy's gone.


I might as well make this my signature:

"Someday a book will be written on how this city can be broke in the midst of all this development."

Quoted from the NY Times article:

************************************************
"The larger question is whether the mayor's activities and the unwelcome publicity will give pause to developers ? like Hartz Mountain, K. Hovnanian and Mack-Cali ? who together have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in a gilded future for Jersey City.

"Absolutely not," said Mitchell E. Hersh, president and chief executive of Mack-Cali, a developer that owns 4.3 million square feet of property here.

Indeed, Mr. Hersh called the mayor "a man of high integrity, a former judge."

He added, "Our dealings with the administration in Jersey City have certainly been on a very high level, and I have seen nothing but an honorable administration of the highest integrity."

************************************************

...forget the alcohol - that the mayor's staunchest defenders are the developers says a lot about how hard a bargain his administration must be striking with them.


I'll quote that post of someone else's yet again:
"Someday a book will be written about how this city can be broke in the midst of all this development".

I don't want to sound patronizing, but this person who suggests heavy drinking is a part of everyone's family get-togethers (...first we get ripped and hang out naked on the prorch, then one of us is arrested... good times...) or the person who suggests we be proud our mayor's at least not on coke too (if that person's even for real) - it just makes me sad - is that Jersey City?

tell me that's not Jersey City...

Mayors Gone WIld!!! $19.95 for the DVD!!

... the single best reponse in this thread was when someone asked (...reality check...) - can you imagine Bloomberg being remotely cuffed and maced in a bar parking lot at 2:00 AM??? (or Giuliani for that matter)

It's such a tragedy, because JC could be so much more - unfortunately the slick developers showed up a few years before we got the old-school buffoons out, so we're getting our clocks cleaned with the PILOTS/abatements - this will be Healy's lagacy, not his alcohol misadventures.


The other best line recently on these boards:
"Someday a book will be written on how Jersey City could be 'broke' in the midst of all this development"

unbelievable - I just rode my bike past city hall and saw channel 2 and channel 7 microwave vans set up to do reports, and - I kid you not - I thought to myself, hmm, on a Sunday? Did Healy get picked up DWI last night?

God's honest truth. Good old Jersey City.

Quote:


exactly. exactlyexactlyexactly