a 10% drop in rent is roughly a free month of rent, which is pretty common nowadays. the other approach is that the landlord pays the broker, which typically equals the monthly rent payment.

the problem in jersey city is, which has been pointed out elsewhere, the increasing expenses real estate taxes and utilities that landlords have to bear. so given a 10% increase in these expenses coupled with a 10% cut in rent de facto reduces the landlord's margin by 20%.

so, many renters who have received a reduction in their current rents are in fact paying roughly 20% less in rent from the landlord's perspective ...

worth pointing out ...

Quote: this has been a problem for a while. these guys are hanging out every morning outside the specific house of 8th street, which is one of the dumpier looking buildings on that side of the street. i always thought they are working on the house, but clearly progress and process are lacking.

entirely depends on where you are on jersey and what the shape of the place is.

close to the park and the nicer part of jersey, this could be at least 3,500, assuming that it is in decent shape.

Quote:i do not know what planet healy is on, but certainly he is orbiting in a far place with a very weak connection to reality.

while it could be possible that there were in fact no direct promises made for the campaign contributions made by these developers, there is a significant change in both the political climate and the public perception. continuing to claim that there is no quid pro quo, although the circumstances point otherwise, only demonstrates that our mayor's perspective is not based on reality and he is not sensitive to public opinion.

what is increasingly disappointing to many in the city are the half-hearted attempts by city hall to deal with the political and reputational fall-out of the july 23 arrests. it seems that the mayor continues with the traditional modus operandi of shifting the financial burden to taxpayers, who continue to pay the price of development. lowering the PILOT levels will further weaken the critical state of the city's collapsing infrastructure ....

we need a p2p reform and we need it now, so that the influence of developers on the rest of the city can be curtailed.

it was a great meeting and the two suits did a pretty decent job explaining what the potential causes of the lead and arsenic contamination were and the relative severity of each.

Quote:

this is a concern that was raised. since the dogs and their owners will have two separate runs (one for the big ones and the other for the smaller ones), it is less likely that they would run around and dig in the park. but certainly, it is a possibility. and if a new family were to plant a flower, even in that case, digging below 6 inches would be somewhat of a stretch. should either of these violate the integrity of the barrier layer, there are ways to remedy the situation.

coincidentally, the greatest concentration of contaminants was under the old basketball court .....

Quote:good points. last time i checked, there was more than a 99.9% likelihood that people living in jersey city die. the rest are reincarnated....

This seems to be a good news bad news situation. There are contaminants, but the levels are marginally higher than requires remediation levels and the area is concentrated around the old basketball courts at Jersey Ave/9th street.


The contaminants are in the ground and under the surface.

Quote: i commend the hpna for arranging the meeting to discuss these concerns. this organization has done an excellent job representing our common interests toward the city, sharing our concerns with the renovation, and trying to find a solution to a greater problem than the location of a temporary dog run.

when curing this contemination, our community faces a very difficult decision. we need to have a serious discussion both at the meeting and on jclist.

i'll be there ....

Quote:right ... at first they are expensive, but they drop their prices fast, and at the end they are reasonable.

Quote: wtf?????????????????

Quote: thanks for the link to the article, which was quite extensive and informative.

the recent news about a new p2p policy for the city is excellent. as long as the disclosure rules provide transparency, it will be beneficial. my only concern is how tightly the rules are going to be written, as it is quite simple to circumvent federal campaign finance rules, and those rules are pretty tight.

http://allironworks.com/

95 Coles Street,
Jersey City, NJ 07302
(201) 653-8681
(201) 653-8567 Fax

they are ok - not the best, not the worst. you just have to be very specific about what they should do, and how much you should pay, and most importantly when.

they do their work in fits and bouts, so giving them the right incentive to work through the project is smart.

they are recommended with some reservations.

since this is jersey city, the question is pretty academic.

my suggestion is the following. let's have fundraiser. once we have roughly $10k in small denomination unmarked bills, we could go to the relevant guy working at the mayor's action bureau. i heard guy catrillo, really nice guy who is on top of things. he is the man who calls the shots. we could give him the money and i am sure as friends of his, we would be getting a nice red light on the corner of 10th and erie pretty soon....



Quote:

the idea is not bad, but the fact is that jersey city and hudson county are one of the most reliable democratic areas in the state. for corzine it is a must to win the county with a broad and steady margin. corzine is definitely playing the game well - he is going after mayors and not the elected officials. it may be so that it is seen less as a reputational liability than mayors under indictement.

that notwithstanding, lopez and vega must go, but compared to headline prettyboy cammarano, who really must have pissed corzine and the democratic party establishment off, these are small fish, not even worth frying.

Quote:

and the explanation comes from the nyt. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/rea ... 2njzo.html?ref=realestate in case you have not seen it ... IN THE REGION | NEW JERSEY A Tarnished ?Gold Coast? By ANTOINETTE MARTIN AMID the flurry of signs that much of the state home sales market began a recovery in June, there was pretty clear evidence that Hudson County, across the river from Manhattan, was undergoing no such thing. Condominiums make up roughly 80 percent of Hudson?s housing stock ? and across the price spectrum, they have sold poorly, according to the Otteau Valuation Group, which reports to the housing industry. Even for those priced under $400,000, Otteau reported an 11-month inventory build-up. Condos priced at $1 million and up weren?t selling at all; in June, there was not a single signed contract for a condo in that price range in Hudson County, although 86 were listed. ?We had one sell for $961,000 in April at Crystal Point? in Jersey City, said Adrienne Albert, the chief executive of the Marketing Directors Inc., the broker for the project. ?And we?ve had 13 sales in July, with an average sales price over $750,000.? comment - crystal point is selling. was the tax abatement necessary? NO. Also, at Gull?s Cove in Jersey City, the developer Dean S. Geibel of Metro Homes, said three contracts were close to being signed ? ?as in people measuring to see if their furniture would fit? ? for penthouses priced around $1 million. comment - are they asking for an abatement? NO. Nevertheless, the picture painted by Otteau?s latest numbers does not present a penthouse-worthy view of the Jersey City market, or that in neighboring Hoboken, or Hudson County as a whole, even though the area is known as the ?Gold Coast.? Countywide in June, there were a total of 2,335 condos listed ? 89 fewer than in May. But there were only 191 sales, four fewer than in May. During the housing boom years in the early part of the decade, Hudson County?s market was constantly the star in the monthly Otteau reports, and it did not begin to flame out until last year, about two years after the overall state market dimmed. In that trajectory it more closely resembled Manhattan?s market. For example, in the downtown section of Jersey City ? a district proudly known as ?Wall Street West,? until Wall Street had its meltdown last fall ? there were 404 homes on the market in June. Only 33 sold. ?That is a very low buyer-to-seller ratio,? said Jeffrey Otteau, the president of the Otteau Group. ?Only eight buyers for each 100 homes.? Hoboken used to be the top performer in Hudson County when the county was the top performer in the state in the early 2000s. But the story in Hoboken was similar in June: 575 homes listed, 87 sales, which means demand was 15 percent of supply. New listings continue to pour onto the county market, at a reported average rate of 499 condos per month, and 99 single-family houses per month, although Mr. Otteau said he believed those figures were somewhat inflated by the relisting of properties that had not sold at a higher price. David Barry, a principal of Ironstate Development, a builder based in Hoboken, said that despite Hoboken?s poor showing, the true ?perfect storm conditions? were for the condo market in Jersey City. ?It?s been a very pro-development city, where it was a lot easier to get projects approved than in Hoboken,? he said. ?Unfortunately, a lot of inventory came on the market just as Wall Street was crashing ? at prices that no longer made sense to the consumer. comment - no shit. ?Sales will go up after prices are adjusted, but that takes some months to work out. When the market froze up, some developers got caught, and they?ve been sort of paralyzed while they figure out what pricing now is appropriate and workable.? Mr. Barry said his company decided to take a hiatus from building condos more than two years ago, although it has a large rental building under construction in Jersey City. That 15-story tower, 225 Grand, is being built in partnership with SK Properties. During the boom, county condo prices rose rapidly and to unparalleled heights. A $1 million condo ceased being a bell-ringing rarity around the time Gov. Jon Corzine moved into his Hoboken condo in 2004. Early last year, the choicest units at several high-rise buildings were listed above $1.5 million, a few above $2 million ? and some even drew multiple bids. This June, the county still had four condos listed at $2.5 million and above, although five others had disappeared from the listings of the month before ? perhaps to be relisted for less, as Mr. Otteau suggested. In the price range below that, $600,000 to $1 million, 27 condos sold and 343 listed units did not. This alone created a 12-month supply of unsold homes on the market. By far the largest number of condos for sale in Hudson County are priced below $600,000. In June, there were 1,902 units listed in that range. Only 164 of those sold; the result was an 11-month inventory build-up. The picture was not much brighter in any other part of the county. A few statistical snapshots simply underscore the laggardly overall picture: ? In Bayonne, where prices generally tend to be lower than in Hoboken and Jersey City, 15 homes sold in June, leaving a 10.8-month supply. So far this year, sales contracts have been signed for 48 condos. ? In Union City, a lower-priced alternative to adjacent Hoboken, 62 new condo listings were added in June alone; there were eight sales that month. ? North Bergen had 47 new listings in June, but only nine sales.

so, when will he start updating his twitter feed again ...

http://twitter.com/petercammarano

I had to check the calender. It is august 1. Not april 1. Obviously healy&co fail to understand the public's perception of the abetements and the lack of trust and confidence the corruption scandal is leading to.

All the more reason to protest TuesdayQuote:

may your happiness last longer than one week ... Quote:

you give him too much credit - i don't think he knows the difference. he is a seaton hall graduate ...

btw it is funny that they still have his official bio on their website. how long will it take until the city erases all signs of him ...

Quote:

here is your econ 102 .....

Quote:

essentially, the banks own the regional reserves. in exchange, the federal reserve regulates those banks that own the 13 federal reserve banks.

at top of this is board of governors. it is independent of all the government branches. one would argue that it is a privately held fourth branch of the government with the objective of managing monetary policy - the lubricant of the free market system.

there are two broad policy approaches how central banks should relate to the executive or political branch. the us espouses the independent approach, where the executive branch does not have a direct influence in the policies of the central bank - the federal reserve. it is not a government agency, not a government organization, and it is not a separate department within the executive branch.

what is so unique to the fed is that it is not responsible to the white house or congress. fed officials cannot be firedm they are only confirmed. although, the fed informs the white house and congress, it is providing information, not reporting on its activities under oversight. this is a huge difference.

the other approach is the australian approach, where the central bank is a reserve bank serving under the executive power and where the executive power does in fact influence the policies of the central bank. there the reserve bank is a government agency with direct repsonsability to the government. if the government does not like the way the central bank conducts its policies, the head of the bank can be fired by the government.

so, structurally, the fed is independent of the white house. since it has the power of printing money, organizing the payments system, and executing monetary policy by buying and selling government securities, it makes a boatload of money. thus, it is not dependent on taxpayer funds.

in reality, the line between the white house, treasury, and the fed is blurred. but the fact is that the treasury is an agency of the united states government, but the fed is independent.

Quote:

he taught ethics....

in any case, money or not, healy has lost his credibility.

the question becomes whether the electorate will remember this in four years. unless we are reminded frequently what the accusations are - not against him but against his entourage - and how these accusations implicate him, he could actually count on voter apathy and forgetfulness in four years' time.

we have a responsability here to remind the electorate all across the city that he has been elected by the very active support of several individuals who are implicated in a major scandal. and even if none of these guys goes to the slammer, we cannot simply let this scandal disappear into the fog of memory.

there is a political machine in jersey city and hudson county. healy owns it. even if he is gone - resigned, in jail or in retirement - he is still the owner of the machine, and nothing will happen politically in the city without his knowledge, permission and patronage.

it is like killing weed. we can neutralize healy, but the body and his time will survive. and given their pure strength, they may be able to reelect some people who clearly are implicated in this scandal without being charged.

four years is a long time and memories fade fast.


Quote:

the guy is dead. he was ill. stress exacerbates physical and emotional problems.

Quote:

nixon was a lawyer too. and he was not a crook. of course, we may want to remember this ... i love you tube, but beats everything else....

i think you are right. healy was a municipal court judge and before that a prosecutor and an attorney in private practice. reading up on the rules, understanding the difference between fact and evidence, and knowing what is permissible and what is not is the least i would expect from him.

while it is likely that he is implicated in the whole process, perhaps well beyond what is evident in the various criminal complaints that we have been reading for the past week, the truth will not emerge. what we do not know, and perhaps never will, is what he did, said and ordered when the CW wasn't around?

if may be so that he is in fact innocent (as innocent as a pol can be in new jersey).

thanks for the update. nice demotion of vega - still not enough, but a demotion nevertheless. and healy seems to be showing off his political showmanship. once ensconced, always reelected.

Quote:

jc independent tweeted two odd things .... can someone, who is/was present at the city council meeting - explain?

1.
Brennan appointed Council president Pro Tem; will run meetings instead of Vega #jerseycity #corruption16 minutes ago from web

2.
rumors fly in press room that Healy will resign #jerseycity #corruption #wantonspeculation10 minutes ago from web
marathon council mtg. adjourns; Healy now set to address

Quote:

it is the most prestigious area of the intersection of 2nd street and merseles street in jersey city. the location is perfect - close to both the interstate and only steps from the path. i'd suggest that you drive around the area on a friday night between 11 pm and 3 am.

two articles of interest on the political situation in hudson county and the rise and fall of peter cammarano.


The Rise and Fall of Peter Cammarano
VIEW STORY ON ONE PAGE PRINT THIS STORY SHARE THIS STORY
By Max Pizarro
July 28, 2009 | 8:33 p.m

+Enlarge
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When Peter Cammarano III wanted to kick off his campaign to become the mayor of Hoboken, the 32-year-old chose the Frozen Monkey, a hip salad-and-wrap joint here, for his venue.

It flaunted the young professional?s credibility with the other young professionals who have flocked to this city since the real estate got hot.

But Mr. Cammarano was careful to stay on message from the beginning: This city is deeply divided, after all. The born-and-raised are one faction, resistant to the change wrought by the influx of wealthy Manhattan commuters, which in their view had quickly and purely by dint of money become a powerful force in the city. To cobble together a coalition big enough to win, Mr. Cammarano knew, he would have to appeal to both.

He succeeded, barely edging out an opponent in a June 10 runoff election. And 22 days later, he is facing charges of accepting cash bribes, his scarcely begun political career in tatters.

Mr. Cammarano wasn?t a Hoboken native, but as an at-large councilman, he?d forged good relations with the Latino community and the poor. He was a friend of the police and firefighters and promised not to cut city employees from the payroll. It didn?t hurt to be an Italian-American in a town where some of the born-and-raised proudly display pictures of themselves mugging with prominent Hoboken native Frank Sinatra.

?I never wanted to be identified with one side or the other,? Mr. Cammarano said at his home in the lead-up to his run for mayor. ?I?m not a born-and-raised guy, and I?m not a reformer. I?m not a revolutionary or reactionary.?

By the time he reached the June 10 runoff, Mr. Cammarano was optimistic that his base would come through. His problem is that he was offering his political analysis to an F.B.I. informant wearing a wire and offering him a bribe.

?Right now, the Italians, the Hispanics, the seniors are locked down,? he told the informant, according to documents in a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. attorney?s office. ?Nothing can change that now. I could be, uh, indicted, and I?m still gonna win 85 to 95 percent of those populations.?

It might have seemed that way at one point.

What struck observers as Mr. Cammarano built his organization and remained competitive with two candidates running on reform platforms?Second Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason and Fourth Ward Councilwoman Dawn Zimmer?was the loyalty he inspired in his supporters.

When a story circulated on the Internet describing an alleged love child being raised elsewhere, just a week before Election Day, the councilman was able to round up an impressive phalanx of soldiers to join him on the sidewalk in front of City Hall to denounce dirty campaigning.

New Hoboken was there.

?Peter gives us the best chance to move forward,? said Jason Maurer, a young professional and former Wall Streeter who stood with Mr. Cammarano, and who said the story wasn?t relevant to his candidate?s run. But remarkable, too, was the turnout of Old Hoboken: Former fire chief and onetime longshoreman Richard Tremitiedi appeared visibly pained as he watched Mr. Cammarano answer the charge; he himself had run for the Second Ward Council seat two years before, on a ticket representing Old Hoboken against the influx of new money. He?d described his opponent, Ms. Mason, a financial consultant, as a local amalgam of ?Corzine-Bloomberg.?

Now, Mr. Cammarano was facing off against Ms. Mason--an expensive proposition. Feds say Mr. Cammarano was accepting cash payments in $5,000 increments from a man he thought was a developer looking for a pay-to-play connection in Hoboken.

On July 25, protestors--a mix of Old and New Hoboken--appeared in front of his brownstone. One of their signs read, ?Powder to the People,? a reference to that now-notorious campaign boast. The young champion had united Hoboken again, in wanting to see the back of him.



Hudson County Confidential
VIEW STORY ON ONE PAGE PRINT THIS STORY SHARE THIS STORY
By Matt Friedman
July 28, 2009 | 8:38 p.m

Corzine.
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When political operative Joe Cardwell walked past the television cameras and into F.B.I. headquarters in Newark early on the morning of July 23, New Jersey Democrats could almost see the thousands of Democratic votes following him into oblivion.

Mr. Cardwell holds sway over Ward F of the city, by far the largest municipality in Hudson County and a ward that New Jersey Democrats depend upon, because of its large black voting bloc, to turn out their base in a big way every election day.

Coverage of the immediate impact of Thursday?s corruption busts on the state?s competitive upcoming gubernatorial race focused on the public?s perception of the two candidates in the wake of the scandal: Would Governor Jon Corzine, already trailing badly in the polls, be seen as weak on ethics and reform compared to his opponent, Chris Christie, a former U.S. attorney who built his campaign on a record of putting 130 politicians in federal prison? Would Mr. Corzine?s recent ad campaign accusing Mr. Christie of doling out no-bid federal monitoring contracts to friends, allies and former bosses seem suddenly irrelevant?

Things being what they are in New Jersey, though, insiders knew it hardly mattered: The real problem for Mr. Corzine is practical, not perceptual, and it?s in Hudson County.

?The corruption thing will fade from voters? memories very quickly,? said Patrick Murray, a pollster and political science professor at Monmouth University. ?Where it?s going to play out is among the party operatives who either want to keep their heads low because the feds are looking at them, or are not happy with the way Governor Corzine has handled this.?

?If you have 10 operatives who for whatever reason can?t do their jobs on Election Day, that can cost Corzine 30,000 votes?not because the voters care about corruption, but because nobody knocked on their doors,? said Mr. Murray.

Mr. Corzine?s problems in Hudson County were bad enough already: His support from two important northern Hudson County mayors, still left standing after last week?s bloodbath, has ranged from unenthusiastic to nonexistent. Union City?s Brian Stack and North Bergen?s Nicholas Sacco both also run powerful political machines and represent their legislative districts in the State Senate. (Running against Mr. Stack for State Senate in 2007, Cuban-born West New York Mayor Silverio ?Sal? Vega compared his control over Union City to the grip of the Castro regime.)

Mr. Stack has yet to officially endorse Mr. Corzine, and Mr. Sacco reportedly attempted a behind-the-scenes maneuver earlier this year to shift Democratic support for the governor to popular Senate President Dick Codey of Roseland, a former acting governor who, it turned out, did not want to run.

Meanwhile, Hoboken, already a political mess, is paralyzed with the arrest of 32-year-old Mayor Peter Cammarano three weeks into his tenure. Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell? He was arrested, too.

In Bayonne, Mr. Corzine forced Joe Doria, a former mayor and Assembly speaker, to resign from his cabinet position as commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs after the F.B.I. raided his home and office, but did not arrest him. An officeholder since 1975, Mr. Doria had developed a reputation as one of the straightest arrows in the state, let alone Hudson County, and over the years accumulated many friends and supporters.

And then there?s Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, who heads the Democratic Party in Hudson County. Though he wasn?t arrested last week, he was not untouched by the scandal, having met twice with real estate developer Solomon Dwek?the government?s cooperating witness?over lunch with three local politicos who were charged with funneling Mr. Dwek?s bribes into Mr. Healy?s own reelection campaign, as well as taking a cut for themselves.

At their second meeting, after Mr. Dwek informed Mr. Healy of the $20,000 he gave to his allies and the $10,000 more he planned to give after the election, the complaint quotes Mr. Healy proposing a relationship that would be ?mutually beneficial.?

?If you do not have 100 percent from Nick Sacco and Brian Stack going into election day, and you have the situation in Jersey City like you have today, where key players are hobbled, and the issue of Joe Doria in Bayonne, where people might feel like he?s slighted, the governor might have a problem in Hudson County,? said New Jersey Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky. ?You cannot expect to win Hudson County marginally and expect to win this election. You need incredible turnout in Hudson County.?

i heard that the lead residue comes from the nuclear reactor buried under the gazebo.........

this comes from healy's indictment that is still under seal. evidently, healy got a huge pay-off for dumping a leaking russian nuclear reactor in hamilton park. this was after he got drunk, beat up city council, and became love client #4.

this is the truth. i swear.

NOT!