the last two years of the Healy admin, Mike Sottalano negotiated the abatements for the most part. By all accounts Mike did a great job of keeping the abatements in check. Steven's executive order sounds great, but the developers have figured out the work arounds. If you want to phase out the tax abatements, eliminate the Project labor agreements. The unions add somewhere between 25 and 30 percent to the cost of a new tower. The tax abatements ease the burden of the union cost. The tax payers are funding the full employment of all those union workers who drive up the parkway and turnpike everyday to work in the construction on these tower. We are so generous to the balance of the state.

Fat-ass, the present Mayor, like the previous ones is rewarding developers with the same level of density at the past mayors. He has also violated the pay to play laws that no one in the city is following, its now a free for all. Spend a day in city hall and see the endless flow of developers with their plans heading to the mayors office and you will see how wrong you are. The city is a stepping stone for Steven and pay to play has gone out the window. Point to one person enforcing it in the city! You can't because that person does't exist.

The city pays a fortune to park cars in the Mack Cali garage for employees at 30 Montgomery street. Once again, a perk that nevers shows up anywhere in the budget.

Ward F under Coleman is a dumping ground for everything no one else wants in their wards. It started with the horrendous use of the retail space at the HUB for the prisoner reentry program and has continued with projects like the oil changing station. Ward F is in a free fall! The community garden has been doing great in a very difficult neighborhood, why is the JCRA looking to destroy it. Because the so called developers of this projects are close friends with the Coleman and the Greenville, missing in action councilman that is why. The community knows it and rightfully resents it.

John, thanks for explaining the surplus in this forum. The executive leadership of the MUA is suspect to put it mildly. Mr. Becht was one of the highest paid people in the Healy administration and the most political, not to mention the least competent. Its dissapointing that Mayor Fulop, has forgotten his reformer roots when it comes to the MUA and Mr. Becht. Clearly we can do some much better in the Executive Director position of the MUA.

I agree Alex is and has been a fighter and he has always put the best interest on the city first. In his letter he attached the sacred cow, St. Steven! Shame on him for calling the mayor out!!

the reality is for many in the city there is still a need for a car. If you don't work in NYC, you need a car. If you live on the western slope and want to go shopping on Central Ave, you need a car. For most of the city, if you want to go food shopping you need a car. If your kid belong to Girl Scouts troop, you need a car. I hate the how the city looks like when owners take out the front garden for a parking spot, but I understand it. The city has not addressed the parking issues throughout the city and with the demise of Parking Authority, we will only see the ruthless enforcement of no parking rules by the police department.

By THE REV. ALEXANDER M. SANTORA
GUEST COLUMNIST

Talk of Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop running for governor after a little more than one year in office makes me wonder what qualifies one to run for higher office. In Fulop?s case, it?s seems to be simply that he was elected mayor.

I am still mystified how Fulop, socially awkward, even got elected. I know he was somewhat of an iconoclastic councilman. But throwing out good ideas does not make a good city manager. Plus, he has done some 360 on abatements, pay-for-play and cozying up to state bigwigs to feather his nest. His abandonment of his former Jersey City Board of Education members is playing nice to the JCEA. We can?t trust what he does because it doesn?t seem in the best interests of the city but his own personal ambitions.

He comes across as a dilettante. He shows up ? anywhere, anytime, at anything. Recall the photos you see in the newspaper. He?s getting his blood pressure checked by Dr. Oz when he visited Jersey City; going down a slide in a new children?s park; or cutting endless opening business ribbons.

When former Gov. Jim McGreevey hosted a conference on post-prison life at St. Peter?s University, earlier this year, Fulop was there. McGreevey was working the crowd: hugging, back slapping, glad handing and pumping them up. Fulop stayed up front: standing, sitting, texting, walking and then, well, repeat. He gave a listless talk on helping ex-prisoners that could have been delivered by a criminal justice major. He hardly connected with the audience, got a polite applause and sat down. He never once engaged a person, like McGreevey, on his own but waited for people to come to him. And then the encounter was perfunctory.

Fulop needs to drop this gubernatorial quest and run a city with a myriad of problems for the long haul. Just look north to Mayors Brian Stack and Richard Turner, who have served for years and have made Union City and Weehawken, respectively, successful cities. Both are as political as the next but live out their commitments.

We?ve seen this hubris before. Sen. Cory Booker, seemed to have one foot out the door in Newark just as he set one foot in, as mayor. And the city suffered for that ambition. Gov. Chris Christie has had his head swell, not even two years in office, as a potential presidential candidate and hasn?t stopped grasping. The state?s in one big mess during his travels around the country.

Last Thursday, this newspaper published an unscientific poll on whether Fulop should run for governor with 59.06 percent voting "yes," 40.84, "no." It could be that people are beginning to realize that he should vacate Jersey City so we can elect a mayor who wants to stay and govern.

EDITOR?S NOTE: The Rev. Alexander Santora is the pastor of The Church of Our Lady of Grace & St. Joseph, Hoboken, and he can be reached by email at padrealex@yahoo.com. Santora also writes the Faith Matters column for The Jersey Journal.

The fact are the residents will never know if they have in fact saved money with the elimination of the parking authority. Once the police department weighs into this the cost will balloon, it always does. Civilians are just less expensive than the uniformed employees. But what the city has lost in their haste to get ride of the parking authority is the ability to create much needed new parking structures around the city. That is now lost. The parking authority had now vision, so in the end they were known for just enforcement, not addressing the parking issues in places like DT. New Brunswick parking authority did a great job in blending redevelopment projects and community parking needs. That didn't happen in JC. When the dust finally settles on this merger, the parking authority line item in the city budget will as large if not larger than the autonomous agency. By that time, Steven will be gone and it will be the problem for some other administration.

So true, Healy had Hall of Fame Basketball Coach Bobby Hurley and after Bobby left, Joe Macchi, who spent his entire career delivering quality recreation programing in Jersey City. He replaced Joe, with Mohammad Akil's hand picked guy, Ryan, who is abusive and and inept. The mayor's business decisions and staff decisions have been awful. And you are right, he is unapproachable!! Really, in a state of denial! He already has one foot out the door! At least Cory Booker spent 8 years in the job, about 3 running the city. Steven has not even spent 1 year running the city, before he is out the door. amazing!

The Chief of Staff, Akil, put him in that position for using the HUB during the election. The fact is, the former director did a great job at Recreation. Strothers has run over budget 20%+ in the first year and has shown that he is completely clueless, like almost all of Steven's directors. The only exception has been Stacy F at HHS. Its been a nightmare not just for the long time city employees, but the residents of the city.

I couldn't agree more, Ryan did a horrible job at the HUB and in the end, never paid rent on the store that he rented. He made it a point to evict local tenants, like the woman who sold arts and crafts while he ducked out of paying the city rent. His reward, a directors job by the mayor and chief of staff.

That rumor is old, my friend just booked a 50 anniversary party for January. They have owned it for many years and have employed local people of decades. If they eventually sell, they deserve it, they have been a fixture in JC decades.

the port authority has said in the past , that the city is over building downtown and more specifically on Grove, Healy started to shift focus to journal square, but he didn't slow down Grove area development, Steven is not doing much to slow it down either. It will be interesting going forward, everything we are now seeing was approved and in place under Healy, for better or for worst. No matter how Steven spins what is happening, he was bystander over the last 8 years to what is being developed now. The move away from the waterfront was started by Healy, hence the Journal Square Plan, Bayfront, Canal Crossing, Berry Lane, affordable housing all over the city, AMB Warehouse -1000 jobs, McGinley Square Plan, 18 street, just a sampling, Steven, build your own legacy, stop taking credit for Healy's.

Expect the administration to bring the Wall Street guys in, to finance this and reap huge profits from the sale of land created by filling in the hudson. For all of those along the waterfront, like Avolon Cove who thought they had waterfront property, you are now sitting with towers in front of you as they fill in the river. Big bucks to be made by Wall street and the developers, all in the name of climate change. Funny, Hoboken again, had the right approach and didn't look to sell out to the big money interest.

The photos are wrong. Jackson Green is a for sale project. The Jersey Journal screwed up the photos! Jackson Green is a great project and looks terrific. I wish the Jersey Journal would get there facts straight!!

The real problem Steven has is not under construction is his, nothing everything you see when you drive the city was started, approved before the election. The KRE Journal Square project was a started, approved and funded by the prior administration. Steven can take credit for giving them the most lucrative tax abatement in the city's history! Steven has become shameless at taking credit for other peoples work.

Borgiano was right, these same trains came thru the Square and you could smell them for blocks and blocks, just awful stuff!!

"The expansion of Greenville Yards will remove 800,000 tons of waste currently driven through Jersey City streets. It will instead be transported in sealed containers of barge-to-rail, never entering the Jersey City community, the city said in a press release."

This is not true and another great stretch from the Mayor. The trash is New York City trash, not Jersey City's. We are not putting our trash in sealed containers and sending it out by rail. That is not part on this deal. Our trash is still being trucked out of the city. When they say they are getting 800,000 tons off the street, they are referring to NY trash that is presently being trucked out of the city and may hit JC roads, althought that is highly unlikely. This was put on a fast track and none of these questions have been answered. We spend more time of a zoning variance than we did on this important issue!! I don't understand why more people in the Heights and Downtown are not standing with the residents of Greenville on this issue.

there appears to be a special relationship between Steven and Akil! Steven has tossed everyone else to the curb when it was in his best interest, but not Akil! Why?

I feel for Greenville, they have been hit hard over the last 25 years, now they get hit with this. At least they should get the 10 million for their parks and the 250,000 a year toward their parks as well. Why send it to the heights! oh, I know, so the future Gov can point to the reservoir park and say, look what I have done in the short time I have been mayor!! I've unstuck the reservoir park and made it happen!!

Bostwick trash, make it yours, Brooke!

Jersey Mom, right on!! Its like they hired a firm who didn't know the city to promote the city, but that firm had to rely on the Brooke Hansen and the other clueless youngster in the mayors office to teach them about the city. But the only thing they know, is the city that the mayor knows which is Downtown!!

Wait a minute, as a life long resident, Jersey City has always been mine. St. Al's has been mine, the Square has been mine, Lincoln Park has been mine and Van Vorst Park has been mine. Steven has lived his entire life in JC in a 5 block radius. Now he is promoting the city like its a candy bar!!

he was absent because he has no backbone, he's a coward!! Greenville gets the trash and btw no real jobs to speak of, a handful at best and the Heights get the cash. How do you explain that Frank. Iron Mike would have went to the meeting and said NO!! That's leadership, go knock on Mike's door and ask him to teach you about leadership!

Greenville Yards doesn't need to be revitalized. When was the last time you went down there, its completely full. The only vacant property is the transfer site, because the Port Authority left it that way because the Healy administration wouldn't allow a trash transfer station. The Port has been pushing this deal for New York for years. New York must be giddy about this, they didn't want the trash being railed out of their city. The community in New York wouldn't tolerate it!! We celebrate it!!!

Steven got taken on this deal. Healy never allowed it. Mike S never allowed it. Those trains are not air tight, the smell is horrendous. Ask anyone in Staten Island and they will tell you.

this is an old deal that the Healy administration rejected because of the odor from the sealed cars and the tons of New York garbage that would be sitting in Greenville next to Port Liberte, Liberty National and Greenville. Anyone who thinks those trains will not have immediate negative impact on Greenville is crazy. And if Greenville is to suffer with the smell and stigma, they should get the 10 million for their parks. Its hilarious, Greenville get million of tons of smelly, trash slowly meandering thru their community and the heights gets the money. Mike Sottalano would never have allowed it and he didn't! Where is leadership when you need it.

Remember this is the guy Glenn Cunningham fired! Glenn didn't want him around, Glenn knew he was bad news!

that is correct, Steven fooled us all, he railed against Healy for 8 years and came so ill prepared to lead, its stunning. The only appointment who has any credentials is the HHS director, everyone else is a hack and political payback. Amazing.