user1111 wrote:
By Corey W. McDonald cmcdonald@jjournal.com
The Jersey Journal

JERSEY CITY -- City officials broke ground on a new affordable housing project that will include more than 200 units designated for low- and moderate-income residents.

On Friday, Mayor Steve Fulop and representatives from RPM Development Group broke ground at the Whitlock Cordage site, a six-and-a-half-acre site which includes five buildings under renovation along with 29 newly reconstructed buildings.

https://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/20 ... ound_on_affordable_h.html

MDM wrote:
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Dinger wrote:
$650 is ungodly expensive for a 20 yard C&D. I've got an account but pay about $350. It's more for concrete.

It would have been under $400 if I wasn't mixing asbestos tile, ceramic tile, concrete, wood, etc. all in one container.

mastablasta wrote:
All talk. Sounds like the same BS PATH has been putting out for years. How about running more trains during non rush hour times and weekends? 20 minute intervals between trains on the weekends while WTC is shutdown? Who's bright idea is this one? I see people being left behind in Hoboken because there is absolutely no room on the train. PATHetic.

Dolomiti wrote:
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135jc wrote:
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RichMauro wrote:
I wonder if Cuomo will pull it off going back in?
An awful lot of the leeching political class are counting on big number jobs for family and friends.

He won't. How could he without even more incentives? In the end NYC will just give the grant away to a less deserving company so there will be no savings either.

Cuomo pretty much admitted that it's not an attempt to actually lure back Amazon. He's trying to tell other big corporations that the State is still willing to play ball.

That said, I don't see how Amazon is "more deserving" than any other company.

brewster wrote:
Here we go again, FIOS jumped my price from $40 to $55, so I'm going to be a new Xfinity customer again for $35. But I left them last time in part because they would no longer service my Docsis 2.0 modem, so I need a new one. Anybody have wisdom on this? I know some of you are pros. How much should I spend? I have wifi routers, so I don't really need more of that.

RichMauro wrote:
Jeez, this looked like it was gonna be so easy.
Not so, according to this article:
https://www.nj.com/marijuana/2019/02/n ... ow-hard-that-will-be.html

ThirdStreet wrote:
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hero69 wrote:
other than jaywalking and at intersections with lights, pedestrans have the right of way. how hard is that to understand. the moment a person puts their foot onto the street, cars NEED t stop.

Okay...
I personally prefer to apply and common sense and mindfulness to every situation whether as a driver or a pedestrian. However some people l do seem to think that they will be fine as long they apply their simple rules and formulas and declarations. They must the same people that decide to keep walking enter the intersection when a car going 15 miles an hour is only about 30 feet away.

For what it's worth, I am the driver that stop a good 10 15 feet away if I spot a pedestrian waiting to cross the street .

mscottc wrote:
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bodhipooh wrote:
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hero69 wrote:
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ThirdStreet wrote:
I am not sure how far this , 'the pedestrian can do absolutely no wrong attitude ' the city has adopted since the Fulop administration will take us. There has zero effort to encourage pedestrians to drop unsafe habits like jay walking, standing a good yard or so onto the road while waiting to cross the street.

nope. this lady was not jay walking. she was trying to cross in the striped zone and these cars just would not stop for a slow walking person. pedestrians always have right of way at a non-controlled intersection!

This is a SERIOUS problem in JC. I see it happen all over DTJC, almost daily. I have had many close calls with other cars almost rear ending me when I have stopped for pedestrians. I have seen cars get annoyed and drive around someone yielding to pedestrians, and then narrowly miss them. Pedestrians do need to do their part: don’t stand at the corner if you don’t intend to cross (weirdly, this happens often) and DO assert your right of way when you approach a crosswalk.

Overall, there needs to be more education around this issue. Collectively, we definitely lag behind other countries when it comes to pedestrians, cyclists, and cars, sharing space.

I think there's a lot right on both sides of this issue. However another real problem here is that a minority of people feel the law doesn't apply to them. That they have the right to cross the street where they really shouldn't be, or they have the right to drive around a car stopped for pedestrians, or drive around a school bus with its lights flashing, or speed through high pedestrian traffic areas.

Unfortunately the only way to deal with that is far comprehensive enforcement, or something as simple as speed bumps.

Dolomiti wrote:
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bodhipooh wrote:
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Dude, there is no capital in some hidden account being handed over. The REAP and ICAP funds were refundable tax credits that Amazon would have been given.

OK then. It's a $500 million grant (not a tax cut) plus $1.2 billion in tax cuts not connected to the number of jobs, plus $1.2 billion linked to job cuts. Happy now?

We should note that tax cuts are not actually a free lunch. That is only the case if it is evident that there is no other way those tax revenues would be generated, which is definitely not the case -- unless you believe that HQ 2.5 would have imported most or all of its 25,000 of its hires from out of state, and that the lot will lie fallow for decades now that Amazon has decided not to build there.

We should also note that the claims about "$27.5 billion in tax revenues!!!" are, well... exaggerated. Where did the claim originate, by the way? In two economic impact statements, one released to the public (NY State) and one not (NYC).

Roughly speaking, half is NYC tax revenues, half is NY State tax revenues. It's over a 24 year period -- and the headline number does not account for inflation. The authors of the NY State report, however, did use 2019 dollars, and said NY State would get around $9 billion before the impact of tax cuts. So, right off the bat we can cut it to approximately $20 billion.

One big problem is that those statements were based on Amazon only opening only one additional headquarters, with a staff of 40,000. Instead, Amazon chose to open two HQs, and hire 25,000 employees in NYC. So, unless Amazon plans to hire 15,000 employees more than it originally planned, we can further cut the total to roughly $12 billion.

Aaaand.... That figure doesn't include the incentives. Again, about $1.7 billion is not linked to the number of jobs. We'll reduce the job-linked tax credits to $720m. So, now we are down to about $9 billion.

Guess what? Amazon says it's going to add 5000 employees to NYC anyway, with no tax breaks. Almost none of the expected income is corporate taxes (surprise!), it's income and sales taxes on employees. That means Amazon's additional workforce will still pay another $1.25 billion in taxes. So, now we are down to $7.75 billion. Over 24 years.

Let's shave off another chunk, shall we? The reality is that Amazon wasn't going to put HQ2.5 in Oneonta, meaning they weren't going to import 25,000 new employees to NY (city and/or state); in fact, a big reason why they wanted to open another HQ in NYC is because the techie employees they want are already here and/or were already planning to move to NYC. And they weren't $150k/yr jobs for high school grads; Amazon wants highly educated employees, the kind that have no problem finding work in NYC today. So, what are we down to now? Maybe $4 billion in additional tax revenues over 24 years, based on $2 billion in subsidies? Somehow, Amazon fleeing because it didn't want to tolerate unions doesn't seem like such a huge loss.

Ultimately, it seems pretty clear that Amazon needs NYC far, far more than NYC needs Amazon.

I will say there is no guarantee that those funds will be used for future job development. However, it's clear that lots of people just grabbed a big number and ran with it, without bothering to even think about it.

ThirdStreet wrote:
I am not sure how far this , 'the pedestrian can do absolutely no wrong attitude ' the city has adopted since the Fulop administration will take us. There has zero effort to encourage pedestrians to drop unsafe habits like jay walking, standing a good yard or so onto the road while waiting to cross the street.

MediaAvid wrote:
Does anyone know how early the Central Ave and or Palisade Ave jitneys to midtown NYC begin?

neverleft wrote:
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(Times Square billboard)

135jc wrote:
Wow. Amazing like many here she still doesnt get it.

https://nypost.com/2019/02/20/alexandr ... t-understand-amazon-deal/

bodhipooh wrote:
De Blasio doesn't seem able to decide who to blame, but in typical coward style, he is pointing fingers and engaging in a musical chairs game of finger pointing and assigning blame: he is blaming Amazon, but also pointing the finger at AOC over her lack of understanding of the agreed incentive deal. Of course, in typical far left fashion, AOC is now asking (demanding?) that the 3 billions from the Amazon deal be spent in hiring teachers and putting people to work. Except that there never was 3 billion of cash sitting around and being handed over to Amazon... it was just tax credits, and only after certain thresholds were reached.

135jc wrote:
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Kurtmcdirt wrote:
Here are the current jobs that Amazon Advertising is currently hiring for in NYC. These aren't desirable jobs?

https://www.amazon.jobs/en/business_ca ... t=10&sort=relevant&cities[]=New%20York%2C%20New%20York%2C%20USA&distanceType=Mi&radius=24km&latitude=&longitude=&loc_group_id=&loc_query=&base_query=&city=&country=®ion=&county=&query_options=&

$3 billion in tax cuts for $30 billion in revenue. You do the math.

bodhipooh wrote:
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Kurtmcdirt wrote:
If people read Amazon's statement they would see the part where Amazon says they already have 5,000 workers in NYC and they will add more. NYC is going to get the tax revenue from these workers and not have to give the world's richest man any incentives.

A good portion of those existing jobs are not the type of high paying jobs that would have come from having HQ2 here. The cumulative loss in salaries is almost 4 BILLION annually. And the loss for NYS and NYC will be about 300 million annually in personal income tax revenue that will not be realized, plus additional labor taxes not paid by the employees.

The state (and the city) bent over backwards because the the projected revenue from those 25K jobs would have paid for those incentives over time, and then some.