Interesting vote of Flood about the cars. But I guess she doesn't care because she has a county car.

In either case, this article made me realize a few things. Even if the JC1TV passed we would face 2 issues.
1. Most likely we would only see what is seen on the big screen. Kinda lame since the crowds wont be seen. It will look boring I think.
2. As lame as JC1TV is now, it does have a schedule. If it did broadcast these meetings, and it runs for 3-5 hours and next week only and hour or so. There really can't be an official time for it then. Thats why I think online broadcasts are the only way to go.

We really need an actual news broadcast on JC1TV.

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And the next time the mayoral & city council election comes to town bring your account with you to the campaign at your local block association meetings to quiz the potential victors / candidates about their financial prowess. Put these SOB's on the money carpet and their back against the vault.

Interesting take on last night's meeting.

Hudson Democracy
by Douglas Carlucci

Thursday, February 25, 2010

The Power to Destroy

The Jersey City Council must have worked hard preparing for Wednesday night's meeting. They must have heard that a lot of people were going to come out for the first public hearing on the proposed city budget.

The City Council must really have wanted to put on a show. Because in the first half hour of the meeting, as though it was rehearsed, the council showed the hundreds of people present exactly what is wrong with the City of Jersey City and why it carries the weight of a $45 million structural deficit and $800 million in debt.

Early in the meeting, as the council was going through the first reading of proposed ordinances, Downtown Councilman Steve Fulop said city taxpayers were getting robbed at every council meeting. By spending a few million here and there with little discretion, the city was stealing from the taxpayers. The pistols were out Wednesday night.

First, the patronage.

The board members of Jersey City's two utility authorities, the Incinerator Authority and the Municipal Utilities Authority, work only a few hours a month. They are responsible for oversight of the authorities, not day-to-day management of their operations. It's not even a part-time job, and no one pretends it's not a patronage position. Yet Jersey City pays the full cost for health insurance for all authority board members.

The city probably shouldn't provide health insurance to the board members at all. Wednesday night, a small reform was proposed to the council: an ordinance to require board members to make a twenty-percent co-payment for their health insurance.

It was too much to ask. The council rejected the ordinance on its first reading, 6-2. Only Fulop and Bergen-Lafayette Councilwoman Viola Richardson voted to introduce the resolution. The rest of the council rejected it outright.

Then there were the cars.

City Council members and about 39 of the mayor's very favorite employees are granted the use of city-owned cars. The city pays to insure the cars and pays to put gas in them. They are not marked as city-owned cars.

Fulop introduced a resolution to restrict the use of the cars and to require that they are marked as city-owned vehicles. Most cities already do that. This way, if one of the cars is parked at, say a local drinking establishment, a citizen can take the initiative to walk into the bar to make sure the employee is there just to check the proprietor's liquor license.

It was too much to ask. The council voted 6-2 to reject the ordinance on its first reading. Only Fulop and Councilwoman-at-large Willie Flood voted for it.

Finally, the was the uncomfortable matter of a quid pro quo.

Item 3(i) on the council's consent agenda was:

Ordinance approving 1) An $8 million loan to the City of Jersey City to be guaranteed by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development pursuant to ?108 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, as amended, and 2) A re-loaning of the proceeds to Statue of Liberty Harbor North Redevelopment Urban Renewal, LLC.

Fulop asked corporation counsel Bill Matsikoudis a question concerning the ordinance. Did not the principals of that limited liability corporation donate money to the Healy council slate? Yes, they did, answered the counsel. (It was hard to hear in the crowded room, so I confirmed this later with Matsikoudis.)

No matter. Although the loan comes with no requirement to build anything in particular, nor a guarantee that anything will be built, the council proceeded to approve the loan 6-2. The only council members to vote against it were Fulop and West Side Councilman David Donnelly. What do they have in common? Neither ran on the Healy council slate in last year's municipal election, which means neither received a contribution from the corporation's principals. The rest of the council voted on principle: Say yes to your contributors.

Certain members of the council have gotten in trouble before for just this sort of thing.

Mariano Vega, now under indictment by the federal government for accepting cash bribes to take official action, used to run the council's tax abatements committee. He had a habit of granting tax abatements?long-term agreements in which developers agree to make payments to the city that are much lower than regular property taxes?to campaign contributors, like the developers of Crystal Point.

I buttonholed Vega during a break. I asked him, considering his current legal situation, how could he justify continuing to vote on city business effecting contributors to his campaign?

Vega made a three-pronged defense. First, Vega said, he does not remember all his campaign contributors, and that he considered his legal duty merely to be to record all his contributors and file the records with the state "as the law requires". He did not respond when I reminded him Fulop and Matsikoudis had just discussed the contributions before the vote.

Second, Vega said the contributions were too old to matter. "When did they occur? That's important," he said. He meant that the money changed hands before a strong anti-pay-to-play ordinance was approved by the council a week after Vega and others were arrested for extortion.

Third, when I pressed Vega on his legal situation and if it should preclude him from at least some council votes, he asked me what I meant. I said I meant that he was under an indictment based on taped evidence for accepting cash bribes from a secret witness. Vega said he pleaded not guilty to the charges and maintained his innocence. He told me that when he became a councilman, he took an oath to the Constitution and that the Constitution provides for the presumption of innocence.

As I played prosecutor, I will let readers play jury.

To make the night a true farce, the City Council unceremoniously rejected a benign ordinance that would require its meetings to be broadcast on the JCTV public access television channel. Fulop proposed the ordinance. The council voted it down in front of the a.v. equipment the city would need to broadcast the meetings. Council business is projected onto a large screen in the chambers, and each council member has a screen displaying the proceedings in front or him or her on the council table. The fifty or so people who turned out to speak about the budget were all on the big screen. It probably wouldn't require too much effort to get the recording on the air.

All this preceded the budget hearing. The fifty or so people took about three hours to speak. They were among a group of more than 300 who turned out. Of course the crowd dwindled throughout, it was quite grueling. But it was an impressive protest.

The most passionate speakers were from Bergen-Lafayette and Greenville, the most dangerous parts of Jersey City and the parts that would be hardest hit by the Healy administration's proposed $40 million property tax increase.

For the most part the council members were impassive. Several speakers directly antagonized certain council members. At one point, a speaker challenged Journal Square Councilwoman Nidia Lopez to prove that she had settled her tax problems in Florida. Lopez went to her office to fetch a receipt. Vega came under sustained boos and catcalls; more than one speaker directly asked him how he could continue to sit at the council table. He didn't say anything.

The axiom says the power to tax is the power to destroy. As the City Council watched person after person come to the front of the chambers and say they or people they new risked losing their homes if taxes were increased any more, they heard testimony of destruction. They don't seem prepared to take action. Maybe like their former leader Vega, they want proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that the city is being destroyed before they do anything.

The killer whale story is bizarre - I half heard it this morning when the alarm went off and it woke me up quickly!

Probably the most interesting part of last night (to me) may have been lost in all of the crowd noise - Esther Wintner saying that she and her friends had formed a PAC and were going after Donnelly's seat in the coming November election. I was sitting toward the front and heard her - it was unfortunate that she said it right when she had whipped the crowd up to a frenzy.

That's real action - can they pull it off? If they are successful, I think that could be the thing that finally makes the rest of Mt. Rushmore (Gaughan, Brennan, et al) very nervous.

Quote: Right! PEOPLE need to come out and vote when the time comes. Don't let others take away your rights and your voice! If not, we'll all end up boiling our water like these people! FFFRRRRRREEEEDDDDOOOOMMM!!!!!!

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I didn't see the late night news but I tuned in this morning and saw the killer whale story, american idol crap and snow coverge.. played over and over again. I was disappointed to say the least.

Angry Jersey City residents confront council on tax hikes, layoffs, retirees rehired as consultants; suggest cutting top jobs, threaten recalls

Thursday, February 25, 2010
By MELISSA HAYES
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Journal Square business owner Raju Patel summed up the sentiments of the hundreds of Jersey City residents at last night's council meeting.

"Look after us as a taxpayer," he said. "We do not have such deep pockets."

The comment drew applause from a standing-room-only crowd in City Hall for a public hearing on the proposed municipal budget for the fiscal year ending June 30.

"You chose to lay off 280 low-level and seasonal employees, people who are most vulnerable to this economy," resident Esther Wintner said.

"You shielded your friends and kept your unmarked municipal cars for your pleasure at our expense. Did you think this would go unnoticed? You tried to pacify us and hoped we would fade away. We are here, and we are angry."

Wintner reminded City Council members that they are elected by the voters and are supposed to represent their constituents.

"We are left with no other recourse but to defend our homes and future," she said, speaking to the council. "We are united and will work to dismantle the beast before us, limb by limb, door by door, ward by ward."

The rowdy crowd chanted "recall" and "no more taxes" during a lengthy public hearing.

Resident Amy Ertle said residents have collected about 2,000 signatures protesting the tax hike they plan to send to Gov. Chris Christie.

Residents offered suggestions like freezing borrowing, reducing overtime, cutting higher-paid positions, sharing services and making city buildings more energy efficient.

The crowd criticized the council for voting to hire back retired employees as consultants and also turned the blame on themselves for not being involved enough.

About 30,000 of the city's roughly 240,000 residents voted in the May election.

"That's the essential problem here. It's not just that the council doesn't care. We have a lot of people out here who do care," resident Andrew Velwest said. "The problem as somebody already stated is the citizens of Jersey City as a whole are either ignorant or apathetic about their government."

The budget hearing came after the council declined to introduce ordinances sponsored by Councilman Steven Fulop that would eliminate health benefits for members of the Municipal Utilities Authority and Jersey City Incinerator Authority, a move that angered many in attendance.

City officials originally said the budget would hike taxes $800 for the owner of a home assessed at $100,000. Last night, Business Administrator Brian O'Reilly said the increase for a $100,000 home now stands at $640.

NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!

STOP THE TAX ABATEMENTS TO WEALTHY DEVELOPERS AND HIGHRISE CONDOS.

(ABATEMENTS SHOULD BE USED ONLY FOR PROCURING DEVELOPMENT TO NEGLECTED AREAS TO RAISE AREA LIVING STANDARDS)

CUT THE WAR BUDGET BY 80-90%
(THIS FREES UP MUCH NEEDED BILLIONS SO OUR STATES CAN GET MORE FUNDS)

PUT PLANS IN PLACE TO CREATE AFFORDABLE:
GREEN GARDENS,
SAFE PLACES FOR YOUTH,
FOOD KITCHENS FOR NEEDY;
SHELTERS;
JOBS
(THIS CAN BE ALL DONE WITH MINIMAL EFFORT AND FUNDS IF DONE CORRECTLY)

Just saw News 12, they did a nice job. It is great to see the Healy Team Council being exposed for failing the residents of Jersey City.

Because of the poor decisions made by the Team Healy Council Jersey City we are mired in this current budget crisis.

The Team Healy council has treated Jersey City like their own ATM and now wants to place hardship on the residents of Jersey City with unacceptable tax increases.

Starting from the last City Council meeting you can see that Jersey City Residents have begun to Rise Up as Mayor Healy and his Captive Council have been exposed on how they have failed the residents of Jersey City along with Team Healy going about their business with a sense of entitlement mentality.

We cannot fade away we must continue to mobilize across Jersey City and explore every method possible to remove Team Healy out of office.

A lot of people tonight, now we have to keep up the pressure.

This tax increase is nothing compared to what can happen with the school budget of 600 million bucks. The city only pays about 20% of that. What will happen going forward? Do get out and vote in the school board election, because unless you live in an abated building there could be a world of tax hurt coming all our way.

The bunch of kids who left after half an hour were from a teen group. They were due to be picked up by their parents.
It was their first visit to the City Council, and some of them were so excited, they were hoping they would have been able to address the council with their budget concerns.

They are future voters, taxpayers and tax protesters who were getting a first hand look at how democracy affects their lives and were being taught that they have rights and should and can speak out!

The whole thing was awesome. Apart from a bunch of kids who left after a half hour, it was great.

I just left, and it was like the last person speaking. Don't know when the actual meeting will end, it got too tired.

What was up with the people who started talking about how they are raised and how their kids are and Obama and stupid stuff. What a waste.

Anyway, i hope someone has a pic of Vega's face when everyone booed for him.

my lazy a$s made it there tonight- had to leave early
Vega was there.
I thought the turn out was pretty good.

it was getting pretty noisy when I left...

City hall is packed today, many more than feb 9. Lots of cameras too. Stop by to voice your grievance!

The first city council meeting that I went to was in the spring of 2008. There were roughly fifteen people sitting in during the meeting. It is nice to see more people interested in City Government.

Will Vega show up. He was not at the last City Council meeting. He is being paid by Taxpayers dollars, he should have to provide his time even if he will be going to jail sooner or later.

Jersey City budget hearing is tonight during City Council meeting

Wednesday, February 24, 2010
By MELISSA HAYES
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

The Jersey City Council is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the fiscal year 2009 budget tonight - and the meeting is likely to be packed.

More than 300 residents attended the Jan. 27 meeting on the budget and organizers of that rally are hoping for a larger crowd.

If the budget were to be adopted as introduced, taxes would increase by about $800 for the owner of a home assessed at $100,000. But city officials are still working to trim the budget and ease the pain.

The City Council rushed to introduce its $492 million operating budget last month in order to accept $14 million in state aid.

The budget is $31.6 million higher than the previous fiscal year and carries a $190 million tax levy, up $40 million from last fiscal year.

Since the budget was introduced, Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy has announced that 278 employees are being laid off; four city fire companies are closing; the arson squad has been reduced; and a branch of the Jersey City Public Library is closing.

It is not clear how those reductions will affect the proposed budget.

"We want to continue to push Jersey City residents to keep getting involved," said John Lynch, one of the organizers of last month's budget meeting turnout.

The public hearing will be held during the 6 p.m. council meeting at City Hall, 280 Grove St.

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Well put T-Bird.

Not that I can't blame jc73 given the council's past actions, but one
thing is for sure: Not speaking guarantees them not changing. At least speaking up gives us some chance. Fat chance is better than no chance. See you tonight.

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I disagree. The city is turning a corner - as much out of necessity as anything else. The state is no longer going to be our grand enabler. Exterminator Christie is coming to town and the rats are not happy.

Seriously - if you haven't yet done so, you can call tomorrow and get on the speaker's list. You don't need an elaborate speech - just get up and talk for a couple of minutes about what having to come up with an extra couple thousand dollars is doing to you.

You can get up there and speak til your blue in the face it's not going to change a thing.

The list did indeed carry over. I know two people who were on the previous meeting's list. They're near the front of this week's list and neither re-called the clerk.

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It is best to be ready for anything with this crew. The acting president Brennan and his chief cohort Gaughan are not used to being challenged. A few weeks ago with a firewater blush on their cheeks, chomping on gum, they reacted by threatening to clear the space due to overcrowding. They know whats coming tomorrow and they don't like it. Be prepared is all.

Quote:

I don't think it will come to that, but if you intend to go to the council meeting why not call to sign up and speak. You can always decline to speak when your name is called, but at least you have a "priority purpose" for being there.

I called this morning and was told there were only 25 people signed up - I don't think they carried over the list from the last meeting. If you were signed up to speak at the Feb. 10th meeting and intend to speak tomorrow night, you might want to call and see if you are on the list.

It literally takes fifteen seconds: (201) 547-5150.

From Steve Fulop's email today:

Budget
At the January 13th council meeting, without any public notice, the administration placed on the agenda a draft budget that included a 30% tax increase.

It is unfathomable that something this important can be walked on to the agenda, and it is unconscionable to introduce a budget more than six months into the year -- when half the money has already been spent.

The budget comes on the heels of 53 new hires since the May election.

On budget issues like this I am the lone voice on the council, but it is really your voice that matters most. The next council meeting is February 24th: you can sign up and speak by calling the City Clerk's office at (201) 547-5150. The budget is not finalized yet but you can let the administration know the hardship they place on people and send a strong message that the bloated budget needs to be cut.

Tax Appeals
If you are a homeowner, you should be aware that there is a process for appealing your property taxes should you feel the assessed value of your property is appraised too high.

Every year in January each homeowner receives a postcard with information about the assessed value of their home on which property taxes for the current year will be based. Forms and instructions for filing an appeal can be obtained from the Hudson County Board of Taxation located on the 3rd floor of 257 Cornelison Avenue in Jersey City.

The deadline for 2010 property tax appeals is April 1, 2010.

In addition, we would also like to hear from you directly on how this is impacting you and your community as well as invite you to share your suggestions. Please go to www.stevenfulop.com/budget to fill out our simple form.

Councilman Fulop just sent out an email asking for suggestions for the budget : http://www.stevenfulop.com/budget

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Yeah what's next only those on the list to speak may stay.

Can someone point to the budget in the agenda?

http://www.cityofjerseycity.com/citycouncil.aspx?id=864

Has anyone planned on tactics if they try a "this is too crowded -- I am calling the Fire Marshall, or the police bla bla bla "--
Didn't someone try that last time?
There are capacity limits on rooms. How many people can fit in that room? What will happen if the limit is reached, ie can they stand in the hall (or is there a law?) etc.

Your Taxes

Join and support your neighbors at the public budget hearing on Wednesday, February 24, 2010, at 6pm and speak out against the proposed 25% municipal tax increase. No need to sign up in advance to speak.

Stop the Jersey City Tax Increase Petition - http://www.gopetition.com/online/33870.html

City Budget Suggestion Box - Cost Cutting and Revenue Generating Ideas: http://jclist.com/modules/newbb/viewt ... =&topic_id=20227&forum=11