Jersey City litter patrol workers at City Council meeting to support contract

By Melissa Hayes/The Jersey Journal
May 12, 2010, 6:37PM



Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey Journal
Members of the Second Chance program protest the removal of the litter patrol program during the council meeting at City Hall in Jersey City tonight.

Holding signs that say, "I love my job" and "Please support us" members of the Jersey City Incinerator Authority's Second Chance Program are at tonight's City Council meeting.

The Second Chance Program and clients from Hudson Community Enterprises that did litter patrol for JCIA lost their contracts last month due to budget cuts.
Maureen Walliser, president of Hudson Community Enterprises, was at tonight's meeting. Originally 70 clients who worked with the litter patrol program were
expected to protest, but that protest was called off after the mayor announced today that the city was able to find $71,000 for the remainder of the contract
with Hudson Community Enterprises. JCIA gave the program only two days notice that the contract, which is valid through June 30, would be terminated last month.
Hudson Community Enterprises employs 26 people a day, from a pool of 70 participants, in the litter patrol program.While the funding helps the Hudson Communty
Enterprises clients until June 30, there is no indication that the contract, which has been in place for 20 years, will be renewed in the coming fiscal year.
There has been no word on the future of the Second Chance Program, whose members have brought signs to tonight's City Council meeting.

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/20 ... y_litter_patrol_work.html

Jersey City comes up with $71,000, so developmentally disabled residents will go back to work

By Ron Zeitlinger/The Jersey Journal
May 12, 2010, 2:12PM

Reena Rosa Sibayan/The Jersey Journal
Some of the Hudson Community Enterprises developmentally-disabled clients who were laid off their litter patrol jobs with the Jersey City Incinerator Authority because of the city budget cuts. From left to right, Bryan Carter, Tushawn Carter, Curtis Larkin and Johnny Granica, all Jersey City residents. The city says it has come up with funding to put 31 people back to work.

A recently terminated program that gave part-time employment to 31 developmentally disabled residents has been reinstated temporarily, Jersey City officials said today.
The Hudson Community Enterprise employees, whose plight was profiled two weeks ago in The Jersey Journal and on NJ.com, will continue to work under a contract with the Jersey City Incinerator Authority until at least June 30.

City spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said the administration is providing the $71,000 to keep the employees on the job. Hudson Community Enterprise and JCIA officials previously said that there were rotating crews of workers that totalled 70.

The employees, who handle litter patrol operations including sweeping sidewalks and the curb line on secondary streets, work five hours a day, five days a week and are paid $8 an hour.

?These employees do a great job for the Incinerator Authority, and we felt we had to do everything we could to keep them employed, at least until the end of their contract,? said Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy. ?Not only do they help keep the streets clean, this job offers them a positive outlet.

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/20 ... y_comes_up_with_7100.html
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Good News and Kudos to Mayor Healy for doing the right thing and getting these folks back to their jobs while the HCE and the JCIA try to work this all out.

we saw this coming ....

instead of cutting management, waste, outdated spending, our city continues business as usual making only "symbolic" cuts to low paid people that actually provide services that we see (and need).

the administration and council did this with part-time department of recreation employees and now with this program. truly shame on you!


btw - looks like we may be carrying the cost of two business administrators for a few months or more.

To all,

This is from the same press release I read yesterday. It's a 4 page PDF. Below are three of the comments from the workers who were fired with two days notice.

I wasn't going to post on the because I work for the city and I don't want to have any more retaliation for doing the "right thing". Well, screw that, I am a Jersey City resident and this is my home. The HCE workers that were suddenly fired deserve our support and respect. What happened to these people is truly DISGUSTING and I am so ashamed that my City (my employer) is allowing this to happen. It breaks my heart that we have attacked the most vulnerable and the folks that have the least options.

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Below is from the same press release West posted above:

Fuquann Gleaton dropped out of Snyder High School. Eleven years ago, he began working at HCE and was enrolled in the Litter Patrol Progarm. Since joining HCE, Fuquann was inspired to return and graduate from high school and enrolled in Hudson County Community College to further his education. ?Litter patrol changed me. Litter patrol helped me learn respect,? Gleaton recently told the Jersey Journal. ?It helped me be independent mentally and physically.? It absolutely did.

Litter Patrol helped HCE member Danny Vega overcome many challenges in his life. After struggling with life challenging issues for many years, Danny thrived from the support he gained working with the Litter Patrol Program. Now that the program has been cancelled, Vega said, ?It‟s a family, we‟re all devastated.?

Dennis Reilly, who has been mentally disabled since childhood, is a member of HCE. Until April 27th, his life had a purpose. He has been employed with the litter patrol for almost 20 years. Since he lost this opportunity, he feels he has lost everything. And, he has. The litter patrol was his only outlet. Dennis‟ unique disability comes with the habit of thinking out loud, so his family listens all day to Dennis saying, "I lost my job. I lost my job. I have to clean the streets. Who is going to clean the streets?"

It is a good question. This layoff lacked the simple decency of a two week notice. The disabled do not have a union which demands a respectable notice of impending layoff. The disabled only have their families and local non-profit occupational centers like Hudson Community Enterprises.
That ends today. Today we are calling upon the Jersey City community and broader Hudson County community to speak out against this inhumane treatment of Jersey City?s
developmentally challenged residents. Tell City Hall that we the people care too much about our citizens, especially those without their own voice, to stand for this another minute.

Join the Campaign to Reinstate the JCIA Litter Patrol and Reinstate Jobs for Jersey City?s Developmentally Challenged.

Join The HCE Participant Protest!
Jersey City Council Meeting on Wednesday, May 12th
5:00pm - Bring Your Own Sign & Join the Protest outside City Hall.

6:00pm - Speak at the City Council Meeting inside City Hall.
(Call the City Clerk‟s Office to get your name on the speakers list at 201-547-5150.) Sign the petition. This is especially important if you cannot join us at the protest:

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This flier was sent to me this evening.

70 developmentally challenged residents have lost their jobs.

They need your support.





www.hudsoncommunity.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For info contact HCE: 201-432-5959

May 9, 2010

Hudson Community Enterprises Calls On Residents To Protest Jersey City?s Barriers To Employment for the Developmentally Disabled.

Sign a petition, email Jersey City?s elected officials, protest at the next City Council Meeting, Wednesday, May 12th.

Since 1957, Hudson Community Enterprises (HCE) has provided disabled individuals with opportunities to enter the workplace. Based in Jersey City, this local non-profit has placed over 3,500 community residents into employment. HCE‟s mission is simple: ?Give Individuals with
Disabilities and other barriers to employment a Chance to Succeed. Improve the Community One Person at a Time.‟

Recent cancellation of the Jersey City Incinerator Authority?s Litter Patrol Program, which employed seventy developmentally challenged HCE members, has raised new barriers.

On April 27th, 2009, seventy developmentally challenged residents, who participate in the HCE vocational rehabilitation program, suffered a major blow. We were given two days notice that the Jersey City Incinerator Authority was cancelling a twenty year contract for Litter Patrol services.

Jersey City gave the most debilitating news to the neediest in our community. You‟re fired, two days from now. It must be said that persons with disabilities suffer daily. Our program participants are met with barriers to employment and basic communal acceptance every single day of their lives.

On Wednesday, May 12, 2010, the recently unemployed members of the HCE Litter Patrol Program will protest this tragic decision outside City Hall, 280 Grove Street, JC, NJ at 5:00pm. Following the protest, we will attend the City Council Meeting at 6:00pm in Council Chambers, City Hall to speak against this decision.

We are asking Residents and Members of the Jersey City Community to join us to protest this decision.

Call the City Clerk?s Office at 201-547-5150 to put your name on the speakers list.

Hudson Community Enterprises and its supporters work so hard to break down barriers and integrate these individuals into the workplace to gain acceptance, self-reliance and self sufficiency.

Jersey City‟s unfortunate news put up a new barrier. These individuals had an opportunity to enter the workforce and contribute to their community; this tragedy exposes each of them to recidivism, a chronic tendency toward the repetition of criminal or anti-social behavior. It is a health concern, it will require intervention, and will debilitate members of our community.

what a f%+#ing joke this city is. we should all be ashamed of ourselves that these are the democratically elected officials that "represent" us.

At least our council members all have free cars with which they can drive around "documenting" the litter problem.

Except for Vega who we know is busy driving to fires and counting the homeless....

People who cleaned up Jersey City litter have been let go due to budget cuts

Saturday, May 01, 2010
By MELISSA HAYES
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

When Fuquann Gleaton began working at Hudson Community Enterprises 11 years ago, he had dropped out of Snyder High School and didn't know where he fit in.

The Jersey City resident began working in the program's litter patrol program, cleaning city streets through a contract with the Jersey City Incinerator Authority.

Gleaton said it inspired him to go back and graduate from high school. Later he would enroll at Hudson County Community College.

"Litter patrol changed me. Litter patrol helped me learn respect," he said. "It helped me be independent mentally and physically."

Gleaton is among 70 Hudson Community Enterprises clients who lost their jobs yesterday, when the JCIA ended its 20-plus-year contract with the nonprofit. The litter patrol cleaned sidewalks and curblines and emptied city trash cans.

Hudson Community Enterprises in Jersey City is a rehabilitation program that works with 600 developmentally disabled and handicapped adults, offering employment opportunities, job coaching and substance-abuse services.

President and CEO Maureen Walliser said she learned Tuesday the program was being cancelled.

"For many of them, this is their only job and now they're not only going to end up unemployed, but really at risk of recidivism," said Walliser, who added that the workers earn minimum wage and are not eligible to collect unemployment.

Oren Dabney, CEO of the Jersey City Incinerator Authority, said the city cut $4.1 million in funding when the City Council approved the budget April 21. He said he notified Walliser as soon as he received the budget numbers.

The litter patrol program cost $428,122 annually. Dabney said all outside contracts have to be cut, adding there will be layoffs at the JCIA as well.

THEY ARE READY,
Canceled contract puts job re-entry program in jeopardy

Wednesday, February 13, 2008
By RUSSELL BEN-ALI
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

It began like any other January day for the guys in blue, a rugged group of homeless men, ex-addicts and ex-offenders who sweep and cart debris from urban streets regardless of the temperature.

But after five hours in the cold, they were rushed back to the Bergen Avenue headquarters of their sponsor, Ready, Willing & Able-Jersey City, for an emergency meeting.

"We are finished cleaning up Jersey City for now," began Donald Pendleton, director of The Doe Fund Inc.'s only RWA program in New Jersey - one of the few that provides housing, pay and therapeutic classes to some of society's toughest cases.

"Don't put your head down," Pendleton advised the group, some too startled to ask why the contract with the city wasn't being immediately renewed. "You face adversity every day; that's how you got here."

The setback was emblematic of the difficulties urban officials and social service organizations, even well-funded ones like RWA, which has a large operation in New York City, encounter daily in their efforts to bring prisoner re-entry programs to the state's cities.

The urgent need for more programs to help ex-offenders make the adjustment is regular fodder for political speeches. But it hasn't translated into enough money for small, community and faith-based organizations struggling to keep such programs afloat, said Darcella Sessomes, director of the Department of Corrections Office of Transitional Services.

These organizations are in an uneven competition with other needy groups often favored by public officials, who figure there is little political capital in helping ex-cons, Sessomes said. More federal grants and private funds are needed, she added.

"It's a very big problem," she said. "We can't continue to say that we want to see a decrease in recidivism and yet not put money towards it."

Some 14,000 ex-offenders leave state facilities annually, half of them bound for their urban home counties of Essex, Camden, Passaic, Hudson and Union, state corrections officials said. Those same urban pockets usually lack the resources to contract with experienced re-entry job and social service providers or to bulk up their own efforts.

Newark recently hired the third director for its prisoner re-entry program - one promoted hard by Mayor Cory Booker but stalled by financial problems. The program's previous director, Byron Price, complained of trying to run a program with no staff and no budget.

The Corzine administration recently announced a demonstration project to aid former inmates returning to Newark, Trenton and Camden, who

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If not them, who'll clean dirty streets?

Wednesday, February 13, 2008
By EARL MORGAN
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Jersey City Economic Development Director Gene Nelson was on the hot seat at Monday's City Council caucus over delays in awarding a contract to clean the city's sidewalks and streets.

Heights Councilman Bill Gaughan pointed out that since the contract with the nonprofit agency Ready, Willing and Able expired several weeks ago, the streets have been visibly dirtier.

Jersey City has advertised twice unsuccessfully for bids on a new contract, so must try again before the streets are cleaned.

A resolution on the agenda for tonight's City Council meeting, if approved, would allow Ready Willing and Able, also known as the DOE Fund, to continue operating the program for 20 more weeks while the EDC issues its third advertisement for the program's contract.

After noting that the Doe Fund's bid was $13,000 higher than the only other bidder, Hudson County Enterprises, Gaughan said it didn't seem fair to allow the higher bidder to continue running the program.

Instead, Gaughan suggested that the Jersey City Incinerator Authority, which ran the program in the past, take it over until the situation is resolved. Nelson assured Gaughan and the council that by May a new vendor will be selected.

Nelson said it was necessary to advertise for bids again because the state Department of Community Affairs, which finances the program from the city's Urban Enterprise Zone funds, would not have provided the money since the last advertisement removed a required social service component needed to receive the money.

"But I am meeting with the state people (today) and I'm sure we'll get on the same page," Nelson said.