Does this mean his daughter will "retire" too and we'll get an MUA chair who knows more about sewers than "shit goes in and her health insurance comes out"?

He told me a couple of years ago that this term would be his last. And he used the same line "I'm not the same councilman I was years ago."

What I don't understand is why he was still angling for the Assembly seat.

good riddance!

Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out ! His legacy will be that he was complicit or ignorant with all the negative governance and shady policies and programs within JC.

Congress St/9th St. It's an elevator. I do believe I probably descend a comparable level when getting on Pavonia PATH. So yea, it counts!

"bringing the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail to the Heights"

Must be some hitherto hidden branch line of the Light Rail.

Robin.

Longest-serving Jersey City councilman looks back on 20 years By Terrence T. McDonald/The Jersey Journal June 18, 2013 at 4:44 PM Bill Gaughan won?t miss the late nights. Gaughan, 75, has been a member of the Jersey City City Council for 20 years, longer than anyone else, according to City Clerk Robert Byrne. But after five terms, Gaughan is hanging up his hat on June 30. Tomorrow is his last council meeting, and he hopes it?s a short one. ?Late nights ? have been more and more frequent, with a lot of rhetoric that we could have done without,? he said in his office at the Brennan Court House (Gaughan?s day job is chief of staff to Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise). Gaughan picked a good year to retire from representing Ward D on the nine-member council. Not only did outgoing Mayor Jerramiah Healy (a Gaughan ally) lose his bid for reelection, but Healy?s entire council slate was voted down, too, including Healy?s pick to succeed Gaughan, the Rev. Mario Gonzalez. Gaughan said he opted to step down long before Healy picked his council slate. ?I just had the feeling that I didn?t want to do it any longer,? he said. Citing his age, he added: ?I?ll be honest with you ? I am not as good a councilman now as I was 20 years ago.? A former boxer, Gaughan owns the Houghton Funeral Home at Summit Avenue and Lincoln Street. He joined the council in 1993, running with former Mayor Bret Schundler. He was one of two funeral-home directors running for the council that year. Councilman Bill Gaughan retiresCouncilman Bill Gaughan speaks to the Jersey Journal in his Brennan Courthouse office about his twenty years on the Jersey City Council. Asked to name some of his accomplishments over the past two decades, Gaughan cited bringing the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail to the Heights; converting a former bank at Kennedy Boulevard and Thorne Street into a community center; assisting in the creation of three affordable-housing developments in the Heights; and helping to lure Goya from Secaucus to Jersey City. And then there?s the 100 Steps project. When he joined the council 20 years ago, he said, he asked that the stairs leading from Franklin Street to Mountain Road be torn down. A century old, the staircase was in disrepair. ?The steps were missing, the railings were falling off, kids would hang around there and swing on it,? he said. ?It was a danger.? Flash forward two decades, and the stairs are set to be completed by early fall, city officials say. ?It took me 20 years,? Gaughan said today. Gaughan?s five terms on the council weren?t all smooth. He was forced to apologize in 2004 when he called homosexuality ?an illness you're born with.? And he had some notable battles with the late former Mayor Glenn D. Cunningham, who defeated DeGise, Gaughan?s friend and ally, in the 2001 mayor?s race. He was also criticized heavily at times for acting as a councilman, for which he earns about $35,000 annually, and as county chief of staff, for which he is paid around $126,000. But the two public jobs helped him and Jersey City, he insists. If it weren?t for his county role, it may have been more difficult to get Washington Park renovated, he said. Also, he added, his council job ?doesn?t pay enough ? to sustain a proper lifestyle for a married guy with children.? Byrne said he estimates the two have sat through as many as 900 council meetings together. "I'll miss him being seated to my right at every caucus," the clerk said. "We're going to be friends for life, that's for sure." Gaughan isn?t stepping away from public service quite yet. He?ll remain as DeGise?s chief of staff for at least two years, and possibly more if DeGise wins another term in 2015. But Gaughan, who once aspired to represent Jersey City in the state Assembly, is likely done with electoral politics, he said. ?It was getting too political,? he said. ?There were too many people who were in it for the wrong reason.? http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/20 ... lman_says_goodbye.html#/0