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- At a presser in Hackensack yesterday, Sen. Bob Menendez said NJ should land billions dollars of federal stimulus money, particularly in the form of tax relief, infrastructure funding and green energy projects from the package scheduled to be signed by President Obama today. Mayor Healy says Jersey City will seek funding for the new West District Police Station and affordable and public housing projects.

- “The Journal Square Redevelopment Plan will benefit a few developers at the expense of the majority of Jersey City’s residents,” representatives of the Riverview Neighborhood Association say in a letter to the JJ. The letter argues that the possibility for inclusion of skyscrapers up to 100 stories in the plan is out of scale with much of the existing neighborhood, that development of that scale would tax the city’s infrastructure and that there is yet to be any buy-in to the project from the Port Authority or NJ Transit, both of which are necessary partners in the project. More importantly, the group argues, much of the revenue generated by the project would benefit the few at the expense of the many, via funding mechanisms like the Revenue Allocation District (RAD) and the “paradigm shift” in financing (the District Improvement Fund Bonus) that we reported on last week.

- More than 5 percent of St. Peter’s College full-time students are falling behind on tuition as the recession continues. “I was told we had 123 students who began the new semester $5,000 or more in arrears on their tuition bills,” college president Gene Cornacchia tells Bob Braun.

- The Bally Total Fitness health club in Journal Square is celebrating its opening with a weekend-long slate of events starting Friday. They’ve scheduled an After-Work Fitness Formula Happy Hour for Friday from 5-10 pm; a Fitness Music Festival for Saturday from 9 am-9 pm; and a Family Fitness Festival for Sunday from 9 am-6 pm. More info on the gym can be found here.

- To no real surprise, many of the Society Hill neighbors of the man charged this weekend with holding a woman against her will and promoting prostitution didn’t know that he was a pimp. Many apparently thought he was in the music business.

In statewide news:

- Some three weeks after NJ launched an audit of roughly 225,000 public employees to root out ineligible dependents receiving health benefits, workers and unions are seething over how the effort is being conducted.

- Former New York City mayor and Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani is expected to endorse Chris Christie for governor of New Jersey today.

- A bill advanced last week by an Assembly panel would nullify any contract that contains language prohibiting a consumer to file a complaint either with police or government authorities.

- An office of Bayer Health Care Pharmaceuticals in Morris County was evacuated yesterday and eight employees had to be decontaminated after they were exposed to a powdery substance that arrived in a letter sent to the company.

- Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) routes could come to Bergen County as early as next year. BRT already exists in Essex County.