The Jersey City Independent "

Share/Save

- The City Council met last night, and as we reported yesterday, they tabled the ordinance creating the Animal Control Commission and will likely revisit it in two weeks. The council also approved a memorandum of understanding between the city and the Friends of the Loew’s, solidifying the lease for the Loew’s Jersey Theatre. In terms of policy, the rest of the meeting was rather tame, with no major hot-button issues bubbling up. However, sparks between one speaker and a council member did fly — we’ll have more on that tomorrow.

- Hudson County judge Maurice J. Gallipoli is one of the 30 judges across the state who have declined to participate in two days of state furloughs aimed to save money for the troubled state budget. He is taking the days as vacation days instead.

- Veteran columnist Earl Morgan, who was one of several Jersey Journal staffers who took a buyout to keep the paper alive this spring, give us his farewell column today. “Being a Jersey Journal reporter was a lot of things, but never dull,” he writes. “Once when asked by a newly hired staff member, how and where I got my stories, I said, ‘If you can’t find a news story in Hudson County or Jersey City get out of this business and take up basket weaving.’” Earl is a Jersey City institution — it’s unfortunate that the financial woes of the Journal have forced out not only him, but many of its other veteran writers.

- Good news for your summer’s commute: Due to construction delays, suspension of weekend PATH service to the World Trade Center has been pushed back to the end of this year at the earliest.

- Fresh off winning election to the Ward C City Council seat, Nidia Rivera Lopez talks with the Latin American Herald Tribune about her priorities, which include school overcrowding, improving social services for minority groups and helping women get ahead in Jersey City.

- Ballot position drawings for the runoff elections in Ward A and Ward F are today. In A, it’s incumbent Michael Sottolano against Rolando Lavarro; in F, incumbent Viola Richardson faces Ron-Calvin Clark. The runoff election is June 9.

- There was a fire at a Tuers Avenue building near Montgomery Street yesterday. No injuries were reported, but six families were displaced, along with numerous children. Officials think there may have been an unlicensed daycare center at the site.

- A 15-year-old Jersey City boy has been selected as a student ambassador by the People to People program for a two-week trip to Europe this summer, but his family is having trouble getting the $6,500 for the trip together.

In statewide news:

- The state’s unemployment rate rose for the 15th straight month. It was up to 8.4 percent in April, from 8.3 percent in March, remaining lower than the national rate of 8.9 percent.

- Gov. Corzine is defending his proposal to eliminate property tax rebates as part of a plan to close a looming budget gap, saying the public will understand and promising to restore the rebates as soon as the economy improves.

- Former Perth Amboy mayor Joseph Vas, who ran in the 2006 primary to represent Jersey City in the House of Representatives, was indicted yesterday on federal corruption charges, accused of using his political influence to further a real estate deal that netted him nearly $300,000.

- Retired New Jersey Supreme Court justices James R. Zazzali and Stewart G. Pollock have been appointed to the state Advisory Panel on Ethics. They replace the late justice Daniel O’Hern and former state attorney general John Farmer Jr.

- A coalition of 10 environmental groups has released a report — “Ocean Water Quality in New Jersey: Redirecting the Management Effort” — with recommendations on improving water quality.