The Jersey City Independent "

Photos: Steve Gold

If the council members thought they’d be able to breeze through Tuesday’s pre-Thanksgiving City Council meeting, they were sorely mistaken. The meeting lasted nearly three hours, as the council debated one contentious piece of legislation and many members of the public turned out to discuss a proposed project in Lafayette.

New Appraisal Nixed, Building Purchase Moves Forward

To think, the most contentious issue at this week’s meeting wasn’t even on the agenda.

Last month, the council introduced an ordinance for the city to finance the $4.2 million purchase by the Parking Authority of the property it rents at 392-394 Central Ave. in the Heights, and to float a $4.38 bond issue to pay for it. When it came up for a second reading at the last meeting, it was unanimously tabled.

At issue is the value of the building; the city’s purchase price is based on an appraisal done in April 2008. In pushing for the legislation to be tabled, Ward E councilman Steven Fulop had argued at the previous meeting that the real estate market had changed and the city should do another appraisal.

While the ordinance was officially tabled at the beginning of the meeting, all parties knew the council was pressing for a vote on it. City CFO Donna Mauer was in attendance, and she presented the building’s appraiser, Joseph D’Amato, to answer questions from council members.

Contrary to Fulop’s assertion, D’Amato said the city was paying the fair market rate for the building. “I don’t believe [the real estate market] has changed,” he said. “The value still stands.”

But Fulop wasn’t convinced.

“An appraisal from April 2008 doesn’t work for me,” he said. “There is no downside for us to do an additional appraisal.”

Fulop also said that one of the building’s owners is a campaign donor to Mayor Healy and to many members of the council, and noted that in light of the corruption scandals that have rocked City Hall, the council should take the extra steps to avoid any appearance of impropriety.

“We should look to take the highest road possible,” he said. “The fact that the guy’s a contributor means we should go above and beyond. End of story.”

But that argument gained little traction with Fulop’s colleagues, who focused on whether or not a new assessment would value the building at a lower figure.

“The fact is, the appraisal will not change substantially,” Ward B councilman David Donnelly said. He and others making that argument pointed to the fact that the value of the building comes not from its location or its features, but from its current tenant. Other than the Parking Authority, the United States Postal Service (USPS) — which is in dire financial straits and is reducing services in Jersey City and all over the nation — rents space on the first floor in a lease that ends in 2012.

While the council members debated amongst themselves and peppered D’Amato with questions, local real estate agent Phil Rivo was pacing in the center aisle of the chambers, chomping at the bit to get his turn to speak.

Eventually, he just began to approach the microphone and asked to speak.

“Not on this,” council president Peter Brennan told him. The public hearing on this ordinance had already come and gone at the previous meeting, so technically, according to city clerk Robert Byrne, the public did not have the right to be heard.

Fulop introduced a motion to re-open the public hearing. This was followed by a brief silence, and one wondered if the council would stonewall the move. But then Ward F councilwoman Viola Richardson piped up and seconded the motion; meanwhile a clearly frustrated Rivo blurted out: “What are you afraid of?”

That drew the ire of three council members, with Ward A Michael Sottolano quickly saying he would vote no “just because of your attitude.” That sentiment was echoed by Ward D councilman Bill Gaughan, who, along with Brennan, voted no to re-open the public hearing.

Regardless, enough of the council voted to allow more public comment, and Rivo got his turn at the mic, and when he got there, he suggested that the appraisal was skewed because the current tenants are both paying rents that are above market rate.

“Only the Parking Authority and the federal government would pay these rents,” Rivo said. “They are paying double what they should be.”

He suggested that the Parking Authority should perhaps try instead to renegotiate its lease, which ends next year, with the current owner.

Two other residents made their case against the city’s purchase of the building, and then it was time to vote on another procedural item, whether or not to take this bill off the table and give it a vote. Not surprisingly, Fulop and Richardson voted to keep the bill tabled, and they were joined by At-Large council members Willie Flood and Mariano Vega*. The rest of the council voted to bring the bill up for a vote, and the motion to untable passed 5 to 4.

At that point, Byrne reminded the council that six votes would be needed to pass the ordinance, since it was a bond ordinance. Would there be enough votes to push this through?

Sottolano led things off, voting yes. “I know this will save us money in the long run,” he said. He was quickly followed by Donnelly, who had been the fiercest attack dog on the appraisal issue this meeting, getting into several heated exchanges with Fulop, at one point accusing the Downtown councilman of “grandstanding” and playing politics.

“Why waste money on another appraisal?” he asked of the estimated $500 expense as he voted yes.

Lopez and Gaughan followed suit, and then it was Fulop’s turn to vote.

He said the entire scenario was “amongst the most outrageous situations” he’d been part of during his council tenure as he voted against the bill.

“It’s an atrocity,” he said. “It’s nothing less than an atrocity.”

Richardson then cast the second no vote (with far less bombast than Fulop). She said she was concerned about the USPS’s plans, since they had “just [finished] shafting me and my constituents” by leaving the Lafayette neighborhood, and that “it would not hurt” to get another appraisal.

Flood added another no vote, with no comment, and with Brennan a sure yes vote, all of a sudden the ordinance hinged on one man’s vote: Vega*.

After saying that it was “probably a good idea” for the city to get another appraisal on the building, he nonetheless said he was voting yes. He said he thought that owning in this case made more sense than renting, and that other city agencies currently ensconced in rental facilities (at 30 Montgomery St. or the Beacon complex) could join the Parking Authority in the Heights for some cost savings.

“This might make strategic sense for Jersey City,” he said.

Fulop quickly called Vega* out for voting to keep the bill on the table, which meant he was presumably against buying the building at this price, and then — after realizing that six, not the usual five, votes would be needed to pass it, siding with his council allies and voting for the bill.

So what made Vega* change his mind?

“I listened to the arguments of everyone that voted,” he said, “and I was persuaded by those arguments.”

T&M’s Contract Clears the Council

At its last meeting, the City Council tabled a resolution awarding a contract to the engineering firm T&M Associates after concerns were raised by John Seborowski, Sr. about the contract’s potential violation of the city’s pay-to-play law.

The $125,000 contract, which covers work to be done in connection with the Marion Greenway park on the city’s west side, was halted because of several donations from the firm and one of its employees that appeared in a campaign finance report filed by Vega* in August. Under the pay-to-play law, entities that do business with the city are not allowed to donate certain amounts of money to candidates within a year of being awarded a contract.

Jonathan Busch, an attorney working for T&M, was at the council meeting this week to answer questions. After the previous meeting, T&M looked into its contributions and had sent the council a document explaining that the donations were made before the pay-to-play law went into effect last fall.

Vega* was first to address the issue. “I had an opportunity to review my election reports,” he said, “and I concur with the findings.” He explained that the August campaign finance report included aggregate amounts, and that was why the T&M contributions were included.

Fulop argued that Vega*’s admission had to mean that he incorrectly filed his reports, and after much back and forth, threatened to file a complaint with the state Election Law Enforcement Commission if Vega* did not file an amended report within two weeks.

In the end, all of the council members voted to put the resolution back on the agenda this week, and then almost all of them voted to approve the contract. Donnelly cast the lone no vote, saying only “I’m sorry but I will have to vote no.” Flood did not vote, as she had left the meeting by then.

Team Walker’s Pine Street Project Questioned

The majority of the speakers during the public hearing portion of Tuesday’s meeting were there to talk about an after-school facility for children proposed by Jerry Walker of Team Walker.

Walker, who aims to “provide safe and constructive alternatives to the negative influences that plague inner city youth,” is looking to create a facility at 183 Pine St. in Lafayette. Residents of that block and some surrounding blocks are pushing the city to find what they claim would be a more suitable location for it.

They argue that their street is too small and too residential to house what they dub a “commercial” facility. Representatives from this group all sounded similar a theme, that, as resident Lycel Villanueva put it, it is “a great idea in the wrong location.”

To some in attendance Tuesday, that stance smacked of NIMBYism, and several speakers said the residents who are against the project are being motivated by greed or fear. Race was a subtext of many of these comments, but it leaped into the forefront when Philip Carrington spoke.

“Black men are always being told to ‘go somewhere else,’” he said to cheers from the crowd. Carrington said he faced similar hurdles in another Jersey City neighborhood when he tried to launch a similar project.

Despite the obvious tensions at play, folks on both sides of the issue were courteous and seemed willing to listen to others. And underneath it all, it does seem like they all want to see the same thing — a successful after-school program run by Team Walker — just in different locations. Dwayne Baskerville of the Communipaw Avenue Block Association told the council that he would soon be setting up a meeting between all concerned parties to find the best place in the area for the program.

The project has not yet been considered by the Planning Board, which is expected to address the issue next month. Brennan applauded everyone for coming out, and advised them all to attend the Planning Board meeting to voice their concerns.

Supporting Trenton’s Efforts on Sentencing Reform

This week in Trenton, the Senate Judiciary Committee released a bill, co-sponsored by state Sen. Sandra Cunningham, that would allow judges to skirt New Jersey’s harsh mandatory minimum sentences when sentencing nonviolent offenders under the state’s drug-free school zone law.

Many other states around the nation have moved in this direction, despite the default — and empty — political pose of being “tough on crime.” The ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, for example, said this week that leaving sentencing to the discretion of judges has “often meant that serial offenders were back on the street terrorizing our neighborhoods.”

Gov. Corzine has pledged to sign such a bill if it comes to his desk. It’s unclear if Gov.-elect Chris Christie would do so, but even if he would, the legislature would have to start from scratch when the new session begins in January if the bill is not passed during the lame-duck session.

Roseanne Scotti, the director of the Drug Policy Alliance of New Jersey, was on hand Tuesday to press the council to pass a resolution supporting the Senate bill, which is a companion bill to one the Assembly passed in 2008.

“One-sized justice is no justice at all,” Scotti said as she revealed striking statistics on the racial makeup of nonviolent offenders in prison (overwhelming Black and Latino) and the high cost the state incurs by incarcerating these individuals.

When it was time to vote for the resolution, Ward A councilman Michael Sottolano came out against the legislation. “I have some concern,” he said, claiming that sentences are often cut down in the criminal justice process anyway. He seemed to be more persuaded by the cost-savings argument, but it wasn’t enough for him to cast an “aye” vote, and he abstained from voting.

Fulop, without any comment, joined Sottolano and abstained as well, but several other council members spoke in strong support of the bill.

Vega* commended Scotti for “speaking truth to power,” discussed the disturbing sentencing disparity for cocaine and crack cocaine and pointed out that the drug-free school zone laws disproportionately hurt urban areas, since we are more condensed and more people live, work and play within these zones.

Richardson and Lopez also spoke out in favor of the legislation, but it was Donnelly who offered the most passionate defense of the bill, pounding his fist on the dais several times as he repeatedly said “there’s something wrong” with a system where this kind of sentencing so negatively affects only some segments of the community.

Labor and Local Jobs at Construction Sites

During this year’s mayoral campaign, several candidates focused on the lack of construction jobs for Jersey City residents at tax abated development projects. Lou Manzo and others accused developers of skirting Jersey City’s Project Labor Agreement and generally not providing residents with the much-needed living-wage jobs that come from unionized construction work. The Project Labor Agreement requires all projects of $25 million or greater with tax abatements to hire at least 20 percent Jersey City residents as apprentices.

Glenroy Martin, a member of the Local 6 Carpenter’s Union, addressed the council on the same subject Tuesday. He claimed that, when developers were seeking abatement approvals from the council, they leaned on the unions to send rank-and-file members to council meetings to lobby for the abatements, with the understanding that the projects would create jobs.

But Martin said that one project he’s recently been working on Downtown hasn’t been living up to its potential in that regard. He claimed that out of 35 or so carpenters on the site, less than 10 were union members, and only five were from Jersey City. Instead, the contractor was bussing in non-union workers from far-flung areas of the state until, he said, it finally laid off all of the union members — and all of the Jersey City residents.

Exasperated and angry, and with several union members supporting him in the crowd, Martin was at Tuesday’s meeting to find out what, if anything, the city could do to fix this particular situation.

Deputy mayor Kabili Tayari admitted that the scope of the problem was much larger than Martin’s individual experience.

“This has been an ongoing issue since I’ve worked here,” he said. “This is not a single situation. A lot more of these men and women will be coming forward.”

The shape of the city’s response will be determined by several factors, including if the project is abated and if it is subject to the Project Labor Agreement.

Tayari said that he would sort out the details of this project’s alleged problems as soon as possible.

“I’m on vacation tomorrow, but believe me, I’ll do it tomorrow,” he said.

Banging the Drum for Vega*’s Resignation

Saying that the At-Large councilman “continues to insult the intelligence” of Jersey City’s residents, John Seborowski, Sr. continued his call for Vega* to resign in the wake of his July on corruption charges.

Seborowski, who has called on Vega* to step down at meeting after meeting over the past few months, said several people had asked him recently why he was doing this, who was putting him up to it, and what he had to gain from his mini-crusade.

He said Tuesday that no one was behind his efforts, it was merely a result of his disgust with the system.

“I am doing this because I feel betrayed by an elected official,” he said.

First Reads

Five ordinances were introduced at Tuesday’s meeting, and nearly as many — three — were withdrawn. For the full text of all of them, click here.

Here are the ones that were introduced:

* Ord. 09-120 is a revision to the city code that would require the seller or landlord of any residential building to provide new tenants with a notice informing them of the city’s parking permit regulations.

* Ord. 09-123 would impose deed restrictions on three areas of a site formerly owned by PSE&G that the state Department of Transportation now owns.

* Ord 09-124 concerns a property at 136-138 Grant Ave. that the city transfered in the 1980s to Fairmount Housing Corporation, under the terms that the 38 units to be built on site were to be rented as affordable housing for 15 years. Fairmount not only failed to comply with the affordable housing requirement, it defaulted on its mortgages to the city and Hudson County that helped fund the rehabilitation of the property. Now, Fairmount wants to sell the property for $470,000 — but the buyer, William Melms, wants to rehab the building and create market-rate housing. Fairmount is offering the city $25,000 if it will release it from the mortgage — and release the property from its affordability requirements. The city wants to get the building back on the tax rolls, so it is prepared to accept those terms.

* Ord. 09-125 would approve Newport Office Center VI, LLC’s application for a state economic development grant to the tune of $14.6 million to subsidize the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation’s moving of 1,600 jobs to a Newport office building.

* Ord. 09-127 would approve a bond issue of $2.5 million to finance roadway improvements on Newark Avenue.

Second Reads

There were four second-read ordinances on this week’s agenda (you can read more about them here). Three of them were unanimously passed into law, while a simple one (09-119) renaming an honorary section of a street was tabled at Fulop’s request.

Budget Watch

Working without a budget almost five months into the fiscal year, the council once again passed a resolution approving “emergency temporary appropriations” to keep the city running. Fulop voted against the resolution, pointing out that business administrator Brian O’Reilly had promised to give the council a budget to look at by the end of November. Gaughan reminded Fulop that a budget committee had just recently been formed and didn’t have a chance to meet. The committee is made up of Brennan, Gaughan and Sottolano.

The amount appropriated this week brings the total since July to $303.2 million. Last year’s budget came in at $474 million.

Odds & Ends

* Rather than continue to wage costly court battles with deep-pocketed developer Steve Hyman over the ownership and fate of the 6th Street Embankment, the city has decided to enter into mediation with him to come to an agreement over what to do with the property. The council also hired former state Supreme Court chief justice James Zazzali to oversee the mediation at a rate of $580 per hour. The city is estimating 40 hours of mediation, at a total cost of $25,000, which will be split amongst the groups involved. The council will be briefed on the status of the mediation within 45 days.

Fulop commended corporate counsel Bill Matsikoudis for his work on putting this together, and Richardson expressed relief that the city might finally stop spending money on the fight, which had come under increased scrutiny from council members in recent months.

* Despite a push by Fulop at Monday’s caucus meeting, the City Council will continue to hold its summer meetings in the mornings next year, as it approved a resolution shoring up the schedule for 2010.

The morning meetings became a minor issue this July, when post-corruption bust council meetings were held at times when few who work traditional hours could attend.

At Monday’s meeting, Fulop argued that he — and many others — had to work during the days and that the meetings should be in the evenings. But Gaughan said no one in his ward had ever complained about the morning meetings, which were also easier for seniors to attend.

* The city approved the acceptance of a $444,909 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice through the department’s Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program. The city plans to use the money to purchase CCTV in-car feed equipment for 25 JCPD vehicles and to increase foot and vehicular patrols in “hot spots” it has identified throughout the city.

* “I’ve been everywhere,” said local business owner and former independent Assembly candidate Omar Dyer as he described his Kafka-esque experience being bounced around the city’s bureaucracy as he tries to get a program for at-risk youth up and running. He chided the council for not responding to his queries, to mostly bewildered looks. “Do not look at me like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” he said. The council eventually put him in contact with deputy mayor Rosemary McFadden, who said she would help him through the process.

* As part of the renovation and development of the iconic Powerhouse, the Port Authority is going to have to move its PATH substation that currently is at that site. The Port Authority is considering moving the substation just next door to the city-owned triangular property at the intersection of Washington Boulevard, 2nd Street and Greene Street, and the council on Tuesday approved the agency’s access to the land in order to conduct environmental investigations. The first step in a long process, we’re sure.

* The city appointed 12 temporary judges to cover when municipal court judges are unable to work because of illness, emergencies or vacations. The temps will be paid a flat rate of $250 per session.

* With the city in line to receive approximately $958,656 in Community Services Block Grant money from the state Department of Community Affairs, the council approved the city’s proposal application, which doles out $813,000 to 22 programs in the city and $145,656 to administration. Donnelly abstained from voting on this resolution.

* The city authorized refunds and/or credits of $757,822.62 as a result of property tax appeals filed by various property owners.

* Did you know the Jersey City Cricket Club won the 2009 Twenty20 Cricket championship? Well, they did — and the council passed a resolution formally congratulating them on Tuesday.

What Else Are We Buying?
The city approved the following purchases Tuesday:

* $173,000 for additional surveillance cameras in the waterfront district (paid for via a federal grant).

* $168,000 for one year’s worth of services from the legal research firm West Group. The money covers printed legal materials as well as legal research.

* $100,000 to settle a lawsuit with Michelle Zarro, who claimed the city had violated her civil rights.

* $62,775.60 to connect 201 Cornelison Ave. to the city’s wireless network system.

* $50,000 for the JCPD’s wireless network infrastructure support and maintenance.

* $33,750 for an unspecified number of GH Armor Lite body armor vests for the JCPD.

* $23,716.60 for telecommunications equipment to be used by the JCPD.

* $19,924.25 for the Fire department to purchase a CON – SPACE Entrylink Diversity System, a wireless video camera system used to help departments handle Hazmat operations.

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