May 2020

At Wednesday’s Jersey City Council meeting, members approved a rent freeze on certain apartments in response to the coronavirus pandemic. It postponed an ordinance to allow installation of 5G telecommunication utility poles, among other actions taken.

Ultimately, it’s tourism that sustains many Jersey Shore communities — and it is tourism that will save them from economic disaster, once the state has allowed for reopening to begin. “We’re a community, from one tip of the Jersey Shore down to the end of Cape May,” Bangle said. “We’ve been through Sandy and all these other storms. So, I think we’ll bounce back, and I think people are going to come up with a lot of creative ways to run businesses — not just for this season, but for the future as well.”

At Thursday’s Jersey City School Board meeting, trustees discussed a contingency plan for reopening schools in the fall. If Governor Phil Murphy orders schools to reopen in September, School Superintendent Franklin Walker and members of the board agreed that now’s the time to create a Covid-19 task force to oversee the details.

“Parking is both about numbers, but it’s also a highly political process,” according to Margaret Newman, former chief of staff of the New York City Department of Transportation during the Bloomberg administration and one of the consultants who worked on the draft.  Among residents, “Everyone has an interest in it, and everyone has a different story and experience,” she added.

But the long-anticipated announcement at Murphy’s daily press briefing laid bare the vast number of unresolved challenges and questions for schools, families and educators — not just in the next five weeks but in the months to come.