The Place for Jersey City News
Log In / Register
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
Jersey City Times
  • News
  • Food and Fun
    • Food And Drink
    • Performing Arts
    • Visual Arts
    • Other Fun Stuff
  • Education
  • Business
  • Neighborhoods
    • Downtown
      • News
      • Guide
    • Heights
      • News
      • Guide
    • Journal Square
      • News
      • Guide
    • Bergen Lafayette
      • News
      • Guide
    • Greenville
      • News
      • Guide
    • Westside
      • News
      • Guide
  • Opinion
  • Columns
    • Eye Level
    • Mamarama
  • Obituaries
  • Event Calendar
  • Support our Mission
  • Search
  • Menu Menu
Dickinson High School Jersey City 16x9
Aaron Morrill

The Mayor Says Jersey City Schools are Failing: Critics Disagree

April 30, 2022/in Education, header, Latest News, Narrate, News, Trending Now /by Aaron Morrill

Two outside experts and the former Board of Education president are taking issue with Mayor Steven Fulop’s recent attacks on the BOE and school officials following their adoption of a record $955 million budget and a tax levy that would cost the average homeowner an additional $1,600 per year.

In an interview with the Jersey Journal, the mayor asked, “What are we getting for that money? And where is our money going?” The mayor claimed that the annual cost to educate a child had reached $32,000 thousand. Jersey City is, he asserted, “amongst the highest in the entire country for a school system that is largely failing and hasn’t shown meaningful progress.”

“You need actual good decision making and good accountability,” the mayor said. According to the Jersey Journal, the mayor “took a shot at the ‘bloated salaries’ of district leadership, saying district officials and the board ‘have not looked at any common-sense changes that have been recommended to them for years.’” At an April 2 meeting at the St. John’s Apartment Complex, the mayor repeated the charges, complaining that teacher salaries were 30 percent above average.

His spokesperson, Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione, piled on, calling the school tax hike “unconscionable.”

The mayor has found a receptive audience. Said “Brian O.” in a Facebook thread on the subject, “Schools are an industry that can raise taxes on people any time they want to continue funding their criminal operations.” “Tricia R.” added, “We will be in the same boat again next year, mismanaged, promises…same shit diff year. You don’t throw money at a problem and think it’s gonna be fixed!”  “Bill A.” added, “The BOE spends money like a drunken sailor, and everyone knows it yet we have very little to show for it in the way of graduation rates, Math or English proficiency.”

The mayor’s criticisms, however, don’t appear to be well supported by the available evidence. Indeed, the data suggests that the mayor has misrepresented and, in some cases, made false claims about the budget and the state of the Jersey City Schools.

The 2022-23 school budget of $955 million is, indeed, breathtakingly large; and to the uncritical eye, can only be explained by profligate spending.

According to experts, however, it’s not that simple. The school budget and the simultaneous need to raise taxes are being driven by factors largely beyond the control of the Board of Education and administrators. These include Jersey City’s explosive development, changes in state law, and a push by education advocates to fund the schools at an “adequate” level. Moreover, Jersey City schools perform relatively well when compared to similar districts.

It isn’t surprising that Mayor Fulop would go after the Board of Education and school administrators. The narrative of free-spending, “unaccountable” bureaucrats plays well with many voters. In the wake of the 2017 revaluation of the city’s properties, which raised taxes for many downtown homeowners who form the mayor’s political base, rising school taxes are an understandable concern.

However, the blame appears to be misplaced, say those knowledgeable about school funding. The Board of Education and school administrators have been captives of a system of state funding that made today’s tax increases inevitable and necessary.

A rich city with many poor children

In a sense, Jersey City is a microcosm of America, with vast disparities in wealth. Driven by a building boom and gentrification, the $45 billion value of Jersey City’s property, on which school taxes are based, far exceeds any school district in the state.  At the same time, Jersey City’s poverty rate is close to 16 percent, compared to 9 percent statewide. Approximately 60 percent of students in Jersey City schools are enrolled in the state’s free and reduced lunch program.

Reflecting this high rate of poverty, Jersey City is one of 31 state-designated “Abbott” districts, named after the 1985 case Abbott v. Burke in which the New Jersey State Supreme Court held that significant expenditure disparities between poor urban and wealthy suburban school districts were unconstitutional.

For years, because of this high poverty rate, Jersey City received massive amounts of state aid. But according to critics and many legislators, the formula on which that aid was based, first put into place in 2008, didn’t account for Jersey City’s ballooning property values. The old formula, they say, kept school taxes artificially low.

In 2018 alone, one analysis showed that Jersey City received $151.5 million more in state than it should have given its wealth.  “Despite [its] staggering increase in wealth, Jersey City still receives state aid as if it were the struggling city of the 1980s,” wrote the analyst Jeffrey Bennett, a recognized expert on New Jersey school funding.

Bennett was, and is, by no means alone in this view. “From 2010 to 2018, we were technically over aided” says Jersey City resident, blogger, and St. Peter’s University Assistant Professor Brigid D’Souza.

Awash in state aid and limited in its ability to raise taxes more than two percent per year, the Board of Education shielded local taxpayers from the school tax rates found elsewhere in New Jersey. Thus, in 2018, Jersey City homeowners paid school taxes at a rate of .36 (per $100 of assessed value) compared to a state average of 1.45. The overall tax burden (which includes school, county, and city taxes) was equally low, with Jersey City’s homeowners paying at a rate of 1.5 compared to a state average of 2.8.

S2 and the end of Jersey City’s free ride

Jersey City’s luck ran out in 2018 when state legislators voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new school funding formula called S2. S2 eliminated the “over-aiding” of districts like Jersey City in favor of less affluent districts, like Elizabeth and Paterson, which lack the wealth to adequately fund their schools. It has been estimated that S2 will, by 2025, reduce Jersey City Public School’s state aid by $375 million.

S2 sent the Board of Education, school administrators and local politicians scrambling for ways to fill the budget gap. In November 2018, Jersey City enacted a payroll tax, the proceeds from which would go to the schools and help to offset some of the loss in state aid. In May 2019, more than 200 non-tenured public-school employees were threatened with layoffs that were only narrowly averted.

Mayor Steven Fulop and former Jersey City Board of Education President Sudhan Thomas

Mayor Steven Fulop and former Jersey City Board of Education President Sudhan Thomas

A few months later, the Board was thrown into turmoil when its president, Sudhan Thomas, was indicted for promising to make a lawyer the district’s “special counsel for real estate” in exchange for a cash bribe. Thomas was a close ally of the mayor, who had appointed him to also head up the Jersey City Employment and Training Program. Thomas was later also indicted for embezzling money from the that agency.

Amidst the upheaval, the group Jersey City Together pushed back against budget cuts and layoffs as the solution to the schools’ funding woes. Instead, D’Souza, and others argued that Board of Education needed to raise taxes to meet the state prescribed  “adequacy budget” — the cost of educating all students to achieve state standards — which it hadn’t done since 2008. Advocates called this “fully funding” the schools.

As Jersey City’s wealth increased, it had also been missing another state target: paying its “fair share” of the costs of running the school system.

Faced with stiff opposition to budget cuts and large cuts in state aid, the Board of Education began raising property taxes dramatically. In the three years following the passage of S2, the average Jersey City homeowner’s school taxes climbed $320, $550, and $993 respectively. The city was able to offset last year’s increase by using $69 million in Covid-19 relief funds.

If the tax increases dismayed homeowners, the view was very different for education advocates, who celebrated the 2021-2022 budget for “fully funding” the schools for the first time in thirteen years. For his part, with this year’s $1,600 average school tax increase and nothing to soften the blow, it appears the mayor found the school board and administrators an easy target.

An “unconscionable” increase in school taxes

Experts place the blame elsewhere. Danielle Farrie, research director of the Education Law Center, and Jeffrey Bennett have rarely seen eye to eye on school funding issues especially when it comes to teachers’ unions. But, when it came to the need for Jersey City to pay up, they were of one mind.

Said Farrie, “Jersey City has been able to prosper under … artificially low tax rates for years, and now that the state is saying that [the] district and the municipality needs to ante up its school taxes like every other district … Jersey City has for decades has been able to coast on these really low tax rates because they were getting lots of funding for schools that was disproportionate to the property values.”

Bennett agrees. “Jersey City is just catching up to the state average. Because the taxes have been so low for so long, the taxes now have to increase by a lot each year.”

The mayor “wants to blame the district, but it’s not the district’s fault,” said Farrie.

“What I find so infuriating about the mayor’s comments,” continues Farrie “is that it is completely divorced from the reality the school district is facing, which is that the state gives them a number of the amount of local revenue that needs to support the school district. They are nowhere near that number.”

Bennett agrees. “It doesn’t make sense to criticize the Jersey City Board of Ed for [the size of its budget] because it operates within parameters set by the state and JCEA [the Jersey City Education Association].”

“Top-heavy” salaries

In his critique, Fulop called administrator salaries “top heavy” and cited high teacher pay, which he claimed was 30 percent above the average. But the reality is more complicated.

Mussab Ali

Former Board of Education President Mussab Ali

Former Board of Education President Mussab Ali, currently a second year student at Harvard Law School, acknowledges that teacher pay had become “top heavy” for those with seniority when he entered contract negotiations in 2019. But the story was quite different lower down the pay scale, he says.

“When we went into our negotiation [with the union], I remember when I looked at teachers’ salaries, we were just not competitive at an entry level. Newer teachers got the bulk of the raises. A new teacher went from $54 to $61 thousand. The elder teachers, which is about fifty percent of the union along with the union leadership, got a $500 increase.”

If Ali was miserly with overpaid senior teachers, the contract he negotiated was still controversial. Then Senate President Steve Sweeney called the contract “a giveaway to the local NJEA.”

On average, Jersey City does pay its teachers relatively well. A 2020 analysis ranked Jersey City 30th of 657 districts statewide, with a median teacher salary of $87,130. That would put Jersey City teachers 23 percent above the state median of $70,815, not the 30 percent the mayor has claimed. But despite this, when it comes to the 94 school districts with 3,500 students or more, Jersey City isn’t even in the top 20 in terms of classroom teacher salaries and benefits.

Says Ali, “I still don’t think we pay our teachers enough for the work they have to do … You look at districts like Milburn, which are resource heavy, easy jobs, no real other issues that they have to deal with with these children: They still make more than Jersey City teachers.”

“Bloat” and “common-sense changes”

If there is a kernel of truth to the mayor’s point about teacher salaries, his claim that administrative salaries are “bloated” appears to be wholly unsupported by data.

According to the most recent Taxpayer Guide to Education Spending published by the New Jersey Department of Education, of the 94 districts with more than 3,500 students, Jersey City is ranked 33rd lowest in total administrative spending. When it comes to just the salaries and benefits of the school administration, Jersey City did even better, at 27th least expensive.

The data jibes with Ali’s assessment. “I don’t think there’s any way you can look at the central office number and say that it’s super bloated. Our business administrator makes $30 or $40 thousand less than the business administrator in Newark.”

Perhaps most misleading for many was the mayor’s claim that Jersey City is spending $32,000 dollars per student per year.

Instead of using the standard figure — the district’s [2021-22] operating budget of $754 million — to arrive at a per pupil cost, the mayor, said Acting Superintendent Norma Fernandez, included “one-time grants to address specific needs such as keeping students safe during the pandemic, testing students and staff for Covid, doing contact tracing, addressing the learning loss or providing specific services for special needs students by 2024” as well as “federal funds for charter and non-public schools that are presented within the Jersey City Public Schools’ budget.”

Jersey City School Superintendent Norma Fernandez

Jersey City School Acting Superintendent Norma Fernandez

In contrast, for the purpose of comparing school districts, the state excludes the one-time revenue sources used by the mayor to inflate the per pupil number. According to the commonly used formula, the real cost to educate a child in Jersey City, says Fernandez, is approximately $22,657, putting it well within what is typical for a district of its size.

Where Jersey City currently stands in relation to other districts will become clearer in the next few months after it releases its “user friendly budget,” which allows an apples-to-apples comparison of New Jersey’s school districts.

In his Jersey Journal interview, the mayor also criticized the Board of Education for not looking at “any common-sense changes that have been recommended to them for years.”

But Ali disagrees vehemently with the notion that there are obvious “common-sense” cost savings to be had. “We go through this extensive process where every single principal goes before the administration and presents exactly what they need for the following year. I challenge people to look at those numbers and tell us where we would make reductions.”

In fact, The Jersey City Schools Annual Budget is surprisingly detailed, allowing people to do as Ali suggests.  The school budget sets out school-level expenditures as small as $250. Peruse the mayor’s municipal budget, in contrast, and figures generally round out to the tens of thousands of dollars with no detail as to how the money is being spent.

You need “good accountability”

The mayor’s claim that the schools are “unaccountable” also rankles Ali. “This argument about accountability, I’ve always hated it … I think we’re more accountable than the City Council is.” Ali points to the fact that three members of the Board are elected every year, giving the the public regular opportunity to weigh in. “The city council gets elected once, and for four years they’re in. For four years [the public] is stuck with the people who are there, and you can’t really make a difference.”

“The amount of people voting in school board elections has gone up and up and up. People see these tax increases and are continually supportive of the team. More people voted for Lorenzo [Richardson] than voted for Steve Fulop for mayor.”

“The difference between a school district and the city is that there are real metrics … you can look at student performance. In a city, there’s no real metric for quality of life. There’s no statewide survey.”

However, in a 2020 report by the Bloustein Local Government Research Center at Rutgers University monitoring the system’s compliance with its plan to return to local control, Jersey City Schools were criticized for “inconsistent submissions of evidence, mis-identified documents, limited reporting, and repeated requests resulting in several rounds of evidence submission.”

But the BOE has shown a willingness to find waste. In 2018, prompted by the looming state aid cuts wrought by S2, the district hired consultants O’Connor Davies, LLP to identify “operational inefficiencies.” The firm came back with a report identifying $116 million in potential savings and unrealized revenues. As a result, Ali says the district changed its health insurance plan and made other adjustments. Fully $53 million of the total, however, was the result of expenses incurred by the district for capital improvements that should have been covered by the state and revenues that the district lost because of tax abatements given to developers.

A “largely failing” district that “hasn’t shown meaningful progress”

On performance, the mayor was equally critical, characterizing Jersey City schools as “a largely failing public school system” that “hasn’t shown meaningful progress.”

This was not his position, however, in 2017, as the state turned control of the district back over to the Board of Ed, which had lost it in 1989 due to poor performance. At the time, the mayor called the move validation of the district’s progress.

Ali pushes back on the mayor’s description of the district today. “It depends on who you compare us to. If you compare us with other Abbott districts like Newark and Paterson, we outperform them by a landslide. The demographics of Jersey City are changing, and as the schools improve there can be other districts that we compare ourselves to. But it’s tricky because we are still an Abbott district.”

Bolstering Ali’s point, the website schooldigger.com ranks Jersey City 372nd out of 590 districts statewide, handily beating Abbott districts like Elizabeth, Paterson and Newark and even edging out non-Abbott districts like Bayonne and North Bergen.

Kearny, next door, has similar demographics to Jersey City, with 54 percent of its students termed economically disadvantaged. According to state data, Jersey City students bested that district as well on English and math.

If there’s a place where Jersey City’s schools are failing, it’s in graduating its students. In 2019, New Jersey had one of the highest rates nationally at 91 percent. That year, Jersey City graduated just 75 percent of its high school seniors, slightly fewer than Newark or Paterson, both of which have higher rates of poverty than Jersey City.

Asked about the low graduation rate, Ali is forthright. “I’ll be honest with you, it wasn’t top of mind because the problem that we were facing was financially how is this district going to survive … this was our problem with strategic planning. How can you strategically plan if you don’t know how many teachers are going be in classrooms? That burden that was placed on the district was a very tough burden.”

Yet not all schools are having a hard time graduating their seniors. In 2019, at Infinity Institute, a magnet school for sixth through twelfth graders in which 66 percent of the students were classified as “economically disadvantaged,” fully 100 percent graduated.

When it comes to the performance of individual schools, the Jersey City Public Schools district is as diverse as the city itself. McNair High School and Infinity rank as the 5th and 11th best high schools, respectively, statewide. Academy 1 Middle School has been designated a national Blue Ribbon school.

But the failures are equally noteworthy. At Snyder High School in 2019, only 60 percent of students graduated, and just 29 percent met or exceeded expectations on statewide English tests. At Lincoln High School, the number of students meeting or exceeding the English standard was a paltry 17 percent, and the graduation rate was 62 percent. Chronic absenteeism, which refers to students who were absent for 10 percent or more of days enrolled, for both schools was 24 percent, nearly double the state average.

But the issues sabotaging student achievement at Snyder and Lincoln are not limited to Jersey City. At Weequahic High School in Newark just 10.9 percent of students met or exceeded expectations on statewide assessments in English in 2019. Absenteeism was a stratospheric 46.9 percent. At Central High School in Newark a slightly better 13.9 percent met the English assessment standard. There, absenteeism was a stunning 55.2 percent, three times the state average.

The discouraging performance of Snyder, Lincoln, Weequahic and Central rightly beg the question as to whether educators know how to overcome the impediments to learning wrought by poverty. A study in 2008 found that funding under Abbott brought about “a significant positive impact on 11th grade achievement.” However, a 2012 study found that years of increased funding had had a negligible effect on improving outcomes for the poorest districts. The mayor’s critique seemed to make no allowance for the difficult task facing teachers and administrators.

***

In the end, Jersey City looks a lot like other school systems with large concentrations of impoverished children. It is expensive to operate and in many ways an underperformer academically when compared with wealthier suburban systems.

Given this reality, it easy to see why it would be smart politics and a fair question for the mayor to ask, “What are we getting for that money?”

But in going one step further and lambasting the system, the Board of Ed and administrators, the mayor, it would appear, is on shaky ground. The per pupil cost is not $32,000 per year, and the BOE is no less accountable than the mayor or the city council.

Despite massive state aid, the system, which was underfunded for years by the state’s own criterion and tasked with serving some of New Jersey’s neediest children, has done alright. It has shown that it can fund and staff excellent schools like McNair, Infinity and Academy 1. But like districts in other large New Jersey cities, it has struggled to properly educate kids suffering the effects of poverty.

Facing higher costs on everything from food to trash pickup, the mayor has found a sympathetic audience in Jersey City’s property owners. But though the mayor left it out of his comments, even with this year’s tax increase, Jersey City residents will continue to pay property taxes at a much lower rate than most school districts throughout the state. But it’s probably not a winning strategy for a politician to talk about it.

Updated 5/1/22 10:40 a.m.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jersey City Board of Education
Andrea Crowley-Hughes

Board of Ed Grapples with Proposal for Young Women’s Academy

April 30, 2022/in Education, header, Latest News, News, Trending Now /by Andrea Crowley-Hughes

Plans to use the third floor of P.S. 39 for a young women’s leadership academy this fall drew concerned parents and students to Thursday’s Jersey City Board of Education meeting. Although Acting superintendent Norma Fernandez says no one will be displaced from the building, members of the school community worry about being forced to compete with the new program for resources that are already lacking.

At P.S. 39 on Plainfield Avenue, also known as Dr. Charles P. DeFuccio School, moving to the third floor is a “rite of passage,” Jamillah Moore, an alumnus of the school and parent of a fourth grader there, said at the meeting. “At that moment you become upperclassmen, and you take pride in that. Taking that away from any student: absolutely not fair.”

Moore had numerous other concerns. She said the school needs a permanent principal and repairs to “fix a building that has been falling apart for years” before any new program should be moved there.

She said having the school’s existing teachers take on an entirely new curriculum would stretch the educators too thin. And she said parents had been kept in the dark about the planned changes.

“Dr. Fernandez stated at the caucus meeting on Monday there was misinformation given. In fact, there was no information given to the parents of P.S. 39 at all until that meeting,” said Moore.

Several young students at DeFuccio also shared concerns that the school’s numerous autistic students might be relocated. These students have already adapted to their surroundings and feel safe there, their peers said.

The school features an Autistic Program that recently marked Autism Awareness Month with a series of activities, according to posts on the school’s Facebook page.

In response to the various comments, Acting Superintendent Norma Fernandez said Thursday, “There is no action to move anyone out at P.S. 39. We will keep the complete program from preschool to eighth grade, including the self-contained classes and inclusion students with disabilities.”

The acting superintendent said students will need to apply to the new program.

“This is purely by application. It is not on achievement, and it is not about just filling it up with girls,” Fernandez said. “It is about students who are interested, and we’ll have the next year of planning for the process.

Fernandez’s office did not return a request for comment from the Jersey City Times sent on April 11, when a parent’s meeting was scheduled at the school. A follow-up request on April 15 was also unanswered.

The public school district’s budget, which the Jersey City Board of Education approved in March, lists “Opening a Young Women Leadership Academy at P.S. #39 as a school within a school and additional staffing needs with two classes per grade level from 6th–12th grade” as a “program investment.”

Declining enrollment at P.S. 39 has been cited by the superintendent as a reason for looking to place the program there.

“The question of the the Young Women’s Leadership School at P.S. 39 is still under review,” Fernandez said at Monday’s caucus meeting. “The school’s enrollment has gone down, as I shared with the board of trustees significantly over the years.”

According to a teacher who spoke at that meeting, however, enrollment could be increased in other ways.

“It also needs to be noted that we have approximately 60 students from an ESL middle school program that we send to other buildings to be educated because we can’t accommodate them at 39 because we don’t offer that program. If we brought that program to P.S. 39, we would have about 60 slots already taken,” the teacher said.

“Also, if we hire a science and social studies teacher for the middle school, we could probably become competitive again with the students in that area. Maybe we could bring back those children from charter and private schools.”

A petition started by P.S. 39 parent Ashley Wilson had 18 signatures as of Friday.

“There are other schools who have much more room that could house this all-girls school,” the petition states.

Jersey City City Hall
Ron Leir

Council Separates Forestry and Park Maintenance; Gandulla Appointed Finance Director

April 29, 2022/in header, Latest News, Narrate, News, Trending Now /by Ron Leir

As simple as snapping a tree branch in two, Jersey City’s lawmakers have separated its Parks and Forestry Division into separate administrative spheres.

As prescribed by an amended ordinance adopted Wednesday night by the city’s governing body, Forestry will remain a unit within the Department of Public Works while Park Maintenance is moving under the newly-formed Department of Recreation & Youth Development although both perform similar, overlapping functions.

Additionally, as prescribed by the revised structuring, Forestry is to “coordinate with the city Division of Sustainability” as its staff takes responsibility for “maintenance of street trees and trees within city parks,” as well as “ensuring compliance with city forestry standards.” Park Maintenance employees, meanwhile, are tasked with “trimming trees on sidewalks and planting trees within public easement areas,” along with approving uses of city parks for private gatherings.”

Forestry will not get elevated to the level of a department with its own budget and staff as the city’s Shade Tree Committee recently advised the council and the mayor.

Only Ward F Councilman Frank Gilmore opposed the shift, along with a host of other bureaucratic changes to the structure of city government devised by the city administration. Gilmore wondered how a reshuffling of city employees’ work responsibilities on paper would translate to improved quality of service for residents.

Carmen Gandulla and Family

Carmen Gandulla and Family

“I vote ‘no’,” Gilmore said. “You’re still going to have the same people working in those jobs.”

Two colleagues, Ward A Councilmember Denise Ridley and Ward E Councilman James Solomon voiced reservations about the restructuring but in the end voted in favor after getting assurances from city Business Administrator John Metro that no current employees’ jobs are being threatened and that, in fact, their working conditions may even improve when city department heads present their workforce and equipment needs at upcoming city budget deliberations.

Still, Santo Della Monica, president of Jersey City Public Employees Local 245 representing blue-collar workers (including those in park maintenance), urged the council to delay acting on the measure because union members have no way of knowing how it will impact them. Moreover, he said, the city is going to end up “spending thousands of dollars for new directors while we’re 100 traffic guards short.” Better to table the ordinance for now and “call in the unions to make this (proposed restructuring) run efficiently,” he added, drawing cheers and applause from a crowd of city workers, many of them crossing guards, seated in the chambers.

Irked by the outburst, Council President Joyce Watterman said: “This ordinance has nothing to do with you… I didn’t know you were having a problem.  You can make an appointment with me to discuss it…. I understand you need manpower (but) I don’t want you to come up here and insult this council. Schedule a meeting. I welcome a new structure of departments.”

Girl Scout Julie Peters and Father

Girl Scout Julie Peters and Father

In other business, the council ratified the permanent appointment of Carmen Gandulla as city director of finance. Gandulla, who was initially hired to run the city’s Community Development Department in 2014, has been acting finance director since February 2021. A Rider University alumna, Gandulla worked in the banking and finance field before shifting to municipal work. She has chaired the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund Review Committee and, for Hudson County, she has served on the Alliance to End Homelessness and Homelessness Trust Fund executive boards.

“We’re shattering a glass ceiling of sorts tonight,” said Ward D Councilman Yousef Saleh, “since this is the first Hispanic woman, Puerto Rican, to occupy this position in Jersey City.”

Council members delivered a series of accolades to the new department head.  “You’ve knocked it out of the park from day one,” Councilman-at-large Daniel Rivera said. “Continue to do well.” After a round of applause from the audience, Rivera added: “That shows the Latino community has your back.”

Ward B Councilmember Mira Prinz-Arey, Councilwoman-at-large Amy DeGise, and Gilmore thanked Gandulla for aiding their understanding of the city’s fiscal issues, and Watterman commended her for being an “advocate for so many people, for the women in City Hall. I’m so proud of you, girl. In the women’s community, this is a home run.”

On another positive note, the city’s new Division of Sustainability (also created by the new ordinance), which is working to protect and expand the city’s green canopy, got a boost from Julie Peters, a member of Heights-based Girl Scout Troop 1194, who gifted the city 20 new trees as part of her work project toward a Gold Award, the highest citation awarded a high school-age girl scout. Valued at $10,000, the trees will be planted in Leonard Gordon Park to serve as a memorial to those who lost their lives to Covid-19, including her uncle David Peters and former Heights Councilman Michael Yun.

"Departures" Guillermo Bublik
Tris McCall

Jersey City Arts: A May Preview

April 29, 2022/in Columns, Eye Level, header, Narrate /by Tris McCall

Hi, my name is Tris. For many years, I wrote about popular music in regional publications. Lately, I’ve changed my focus to visual art. I didn’t do this because I’ve lost interest in pop; I still listen as much as I ever have. I did it because there’s an astounding amount of talent in and around the town where I live, and too much of that talent is undersung. Jersey City is well-known for its Mural Arts Project, and many of the artists who’ve redecorated outdoor surfaces are worthy of the attention they’ve gotten: Clarence Rich, DISTORT, RU8ICON1, 4SAKN, and others. But Jersey City is also distinguished by the number of outstanding artists working at a much humbler scale. Their work doesn’t shout; instead, it comes on with a whisper.  It’s not always easy to notice or appreciate what they’re doing. That’s what I’m here for.

This May, many of the artists who give Jersey City its peculiar character will have work on view in our local galleries. MANA Contemporary, the biggest arts institution in the city, will make good on its promise to return from its renovation with ambitious spring shows.  I’m going to get to all of it, and I’ll have a review for each of these exhibitions soon.  Today, though, I’d simply like to make you aware of the embarrassment of options you’re about to have. If you love the visual arts, you’re definitely in the right town.

The return of the Power Pop Trio at Firmament

Kayt Hester is probably one of the best-known visual artists in Jersey City, and for very good reason: using little more than black tape stuck on a white background, she summons scenes of great emotional intensity and narrative detail. Making magic with humble materials is a local tradition, and Hester’s black-on-white pieces are aesthetically aligned with Norm Kirby’s fabric designs, threaded through the apertures in chain-link fences. The pop art flavor of her work also makes it a natural match for the glowing candy-counter hallucinations of Robert Piersanti, and the wonderfully stark illustrations of wise-cracking Bayonne artist Joe Waks, whose pieces resemble old advertisements and guidebook illustrations stripped to their barest — and most explosive — essentials. Piersanti, Hester, and Waks have presented together before at PRIME and the lost, lamented LITM, but never in a room as spacious as the Firmament Gallery (329 Warren St.) at the Nimbus Arts Center.  There, these catchy, immediate power pop compositions ought to have plenty of room to resonate. This show is open right now.

An eco-themed exhibit at Deep Space

The city’s cornerstone independent gallery follows up the excellent all-female “Mothership Connection” with another group exhibition that celebrates femininity. But it’s Mother Earth who the artists get protective about in “Material World,” a show that, pointedly, launched on Earth Day. This new Deep Space probe brings back many of the artists who flew on the Mothership, including Rebecca Johnson, whose lovely lime-washed paintings draw connections between female vulnerability and ecological frailty, Johnson’s sibling SarahGrace, tufter of bright felt, the visual storyteller Delilah Ray Miske, fabricator of unnerving interiors, and the inspired fantasist Shamona Stokes, a reliable opener of portals into a twee, adorable, subtly terrifying parallel universe. Expect renderings of flowers and plants — some achingly beautiful, some weird and otherworldly. The show’ll be up until June 10. Hopefully the planet will be around that long.

A coming-out party for Elevator 

Speaking of Shamona Stokes, she’s the co-curator of “Fresh Air,” a group show mounted in the first floor lobby of the Hamilton Square Condominiums (232 Pavonia Ave.) Stokes is working with Kristin DeAngelis, curator of “Coming Into Focus,” a candid look at the city during the pandemic era from painters Deb Sinha and Ben Fine.  DeAngelis exhibited “Focus” in the wainscoted atrium of the Majestic Condominiums on Montgomery Street, a property renovated

Joe Minter's "We Lost Our Spears"

Joe Minter’s “We Lost Our Spears”

and run by Silverman Buildings.  Hamilton Square is also a Silverman space — as is Elevator (135 Erie St.), a new hive of art studios and small-scale creative headquarters located a little farther south in Hamilton Square Park. The Elevator artists opened their studios during the most recent Jersey City Fridays event, and what they’re cooking up in there is pretty fascinating. “Fresh Air” brings the Elevator artists across the pedestrian extension of Pavonia Ave. for their first public foray. I’m sure they’re determined to make a good first impression. The show launches on May 4, and it’ll be accessible to the public whenever the front doors to Hamilton Square Condominiums are open.

MANA Contemporary springs back into action

There’s a lot on the line for MANA Contemporary (888 Newark Ave.), too. After a tumultuous 2021 that included the publicized arrest of former executive director Eugene Lemay, the arts complex made a very shrewd move: it elevated Kele McComsey, curator of the incendiary climate change exhibition “Implied Scale,” to the position of Director. McComsey is charging out of the gates with a spring show that’s every bit as politically engaged as his last one. “Land of the Free” is a three-part project that takes migration in North America as its subject. Joe Minter is an Alabama resident, but “We Lost Our Spears,” a series of nine sculptures assembled from discarded materials, is aesthetically aligned with Jersey City artists’ long tradition of making wonders out of waste. Minter’s “Spears” opens on May 12, alongside the start of “Borderlands,” an improvisational painting that’ll be completed over a two-week period by Hugo Crosthwaite. (“En Memoria” by Vincent Valdez, the third piece of the puzzle, doesn’t open until June 11.) Meanwhile, the Monira Foundation, which has been very active at MANA all winter, is launching a new show of their own on May 14: “Anonymous Architectures,” a series of photographs of empty New York City bars and shuttered businesses.

ART150 braces for Impact

The other nest of studios and arts activity is 150 Bay Street — although some of the brightest-feathered birds have recently flown the coop after a rent increase. Michelle Vitale, better known as the audacious fiber artist Woolpunk, has packed up her yarn and left, and it’s hard to imagine the second-floor

"In Transit" Guillermo Bublik

“In Transit” Guillermo Bublik

space without her presence. Those artists remaining will mount the latest in a series of group shows: “Impact!” opens on May 6 and runs at ART150 all month. Expect an emotional baggage cart (a fuzzed-up, wildly decorated shopping trolley) from the playful Theda Sandiford, experimental photographs from Susan Evans Grove, thickets of color and shape and expressions of hard-won optimism from J. Heloise, the mesmerizing geometry of Mindy Gluck, the muted cityscapes of Deb Sinha, the ambitious, immersive canvases of Guillermo Bublik, the precarious concrete towers of Josh Urso, and other work from many other talented locals affiliated with the advocacy group ProArts.  Like all creative communities, theirs is a fragile one. We should celebrate it while we can.

Curator’s Choice at Casa Colombo

Vitale may no longer have studio space at 150 Bay Street, but a few blocks to the west, she’s in charge. She’s one of eight curators (Maria Kosdan of PRIME Gallery is another) who’ve personally selected pieces for a new group show – the second at Casa Colombo since its reopening to the public. Guillermo Bublik has work in “Curator’s Choice,” too, as does Cheryl Gross, ringmaster of a menagerie of fantastic animal drawings, and Andrea McKenna, investigator of the line between material reality and the ghost world, and an accomplished curator herself. The show also marks a return to Jersey City for Flemington, NJ artist Valerie Huhn, whose show at Outlander Gallery was one of the highlights of 2021. Huhn has developed a personal style that incorporates ink-colored fingerprints on huge paper tapestries and mosaic tiles, and pins driven into books and ordinary household objects.  Her body of work speaks powerfully of humanity, surveillance, crime, trauma, and the elusive, shifting quality of identity, and it’s an example of how much clarity and focus an artist who has found her voice can attain.

trismccall@gmail.com

 

Tree maintenance
Elizabeth Morrill

Shade Tree Committee Caught off Guard by Tonight’s Forestry Vote

April 27, 2022/in header, Latest News, Narrate, News, Trending Now /by Elizabeth Morrill

In a surprise move, the City Council is poised to vote tonight on an ordinance reorganizing the city’s Forestry Department, undermining recommendations made by The Jersey City Shade Tree Committee.

According to members of the committee, who wish to remain anonymous, the timing of the vote on the ordinance, which will disperse responsibility for maintaining the city’s trees among several departments, was unexpected.

According to the members, Ward B Councilwoman Mira Prinz-Arey, who chairs the Shade Tree Committee, did not notify its members that the vote would be taking place.

Currently, a Division of Parks and Forestry falls under the Department of Public Works. Should the ordinance be approved, “Park Maintenance” and “Forestry” will become separate divisions. The former will reside in a newly created Department of Recreation and Youth Development; the latter will remain under the auspices of the Department of Public Works.

The Shade Tree Committee in its “formal recommendations” to the council and mayor implied that Forestry should not remain under DPW because in its assessment, the latter “is understaffed … and as a result [the] tree canopy in Jersey City is not properly managed.”

A member of the Shade Tree Committee said the issue was transparency. The point of the letter, the person said, was to encourage transparency and to assign the responsibility for all tree planting and maintenance to a single department with its own budget and decision making authority.

Ward B Councilwoman Mira Prinz-Arey, who chairs the Shade Tree Committee and penned the letter on the group’s behalf, had asked the administration to “recruit and hire both the Senior and Junior Forester positions as soon as possible,” within the new forestry department.

The proposed ordinance does call for the city to hire a forester, but it stipulates that such a person will work in a new Division of Sustainability (formerly a mere “office”) and report to the director of that division. (The “Division of Sustainability” will itself be located within a newly formed “Department of Infrastructure,” should the ordinance pass.)

The city’s former forester, Ed O’Malley, who resigned in the fall of 2021, also reported to Sustainability. O’Malley was the second forester to have resigned since 2018. O’Malley’s replacement, a consultant who served as acting forester and who was ultimately offered O’Malley’s job earlier this year, declined the offer and no longer works for Jersey City.

As a result of the changes, responsibility for maintaining the city’s trees will also change and seemingly be split. It is unclear which division —and therefore which employees — will have ultimate control over the tree canopy with all the attending credit for successes (and blame for failures) that such control brings with it.

Currently, tree planting and maintenance are the responsibility of the Division of Parks and Forestry. According to the ordinance, the new Division of Forestry will be “responsible for the regular maintenance of street trees and trees within city parks” while the Division of Park Maintenance “shall be responsible for [the] trimming of trees on sidewalks” and for the “planting of trees within public easement areas.”

At the City Council caucus meeting Monday night, Councilman James Solomon expressed concern that this overlap would be a problem. City Business Administrator John Metro replied that the Division of Forestry “will be solely in charge of maintaining city trees and infrastructure of the city’s tree canopy, with the foresters being an important part of that.”

Neither Metro nor Prinz-Arey responded to emails requesting comment on the matter.

 

 

 

Tesla
Aaron Morrill

Totaled Tesla Used in Scheme to Defraud Uber and Lyft

April 27, 2022/in header, Latest News, Narrate, News, Trending Now /by Aaron Morrill

Three Jersey City men have been arrested in connection with a scheme to defraud Uber and Lyft.

According to Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez, Muhammad Khan, age 21, Haq Khan, age 24, and Yasir Raza, age 34, all of Jersey City, were arrested after attempting to defraud the ridesharing companies.

The three allegedly attempted to collect insurance proceeds for fictitious accidents they claimed to have had in a 2018 Tesla. However, the Tesla had previously been in an accident and declared a total loss by an insurance company.

Each of the defendants was charged with one count of Insurance Fraud and one count of Conspiracy to Commit Insurance Fraud.

They were arrested, without incident, by members of the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office Insurance Fraud Unit.

They have been released on summonses pending their first court appearance, which is currently scheduled for May 5, 2022.

The investigation is ongoing. The prosecutor’s office has asked anyone with additional information is asked to call the Insurance Fraud Unit at 201-795-6400 ext. 6634.

 

Photo by Charlie Deets on Unsplash

Tree cutting
Ron Leir

Council to Vote Tomorrow on Creation of Dedicated Division of Forestry

April 26, 2022/in header, Latest News, Narrate, News, Trending Now /by Ron Leir

Acknowledging problems the city has had for years properly managing its trees, the City Council plans to vote tomorrow on the creation of a dedicated Division of Forestry.

According to a proposed ordinance to amend Chapter 3 (Administration of Government) of the city’s municipal code, the new division would sit in the Department of Public Works and be “responsible for the regular maintenance of street trees and trees within city parks as well as ensuring compliance with city forestry standards.”

Business Administrator John Metro acknowledged that in recent years, “there has been a lot of frustration with management of tree inventory, tree planting. We’ve had recycled foresters run year in, year out. Parks and forestry together kind of created a grey area of what success would look like.”

Ward D Councilman Yousef Saleh seemed to agree, saying that the city needs to do a better job maintaining Leonard Gordon Park, particularly along the Liberty Avenue side where weeds proliferate.

Said Metro, now with Forestry in charge, “we’ll take a look at how many trees we’re planning, how many maintained: the health of the tree canopy.”

Asked if the new Division of Forestry would have adequate resources, Metro said the city was looking to expand and maybe draw from the city’s capital budget for “things like chippers,” which are machines that reduce trees to wood chips.

Afterwards, when asked to expand on his greenery-related concerns, Solomon said: “The proof is in the pudding. I would rate Forestry’s performance as poor. Two qualified foresters left, there’s a two-year wait for residents to get a tree trimmed, our tree canopy has declined. We want to ensure there’s sufficient planting of new trees and maintenance of our existing tree canopy as part of the city’s infrastructure.”

In 2020, Jersey City’s tree canopy was estimated to be approximately 10.9%, far below the 20% recommended by the conservation organization American Forests.

The council also took up matters pertaining to recreation, personnel, and policing. Councilman-at-large Daniel Rivera urged Metro to “make sure there’s enough equipment” for summer recreation programs. “We’ve got 8,000 to 10,000 kids playing baseball and softball around the city,” he said.

At Wednesday night’s meeting, the council is expected to permanently appoint Carmen M. Gandulla as city finance director and to table for further tweaking an ordinance that would require only a one-year city residency for veterans seeking jobs as police or fire officers.

Finally, W. Gregg Kierce, director of the Office of Emergency Management spoke on a proposed $19,200 contract with Dennis McSweeny Dog Train LLC, of Absecon for K-9 training and evaluation.

Kierce said it typically costs $6,500 to train a K-9 and its police handler — an expense reimbursed by the federal Department of Homeland Security. Dogs help police detect bombs and narcotics, he said. A K-9 normally serves for nine years, he said.  If its handler’s job or its home circumstances change, then the K-9 is “retired” because “it’s hard to retrain,” given the special bond between dog and handler, Kierce said.  “We have had up to 15 dogs” but now, there are five or six remaining, Kierce said.

Razor wire prison fence
Aaron Morrill

Man Pleads Guilty to 2020 Bergen-Lafayette Homicide

April 26, 2022/in Bergen Lafayette, header, Latest News, Narrate, News, Trending Now /by Aaron Morrill

A Jersey City man pleaded guilty yesterday to charges arising from a 2020 shooting death in Bergen-Lafayette.

According to Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez, Kenyowa Pinkney, 29, pleaded guilty to one count of Aggravated Manslaughter in connection with the 2020 shooting death of Javone Smith, 23, also of Jersey City. 

Smith was gunned down on April 6, 2020, just before 6:30 p.m. near Martin Luther King Drive and Myrtle Avenue.  When members of the Jersey City Police Department responded to a report of shots fired they found Smith with multiple gunshot wounds to the upper body.

Smith was taken to Jersey City Medical Center where he was pronounced dead at approximately a short time later.

On April 14, 2020, members of the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office Homicide Unit arrested Pinkney in connection with Smith’s death.

Kenyowa Pinkney. Photo courtesy of the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office.

Kenyowa Pinkney. Photo courtesy of the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office.

The State will be recommending a sentence of 25 years in New Jersey State Prison subject to the No Early Release Act and Graves Act.

Sentencing is scheduled before Judge Vincent J. Militello on June 17, 2022.

The State is represented in this case by Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Adam Salzer.

Jersey City Police Car
Andrea Crowley-Hughes

Causes and Prevention of Youth Violence is Focus of Virtual Conference

April 25, 2022/in Bergen Lafayette, Greenville, header, Latest News, Narrate, News, Trending Now /by Andrea Crowley-Hughes

New Jersey City University’s seventh annual Save The Youth event earlier this month gave community members a wide-ranging look at the systems that can keep Jersey City’s young people in cycles of violence and at efforts being made to break those cycles.

The virtual event, held on April 12, was held in the wake of the fatal February shooting of 15–year-old Devin Bryant. Recently, a 17-year-old was arrested in connection with Bryant’s death     .

“Gun violence is a public health crisis,” said Heide Grant, a NJCU student who brought up the shooting and state legislation to expand background checks for gun buyers in her presentation at the event. “We need leaders with the courage to strive for us to stand up for the 200-plus Americans shot and injured every day,” she said.

Heide and other students at NJCU specializing in public health education gave short interactive talks about the mental and medical health facilities, the criminal justice system, and the social services agencies that many young people surrounded by violence interact with. The final group of the day discussed advocacy and policy efforts to improve outcomes for youth.

NJCU student Samantha Herrera shared research by Kaiser Permanente and the CDC showing that adverse childhood experiences (known as ACEs) such as abuse, neglect, and witnessing or being subject to physical violence, can lead to negative health outcomes harm one’s health.

“Juvenile offenders are four times more likely to report experiencing four or more ACEs than most college educated students,” Herrera said.

“Studies show that there’s a direct link between childhood bullying and future incarceration, and that’s due to a person dealing with unresolved anger issues or mental health issues,” confirmed NJCU student Arlene Albert during her presentation. “They’re going to deal with more abuse being behind bars…so school programs and resources that deal with the negative impacts of bullying make a big difference.”

Devin Bryant

Devin Bryant, gunned down on February 12

Steven Campos, the community resource director for Hudson Partnership CMO, emceed Save the Youth and spoke of his passion for helping the children who come to the organization with a variety of emotional challenges.

“We work with a really focused population of children that have experienced traumatic experiences in their lives that have put them at higher risk due to gun violence,” said Campos. “Throughout the years, you see these trends and you become very loud and vocal about changing systemic policies and programs so that we can have better outcomes for these kids.”

Another nonprofit speaker was Pamela Johnson, executive director of the Jersey City Anti-Violence Coalition Movement. She explained:

“People think that in order to be a victim, someone has to do something to you. But we would argue that people living in highly concentrated violent neighborhoods are all victims of violence.”

According to Johnson, the movement just received a state grant for a career program matching at-risk teens with local unions to teach carpentry, electrical, plumbing, and HVAC services. “We can place them in not only jobs, but careers that will allow them to make anywhere from $60,000 to $100,000 a year and take them to a very different place in their lives because now they’re able to provide for their families,” she said.

Hospital staff and elected officials also offered perspectives on their day-to-day efforts to respond to and prevent youth violence.

LaShawn Overton, a trauma patient “navigator” with Jersey City Medical Center’s Project Hudson, spoke of “going to bedside for gunshot victims, stabbed victims, physical assault victims, Sometimes domestic violence victim and helping them today to get back to 100 percent recovery.”

Ward F Councilman Frank Gilmore, who attended, said:

“One thing I want the audience to really understand is the mental health component in the Black and brown community because for various reasons, mental health has a negative undertone,” Gilmore said in an interview during a student presentation. “It’s something that we don’t like to talk about in our community. It’s something that when we do talk about is stigmatized. I just want the audience to know because odds are they will be serving this demographic in some form of social service.”

According to Campos, Gilmore and state assemblywoman Angela McKnight, who also attended, have helped organize Save the Youth since the event’s inception seven years ago.

More local resources for youth dealing with violence and their families include:

Trauma Recovery Center at Robert Wood Johnson Jersey City Medical Center

Provides free services available in-person or remotely to those who have experienced of a range of traumas including sexual assault, domestic violence, gun violence, and other forms of community violence. The center also serves family members of homicide victims.

Contact: 201-839-2644; Deborah.Almonte@rwjbh.org

Guazabara Insights, LLC

Provides mentoring and educational services on community reintegration, social consciousness, and more.

Contact: CEO Dennis Febo, 917-727-3326

Angela Cares Inc.

Provides projects and programs designed to assist clients facing emergency situations, service activities, through our case management, workshops, volunteer activities, agency referrals, and client follow-up.

Contact: CEO Angela Mcknight, 201-685-7273

Family Partners of Hudson County

Provides parent support services, support groups, advocacy, and groups for youth with behavioral and mental health needs.

Contact: 201-915-5140

 

Kim Myles Jersey City
Melissa Surach

Heights Woman Revamps Cannabis Dispensaries on Discovery Plus

April 22, 2022/in Business, header, Heights, Latest News, Narrate, News, Trending Now /by Melissa Surach

Kim Myles, the creator, producer and star of High Design on Discovery Plus, is one of many people who yesterday celebrated the first day of legal cannabis sales in New Jersey.

Myles won HGTV’s Design Star 2 award in 2007, and her show Myles of Style ran for three seasons on HGTV. She won an Emmy for the Oprah Winfrey Network’s Home Made Simple.

On High Design, which premiered April 13, Myles makes over struggling mom and pop cannabis dispensaries. “I’m going to take what I know—my expertise as a designer, worker in cannabis world, and consumer—to lift up mom and pop shops,” she said.

“I’ve been a lover of cannabis since I was 20, so…many years.” She laughed, “It was striking to me that I was in dispensaries and spending a lot of money and the retail experience did not match the receipt. Looking around waiting rooms, there was a diverse range of people,  diverse range of ethnicities, ages, and needs. Why are all of us standing around in hovels like we’re doing something wrong?” she wondered.

Myles decided to rectify the situation. She spent 2017 working her way up from “budtender” to assistant general manager of a major dispensary in Beverly Hills in order to understand the retail cannabis business (or “cannabusiness as it’s called) and learn the moving parts of the industry and the legal issues involved. “It’s like normal retail jacked up 100 percent as far as complications,” she said.

And even though she had worked for a larger outfit, Myles said she had always supported smaller dispensaries.

“We wanted to cast a diversity of stories, different stories in different states, different backgrounds, different women, different people of color. I wanted to dip in as much as I could in six episodes: why so many people are getting into [the cannabis business] and what the hurdles are.”

For Myles, the process is not just artistic in nature but emotional. On the first episode, she cried after the reveal ”because this is why, this is the point: real people, real entrepreneurs in the green rush of this amazing industry, and these small mom and pops fighting to hold on and compete in this onslaught of huge corporate money,” she explained.

The biggest challenge Myles faced in the show was navigating each state’s laws. “For example, you can’t come in through one door because there is a live feed to the state. If someone from my team doesn’t have an ID, that’s a $100 thousand fine to the owner,” she said. Or another example: Some states allow TV crews to touch cannabis while dressing the sets; other states don’t.

Myles moved to Jersey City in 2018 “because Jersey City is the bomb.” Originally from Queens, she moved to LA for work, and said that when it came time to come back to the East Coast, she wanted to live in Harlem but that “when it came time to buy, I said, ‘Hi Jersey City!’—particularly the Heights. I love the vibrant, artistic, diversity of people, the old buildings, the super old gross trees…the best restaurants. it’s alive, and it feels really good. It’s a good vibe and good community.”

Myles looks forward to visiting local spots such as Leaf Joint once they are an approved dispensary. “I never thought when I was buying my weed from a dude in the apartment downstairs that one day I would be able to see this, to be able to buy my medicine,” she reflected.

Page 1 of 41234

News Briefs

The Hudson County Board of Commissioners has received a $900,000 grant from the New Jersey Division of Travel and Tourism Destination Marketing Organization to provide financial assistance for Tourism and Marketing to promote Hudson County and New Jersey State as a premier travel destination.

Sustainable Jersey City is seeking volunteers for its 2022 Trees and Trash Action Campaign to help Jersey City’s mature trees thrive and is seeking volunteers. Each “environmental steward” who participates will add materials to the soil surrounding street trees while also removing trash and other debris harmful to the trees. In partnership with Clean Green Jersey, SJC will conduct the campaign at three different locations over the course of three Saturday mornings in May. Training and supplies will be provided

Riverview Jazz is announcing a Covid-Relief grant for Hudson County jazz musicians, aimed at professional musicians who have been financially affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The grant will award ten recipients with a check of $2,000. Applicants must be 18 years of age or older, reside in Hudson County, and be a performing jazz musician. The deadline for applications is May 16,2022 and the winners will be announced at the Jersey City Jazz Festival June 4-5, 2022. For more information or to apply for the grant, please visit: https://riverviewjazz.org/grants

 

CONTACT US

    ADS/INFO

    For information on advertising opportunities, please contact - ads@jcitytimes.com

    For information on writing opportunities, please contact - info@jcitytimes.com

    Download our media kit here

    ABOUT US

    About Jersey City Times

    Contact Jersey City Times

    Social

    Archives

    • May 2022
    • April 2022
    • March 2022
    • February 2022
    • January 2022
    • December 2021
    • November 2021
    • October 2021
    • September 2021
    • August 2021
    • July 2021
    • June 2021
    Copyright © 2020 JCityTimes.com. All Rights Reserved - powered by Enfold WordPress Theme
    Scroll to top