The Place for Jersey City News
Liberty State Park
Dana DiFilippo

Lawmakers Pass Liberty State Park Redevelopment Bill

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Republished courtesy of  New Jersey Monitor

New Jersey lawmakers on Wednesday passed a controversial bill that would open Liberty State Park up to commercialization, to the chagrin of critics who unsuccessfully called for a ban on large-scale development and special protections for an environmentally fragile peninsula there.

The legislation initially called for a $250 million allocation to create a 17-member task force that would recommend a master plan for the 1,200-acre park. But after park preservationists fought the plan, lawmakers scaled planned spending back to $50 million, which would come from federal COVID-19 relief funding, and expanded the task force to include six additional members of the public.

Legislators made a few concessions after critics packed several public hearings since Sen. Brian Stack (D-Hudson) introduced the fast-tracked bill earlier this month.

They removed language that would have required state officials to devise how the park could generate revenue, agreed no casino should be built there, and changed the task force’s mission to advise the state Department of Environmental Protection on how to improve the park, rather than create a master plan.

But lawmakers ignored three of critics’ biggest priorities — banning large-scale development, limiting new development to 50 acres instead of the 100 proposed, and permanently protecting an area known as Caven Point where migratory birds nest.

In the Assembly Wednesday, legislators again ignored a plea from Assemblywoman Vicky Flynn (R-Monmouth) to protect Caven Point and passed the bill 56-20, largely along party lines, with Assemblyman Christopher DePhillips (R-Bergen) abstaining.

Assemblyman Raj Mukherji of Hudson County was one of just two Assembly Democrats to vote against the bill. (Assemblyman John McKeon, an Essex County Democrat, also voted no.)

In the Assembly’s budget committee Monday, Mukherji warned that he “will sue DEP, so will others” if Caven Point is used for any private development. There, too, he voted against the bill and urged his colleagues to support a stalled bill he sponsored that would protect the park against privatization.

“I suffer from paranoia informed by decades of struggles by the community against attempts to privatize and commercialize this open space treasure or otherwise wrest control of park planning from the public,” Mukherji said.

While legislators have steadfastly refused to amend the bill to protect Caven Point, Stack said earlier this week he would introduce a separate bill to do so. That bill and an Assembly version appeared online Wednesday, with no details.

That’s something Sam Pesin welcomes. Pesin heads the Friends of Liberty State Park and has fought privatization efforts at the park since it opened 46 years ago.

“That’s the new war for Liberty State Park, starting right now,” he told the New Jersey Monitor Wednesday.

While parts of the park, which sits on the New York Harbor in Jersey City, include commercial ventures like a marina and restaurants, park advocates like Pesin have fought past plans to add a hotel, a water park, a second marina, and more.

Pesin and other preservationists have complained that Paul Fireman, a politically connected billionaire who has tried to expand his neighboring golf course into the park, is behind the legislation.

A Fireman-backed group called the People’s Park Foundation drafted a plan for park improvements that includes a 150,000-square-foot community center, a 5,000-seat amphitheater/stadium for tournaments, and a 2,500-seat track and field facility. Fireman’s attorney has attended public meetings on the bill, but Fireman hasn’t publicly shared any expansion or development plans he might have.

Environmentalists have said they would lobby Gov. Phil Murphy to veto any bill to privatize Liberty State Park. But Pesin said he won’t bother.

“Calling the governor is totally hopeless, because first of all, it’s hard to get through on his phone number, but also the governor is totally brainwashed by his friend Paul Fireman,” Pesin said. “The governor should listen to the people after 46 years of opposition to commercialization in Liberty State Park.”

The legislation requires the task force to hold at least three public meetings within nine months of the bill becoming law.

In the Senate, the bill passed without discussion by a vote of 36 to 1, with Sen. Nia Gill (D-Essex) the lone opponent.

Liberty State Park is the state’s park busiest, drawing 5 million visitors a year.

 

New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Follow New Jersey Monitor on Facebook and Twitter.

Featured photo by Jayne Freeman

Clarence Thomas
Guest Columnist

Open Letter to Clarence Thomas from One African-American to Another

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By Deborah McWilliams

Justice Thomas, what gives you the right to take away someone’s rights?

For over 250 years, our ancestors were considered property, savages, and sub-human with no rights whatsoever. After gaining freedom over 150 years ago, our ancestors had to contend with — and still are contending with — segregation and Jim Crow Laws, and verbal and physical abuse sometimes leading to serious injury and/or death for trying to exercise our rights for equal access to housing, jobs, medical care, transit, education, public venues, the courts, voting, peaceful protest, fair legal representation and fair treatment from law enforcement and the justice system and to be recognized as full citizens with all of the rights that this nation offers.

We have fought and defended this nation internationally and domestically, yet we as African-Americans are still suffering the legacy of slavery.

You, who stand on the backs of those women and men who have fought for equal rights for all, not just African-Americans, and who have gone before you now sit in the seat of an African-American civil rights leader and lawyer who fought for justice and became a Supreme Court justice: Thurgood Marshall.

You were a product of affirmative action yet want to dismantle it. You now want to relitigate and take away LGBTQIA+ and women’s rights to be treated equally in this society and to birth control and contraception. Why? What century and year are you living in? Do you want to relitigate/dismantle Brown vs. Board of Education or eliminate the 14th Amendment? How about Loving vs. Virginia, which gave you the right to marry your wife who is of a different race?

Are you ashamed of your color? You do not represent me because I am not ashamed to be a person of color, an American of African descent. It seems you are. I do not force my beliefs on others, but you do.

You and your fellow conservative justices should be ashamed, but then that requires a heart, empathy, understanding, and thinking with common sense and wanting equality to be for all, no matter who they are, what they believe, who they love, or people’s sex or the color of their skin. You are not superior to anyone because you are a man.

Women are not the weaker sex. Woman bear the burden of everything in this world.

If you want to regress, that is your business, but the rest of us want to progress. Going backward leads to stagnation, apathy, and complacency. Progress leads to improvement and learning.

You and your fellow conservatives have just opened the floodgates because we will not go back. We will not become complacent or stagnant or apathetic. We will fight and strive that much harder for a nation where equality is for everyone.

I am a proud female African-American senior citizen who will raise her voice to be heard in whatever way I can. Hear me now: I am roaring, striving, fighting, and I will NEVER go back.

NJCU
Ron Leir

NJCU Facing Fiscal Crisis; Campus Awaits Answers in Wake of President’s Departure

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Just days before the country’s Independence Day festivities, New Jersey City University shot off some figurative fireworks of its own.

On June 27, the NJCU board of trustees announced that the school was facing a “financial emergency” resulting from carrying a “recently intensified structural deficit” of $20 million that would likely trigger furloughs and layoffs of employees along with “managerial changes and possible union concessions.”

The same day, Sue Henderson, the school’s president for the past decade, revealed she was leaving July 1, six months before her contract’s expiration. NJCU spokesman Ira Thor said Henderson “had been planning to step down at the end of the fiscal year (June 30) and had decided this months ago.”

In a June 27 interview with ROI-NJ.com, Henderson said she’d asked the board to hold off releasing the news about her imminent departure until she’d had a chance to weigh in on the state’s budget formulation for NJCU this year.

The same day, the board voted to adopt an interim budget that, according to Thor, would be enough for the university’s basic operating expenses, including salaries, utilities, and bond payments, for the next 90 days. Thor said the board also authorized raising student tuition by three percent for the fall.

Asked if the amount budgeted would be sufficient to allow the school to reopen for the fall term, Thor said: “The school will be open in the fall; that would never be questioned, and it would be silly to suggest otherwise.”

Still, the fiscal picture painted by NJCU’s newly hired CFO, Ben Durant, at the June 27 board meeting suggested a rocky road ahead. Durant noted that, not only has the university been saddled with deficit spending for the past four years, it had just 25 days of cash on hand. He suggested that due to shrinking enrollment particularly during COVID-19, the school may have to think about downsizing to get its fiscal house in order.

State Sen. Brian Stack (D-Union City) is trying to get the legislature to approve a budget resolution that would increase by $10 million the $33.6 million the state has appropriated to NJCU for fiscal 2023, but it’s unclear whether that effort will be successful.

Meanwhile, the board has appointed Jason Kroll, NJCU’s assistant vice president and chief strategy officer, as acting president. Kroll has told the board he doesn’t wish to be considered as a candidate for Henderson’s permanent replacement, according to Thor.

Neither Kroll nor Durant were available for interviews, but Thor offered this scenario when asked what direction NJCU may be headed in the near future:

“In terms of how the university plans to ‘right-size’ the economics,” he said, “we are currently determining the road map to accomplish this. That is why we are entering into a 90-day budget, to give us the opportunity to develop and enter into these strategies. We just announced (Monday) this course of action. It is far too soon to be able to provide specific details…. We are engaging in collaborative efforts with our unions. Together, we are going to do everything necessary to ensure NJCU’s mission continues to persist because our institution is indispensable to the community it serves.”

Some observers worry that NJCU’s fiscal predicament could trigger a situation similar to the downsizing that is currently impacting Willliam Paterson University where, due to a $30 million structural deficit—partly attributable to the pandemic—the school is terminating over three years 100 full-time faculty. The school is now in year two of the layoffs. WPU also shut down its programs in art history and geography.

Under an agreement between the school and the state council of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents full-time faculty at WPU and NJCU, when a school declares a financial emergency, it can bypass certain contractual rights, such as tenure protection, to dismiss faculty.

In the meantime, uncertainty and anxiety are prevalent on the NJCU campus. Max Herman, AFT Local 1839 vice president for full-time and part-time faculty, said: “My phone is blowing up from people asking me, ‘Am I losing my job?’ We’re in crisis mode. Everybody wants definite answers, and we probably won’t have any for a few months.”

Herman attributed the financial pinch to several sources, including “overly ambitious expansion plans,” notably a new business school on the city’s waterfront, a campus extension at Fort Monmouth, NJ, and plans to build luxury apartments and a performing arts center on the West Side, that haven’t yet paid expected dividends. Other factors Herman cited include “erroneous projections” about future enrollment and state allocations, which pay 25 percent of NJCU’s operating budget, “remaining flat for several years.”

“We grew at a pace that was not sustainable,” Herman said, “while we lost focus on the population we are trying to serve.” A majority of NJCU’s student base, he said, are young people of limited income, immigrants new to this country, many living in tough neighborhoods, struggling to support themselves and family members, and “they need lots of support, but we’ve cut back in areas like student advisement and counseling.”

Herman said that declining enrollment has also hurt the school’s finances. To ensure they can be family breadwinners, “a lot of young people are entering the job market. They’re not going to college because they felt it wasn’t economically viable to do so, so we’ve had declining enrollment,” Herman said. Covid also contributed to that falloff, he added. “Declining enrollment is an issue for all public colleges in the state, but particularly for us and that should be a fundamental concern.”

While the trustees may like to put the spotlight on glitzy new ventures as examples of areas of growth, Herman said, they should be paying more attention to “neglected basic maintenance” of the school’s main campus, such as no air-conditioning in Rossi Hall where the music program operates, faulty heating/cooling systems and elevator breakdowns in Grossnickle Hall, and leaks in the library.

“Look,” Herman said, “I want this university to succeed. I don’t want to burn the thing to the ground. Now is the time for Gov. (Phil) Murphy to stand up and show he’s a friend of higher education. If we see such a commitment from the governor and legislature to provide additional funding, I’ll be very happy.”

A master plan presented by urban designer Alan Mountjoy shows how Liberty State Park might look with sports arenas, athletic fields, ice rinks, and more. (Photo by Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)
Aaron Morrill

Pesin: Fireman’s Plan for Liberty State Park Remains a “Clear and Present Danger”

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Sam Pesin is taking little solace in changes made to a controversial bill that threatens to open Liberty State Park to commercial development.

In an interview this morning Pesin, president of Friends of Liberty State Park, said “It’s shameful that Paul Fireman’s money and his surrogates’ lies have killed the Liberty State Park Protection Act. Now park supporters have a major battle against Paul Fireman’s plans for a 7,000-seat commercial concert venue and two additional stadiums.”

Paul Fireman, the billionaire founder of Reebok and owner of Liberty National Golf Club, has mounted a campaign to take over Caven Point, a nature preserve within the park, in order to create three additional holes for the golf course, which sits nearby.

In furtherance of his plan, Fireman organized and funded two local groups that have fought the Protection Act, which would protect Caven Point and limit the nature and scope of any commercial development within the park. Instead, with Fireman’s resources and direction, the groups have proposed large commercial venues and sought to vastly increase, beyond what has been recommended by the Department of Environmental Protection, the amount of park land devoted to “active” recreation. One of the groups put forth the plan for three stadiums earlier this month.

Yesterday, in a boost to park supporters, State Senator Brian Stack announced that he has introduced an additional piece of legislation called the “Caven Point Protection Act.” The purpose, he wrote, is “to make clear that Caven Point shall remain as it does today: a nature habitat and public space.”

“Brian Stack’s bill is tremendous news, and I’m hoping that he will work with Assemblyman Raj Mukherji to enact the Caven Point Protection Act,” said Pesin.

The Fireman-backed “Liberty State Park Conservation, Recreation, and Community Inclusion Act,” which will be voted on today, will incorporate several amendments that were hashed out over the last few days. Chief among them is a slashing from $250 million to $50 million in the amount appropriated by the state to spend on the park, an increase in the size of the task force authorized to make recommendations for the park, and elimination of language mandating that the park generate revenue. The bill permits large scale commercial development and contains no protection for Caven Point. Pesin calls Fireman’s plans a “clear and present danger” to the park.

Ultimately, Pesin hopes to see a park along the lines of the DEP’s “New Vision” plan, which is already funded from $70 million in Natural Resource Damage funds. The result of a multi-year process with hearings and 3,600 survey responses, the plan would remediate the interior and create habitats, trails, and 61 acres of active recreation along with small-scale commercial activities.

Department of Environmental Protection "New Visions" plan rendering

Department of Environmental Protection “New Visions” plan rendering

Of particular concern to Pesin is the make-up of the task force created by the bill to be voted on today. Pesin fears that six additional members, to be appointed by the governor, senate president, and speaker of the general assembly could end up being surrogates for Fireman.

Nonethless, noting that meetings will be open to the public with an opportunity for the public to participate and comment, Pesin believes that the park may yet be protected.  “I have great faith in the power of the people to stand up once again to oppose Paul Fireman’s plan.”

Featured photo at top is a rendering of Liberty State Park as envisioned by Paul Fireman backed group People’s Park Foundation.

 

 

School Crossing Guards
Aaron Morrill

School Crossing Guards Ratify New Contract

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Jersey City school crossing guards have ratified a tentative contract ending a five year impasse with the city.

Union President Santo Della Monica said that of 102 guards who voted, 102 voted in favor of ratification.

The guards will get an immediate raise of $1.00 per hour, bringing them to an hourly wage of $18.00 this year and receive retroactive raises going back to 2017.

Two weeks ago, their union, Jersey City Public Employees Local 245, took to the plaza in front of City Hall to call for a new contract. The crossing guards have been working without one since 2017.

According to the Memorandum of Agreement, the new contract will be retroactive to January 1, 2017 and run until the end of 2026.

The city will provide life insurance of $10 thousand per family and an optical plan of $225 per year.

The contract will retroactively set wages at $15.50 per hour beginning in 2017 with an increase each year, ending at $22 per hour in 2026.

The agreement also provides that crossing guards will get the hourly minimum established by any future raise given to city employees by way of an executive order.  On June 16, Mayor Steven Fulop increased the minimum pay for full-time city workers to $20 per hour

Crossing guards currently work for 20 hours each week and are not covered by the mayor’s order. Under the new contract, beginning in 2024, the guards will work 25 hours per week and qualify for pay raises granted to full-time workers.

The city has agreed to study the “feasibility” of offering health care benefits to the guards beginning in 2024.

 

Car crashed into Annex
Aaron Morrill

Stolen Car with Bullet Hole Rams City Building

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Car with bullet holeFor the second time in less than a year, city employees located at the Jackson Square Municipal Complex on Martin Luther King Drive have been reminded of the crime problem in Bergen-Lafayette.

At 1:15 pm today, a city employee shared photos of a stolen silver Audi that had crashed into the side of Four Jackson Square. A bullet hole can be seen in the right rear quarter panel.

The employee appeared to be take the crash in stride commenting “never a dull moment around here.”

This isn’t the building’s first experience with bullets.  In October several windows were shot out at the same building, leaving workers on edge.

In 2019, workers expressed concern about security after a mass shooting at a nearby kosher market which left several people dead.  At that time employees asked for the installation of bullet proof glass, a better locking mechanism on the main entrance, and active shooter training, which the city has reportedly conducted.

 

 

 

Pompidou x
Aaron Morrill

Report: Pompidou was the Brainchild of Developer Charles Kushner

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Much of Mayor Fulop’s plan to build an outpost of the famed Centre Pompidou at Journal Square has been shrouded in secrecy. However, important new information has emerged about the project’s origins. Meanwhile, questions linger about the museum’s cost.

The Jersey City Times has learned that Charles Kushner, the developer of the massive 1 Journal Square apartment complex next door, gave Fulop the initial idea of partnering with the French museum and locating Pompidou x in the Pathside building.

Kushner is the father of Jared Kushner, son-in-law of Donald Trump.

Two weeks ago, Fulop joined Kushner company executives and Charles’ daughter, Nicole, to break ground on the billion-dollar, 1,700-unit apartment project next to Pompidou x.

According to real estate professionals, Kushner stands to benefit financially from Pompidou x.

“Museum developments enhance neighborhoods and boost the value of real estate nearby,” Williams College economics Professor Stephen Sheppard told the Wall Street Journal in 2018. Sheppard studies the impact of new museums on nearby real estate.

The Kushner connection may bring unwelcome notoriety to the project. The elder Kushner served time in prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. Jared Kushner was recently accused of using his Trump connections to obtain a $2 billion investment for a project his family’s company is building from Saudi Arabia. The Kushners were profiled in a scathing Netflix documentary produced by Alex Gibney which featured uninhabitable apartments and a single Black single mother who is nearly destroyed financially when she is sued by Kushner for fictitious charges.

In 2017, Nicole Kushner Meyer got into hot water when, during an event at Beijing’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, she told Chinese investors that they could obtain EB-5 visas in exchange for a $500 thousand investment in the 1 Journal Square project. Apparently, in response, Fulop cancelled a 30-year abatement and $30 million in city-issued bonds that the developer had asked for. Kushner brought a lawsuit against the city, citing the mayor’s “political animus” toward Donald Trump. It seems all is now forgotten.

Neither the mayor nor the Kushner company responded to requests for comment.

Finances may be another issue for the splashy project. It is still unknown how the city will pay for the day-to-day operation of the museum.

At a City Council caucus meeting in June of last year, former Councilman-at-large Rolando Lavarro asked Fulop what it would cost to operate Pompidou. “We’ve done a lot of research around that, and I’m happy to get you some of that information,” the mayor replied. According to Lavarro, that information was never provided. Nor has it been given to the City Council since Lavarro’s departure, according to one insider.

And indeed,  finances may prove to be a challenge. The memorandum of understanding with Pompidou, approved by the City Council last June, calls for Jersey City taxpayers to pay Pompidou $6 million per year for five years in exchange for project development, branding, educational programming, and organizing exhibitions. Annual operating expenses and costs for shipping and insuring art sent from France, which aren’t included in the $6 million already agreed to, could double that number.

By way of comparison, in 2019, the smaller Montclair Museum had operating expenses of $5 million, without the burden of a yearly fee to another institution like Pompidou. Should Pompidou x have similar expenses, combined with the licensing fee, its yearly operating costs could well exceed $11 million.

The mayor has hinted that he’d like to make admission free for Jersey City residents. But even if all visitors do have to pay for admission, those funds will be miniscule proportional to the museum’s operating expenses. A 2018 study by the Association of Art Museum Directors showed that on average a mere seven percent of a museum’s revenue comes from ticket sales. At least two thirds of a museum’s operating costs come from endowments, private and public grants, and memberships. Whether Pompidou x can generate sufficient funds to support its operations from these sources is, as yet, unknown.

Finances are just one unanswered question. The Jersey City Times has also learned that earlier this year, the mayor made an unpublicized trip to Paris with Jersey City’s director of the Office of Cultural Affairs to meet with Pompidou officials. The mayor, who is normally prolific on social media made no mention of it, perhaps concerned about the optics of a Parisienne getaway, work or otherwise.

Responding to the Jersey City Times’ request for information on how the trip was paid for, mayoral spokesperson Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione, said only that “no taxpayer dollars were used in any way.” Scalcione did not respond to questions about the trip’s purpose, length, or how the trip was, in fact, paid for.

If all goes according to the mayor’s plans, Pompidou x will exhibit work in Centre Pompidou’s permanent collection, the second largest collection of modern art in the world after New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In addition, the museum will show local artists’ work and provide art programming for youth. Renovation of the Pathside building is expected to cost close to $40 million. The administration has set a target opening date of early 2024.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ballot
Letter to the Editor

Letter: Republican Poll Workers are Needed

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By Herminio Mendoza, Boris Ioffe and Joshua Sotomayor Einstein 

The Hispanic Republicans of North Jersey and grassroots GOP leaders in Hudson County invite all registered Republicans to apply to be poll workers for the upcoming November 2022 Congressional elections (apply here: NJ DOS – Division of Elections – Poll Worker Application). Poll workers are generously compensated and are important stakeholders in the election process. Legally, but more importantly morally, the two-party system requires registered members of each party to oversee the process during early voting and on election day in every polling place to ensure a fair, unbiased, and transparent process.

For we Republicans in Hudson County, it is imperative not only that we get out the vote, support GOP candidates, and show the country that the red wave is happening everywhere, but that any notion of extra-legal or illegal irregularities that makes Hudson County the butt of jokes across the state are put to bed. If Republicans do not show up, are not at the table, and do not participate in the same process in which Democrats are supervising the election, how will we ever be certain any election is legitimate?

For the Republican Party, for the Republic, and for free and fair elections, sign up to be a poll worker during early voting and on election day in Hudson County for the 2022 Congressional election cycle.

Tell your fellow registered Republicans to sign up as well. Every registered Republican with a clean record and who is over 18 can serve in this vital role.

Herminio Mendoza is President of the Hispanic Republicans of North Jersey

Boris Ioffe is Hudson County Republican Committeeman from Jersey City

 

School Crossing Guards
Aaron Morrill

Crossing Guards to Vote on New Contract: City Could Owe 30 Million in Back-Pay

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Jersey City school crossing guards will vote on a tentative agreement tomorrow settling their long-standing contract dispute with the city. If ratified, the guards will get an immediate raise of $1.00 per hour, bringing them to an hourly wage of $18.00 this year.

The guards will also receive retroactive raises going back to 2017.

Two weeks ago, their union, Jersey City Public Employees Local 245, took to the plaza in front of City Hall to call for a new contract. The crossing guards have been working without one since 2017.

“All we need is a buck to tie up our contract,” read a sign.

“You can’t live in Jersey City on $17.00 an hour,” said Union President Santo Della Monica.

“A lot of these folks couldn’t collect unemployment [during the Covid-19 school closures],” he continued. “They had to get by with help from relatives and food pantries.”

According to the Memorandum of Agreement, the new contract will be retroactive to January 1, 2017 and run until the end of 2026.

The city will provide life insurance of $10 thousand per family and an optical plan of $225 per year.

The contract will retroactively set wages at $15.50 per hour beginning in 2017 with an increase each year, ending at $22 per hour in 2026.

The agreement also provides that crossing guards will get the hourly minimum established by any future raise given to city employees by way of an executive order.  On June 16, Mayor Steven Fulop increased the minimum pay for full-time city workers to $20 per hour.

While he welcomes the raise, Della Monica feels it didn’t go far enough. “It’s not fair for guys like me who’ve been there for 25 years…I make $25 an hour.”

Crossing guards currently work for 20 hours each week and are not covered by the mayor’s order. Under the new contract, beginning in 2024, the guards will work 25 hours per week and qualify for pay raises granted to full-time workers.

The city has agreed to study the “feasibility” of offering health care benefits to the guards beginning in 2024.

According to Della Monica, the crossing guards, mostly senior citizens, have dealt with harsh treatment from supervisors and brutal weather over the years.

Crossing guards almost had a contract in 2019 that would have raised their pay rate to $19.00 per hour, but negotiations stalled with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

The city let go 100 of its 250 unionized crossing guards during the pandemic, according to Della Monica. Some of the city’s public schools used to have six guards and are now down to two, he said. Police, paid at a higher rate, are filling in the gaps.

The protest elicited public sympathy. Said Jersey City resident Karin Vanoppen who witnessed it:

“Crossing guards work in all weather, heavy traffic, and face drivers who park and make U-turns on the crosswalks. I see the guard in front of P.S. 3 get cursed at daily for pointing out dangerous driving. She calls the students ‘my kids.’ They deserve that extra money and more.”

Meantime, Local 245 has filed a grievance seeking double-time pay for its members who worked through the Covid-19 state of emergency. Last year, an appellate court ordered the city to pay the union double-time pay for a 2018 state of emergency. Della Monica is confident that the facts in this case are no different and that the city owes workers approximately $30 million.

The Jersey City Times emailed Mayor Fulop’s press secretary for comment on the contract dispute, but she did not respond.

Andrea Crowley-Hughes assisted in the preparation of this article.

LGBTQ+ Runners
Andrea Crowley-Hughes

Residents Start Local LGBTQ+ Running Club

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During the heart of Pride Month, Jersey City runners launched The Queer Collective, a running club dreamed up by residents Kristina Nungaray and Jules Bursee, two best friends whose goal is to increase the profile of the LGBTQ+ community in endurance racing.

The club held an inaugural three-mile run for joggers of all speeds on June 21 from the Grove Street PATH station to (and through) Exchange Place.

“While we were fearful of a rainout, we still had some eager runners show up and run together through the rain,” Nungaray said. “We’ve had a pretty significant outreach of people who will be joining us for future weekly runs and who are excited to participate in this running club,” she added.

Going forward, Queer Collective will hold its jaunts weekly. Runs will start each Tuesday at 6:35 p.m. at the Grove Street PATH station plaza. The route is a loop with one- and two-mile versions available as well. Afterward at around 7:30, participants are encouraged to gather at Pint, a nearby craft beer bar, for its weekly free Bearly Bingo or simply hang around and make new friends.

No registration is required. The organizers reassured beginner runners that they are welcome in an Instagram post.

“All levels are welcome! And when we say all levels, we mean ALL levels,” they said.

Nungaray and Bursee are offering this same warm welcome in a second fitness program they are broadening this fall, Say Maybe. Started earlier this year, the effort has consisted of the duo themselves competing in more than 21 endurance events to raise funds for a variety of LGBTQ+ nonprofit organizations.

The founders want to increase the visibility of non-binary and other queer athletes, people of color, and those of all sizes and abilities in endurance sports and encourage a wider group of people to experience the camaraderie and excitement of a race day, the satisfaction of completing a triathlon.

“There’s a certain elitism that comes with endurance sports,” Nungaray said. “I have raced with so many people of so many different calibers of strength shape and age and race. And whenever you actually take the time to listen, you still find people who … feel like they don’t belong …”

With a packed schedule and loads of determination, Say Maybe has already raised $5,000 this year for organizations including the Montrose Center, which offers programs and services for LGBTQ+ individuals and their families in Houston, TX; and Summer Bluefish, a program that provides free swim lessons to underserved youth. They are in talks with Jersey-City-based Hudson Pride Center to make a donation to them as well.

The group will implement a free training program for first-time hopeful triathletes in In July in preparation for a triathlon this fall. They are also forming a queer racing team to complete its first Ragnar race, Ragnar Trail New Jersey.

Said Bursee, “There are there are a decent number of queer or LGBTQ+ athletes in the endurance world, but you don’t know them. They’re not in hiding, but there’s no spotlight, no intention, no ‘Listen, you can do this too.’”

Now with two initiatives, the duo hopes to change this.

“Don’t worry about being ‘too slow’ or left behind,” they said in their Instagram post. “We’ve got you.”