Data overload caused Jersey City’s municipal payroll system to crash a few pay cycles ago. Slowly but surely, it’s been creeping back to normal, according to city administrators. Quizzed by City Council members at Monday’s caucus, James Carroll, assistant director of Human Resources, said the city is trying to switch all of its more than […]
Ron Leir
Ron Leir has been a journalist since 1972. That includes a 37-year stint as a reporter, copy reader and assistant editor with The Jersey Journal, followed by a decade as a reporter with The Observer in Kearny. He has also pursued his avocation of acting, appearing mostly on small stages in NYC and New Jersey and several independent films.
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DeGise Pleads Guilty to Leaving the Scene of an Accident
As her dad, Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise looked on, Jersey City’s embattled lawmaker Amy DeGise yesterday pleaded guilty to “leaving the scene of an accident involving injury or death.” DeGise’s plea was the culmination of a 6-month ordeal that the city’s at-large lawmaker triggered when she drove her Nissan Rogue SUV through the intersection […]
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BelovED Charter School Senior Offered Full Scholarship to Princeton
Amaya Jiminez, a senior at BelovED Charter School on Grand Street, has been offered a full undergraduate scholarship to Princeton University. The first member of her family to attend college, Jiminez is also a ringing endorsement for BelovED itself, which this year is graduating its first twelth-grade class. Jiminez credits her family for instilling in […]
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NJCU Appoints Interim President to Steer Cash-Leaking Ship
New Jersey City University has promoted its executive vice president, 37-year-old Andres Acebo, to interim president, its third leader in less than one year and the youngest person ever to preside over a public university in New Jersey, according to a campus spokesman. Appointed by NJCU’s board to a two-year term, Acebo assumes the presidency […]
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Boggiano Rails as City Council Approves Homeless Center in Ward C
Jersey City lawmakers had their hands full Wednesday night, reacting to complaints reflecting a tale of two cities. Over the strenuous objections of Ward C Councilmember Richard Boggiano, the council voted 8–1 to authorize a lease agreement between the city, Jersey City Housing Authority and Garden State Community Development Corporation to provide homeless individuals using […]
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Overtime Costs, Glitchy Payroll System and Homeless Drop-in Center Roil Council Caucus
Spiraling overtime on the one hand, and a snafu over regular pay procedures for city police on the other, were hot button topics for members of Jersey City government at Monday night’s City Council caucus. On the first issue, several council members took exception to Ward E Councilmember James Solomon’s call for submission to the […]
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Jersey City and State Still Out of Sync on Birth Records
The road to a birth record for someone born in Jersey City has taken yet another turn. It’s been a tough slog ever since the state shut down the Hudson County Office of Vital Statistics in 2002 after investigators fingered four employees for taking part in a plot to create and sell fraudulent birth records. […]
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Paused For One Month, Ellis Island Hospital “Hard Hat” Tours Offer Window on History
Save Ellis Island, the nonprofit tasked with stabilizing and rehabilitating the historic hospital complex on the island’s south side, has advised that its “Hard Hat” tours will be temporarily suspended between New Year’s Day and January 29, 2023, for winter cleanup and minor infrastructure work. The 90-minute tours will resume January 30, 2023, with six […]
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Claiming Violent Crime is Down Fulop puts Kibosh on Compstat
Yesterday in his “year end public safety recap,” Mayor Steven Fulop trumpeted a big drop in homicides and a “downward trend” in some other categories of crime. Ward F Councilman Frank Gilmore, whose ward experienced a disproportionate amount of crime, was not nearly as sanguine. Fulop said homicides had decreased 50 percent between 2014 and […]
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Faculty Layoffs Loom at NJCU as it Looks to ‘Rightsize’ to Survive
Financially challenged New Jersey City University has taken another step toward “rightsizing” by sending notices of potential layoffs to 30 tenured faculty whose jobs may be eliminated as of June 28, 2023. About 200 tenured professors are currently on campus. In a post on its website this week, NJCU said it will also end contracts with “up […]