News

Despite months of back-and-forth discussion regarding the future of Jersey City’s A. Harry Moore Laboratory School, located at 2078 JFK Blvd. opposite New Jersey City University, a long-term solution to the school’s shuttering remains up in the air.

Activists advocating for the Vote Yes campaign want residents to support city-approved regulations that would place some limits on short-term rentals. Those backing the Vote No campaign want residents to reject the regulations set to go into effect next year; their hope is the city will instead go back to the drawing board and draft a different set of regulations that targets “bad actors” on the short-term rental scene and places fewer restrictions on everyone else.

The City Council may block Mayor Steven Fulop’s plan to restructure the Department of Recreation after department employees claimed the move violates state civil service protections and is being used to lay off longtime workers.

So here we are. If there’s one unintended benefit of the current political climate, it’s that we are all living the civics class we should have had in high school. If we are to rebuild our democracy, it must include a rededication to an independent free press particularly at the local level.

Jersey City is in the midst of a structural, multi-year school-funding crisis that has already led to one year of increased school taxes combined with school budget cuts. Given the disparity between what the State of New Jersey dictates that the Jersey City Public Schools should spend on each student and the local resources that Jersey City chooses to spend on its public schools, this destructive combination will likely result again in the years ahead.