Our beautiful city is in a very bad shape.
Streets are barely cleaned. In horror, I read about stories where people are not able to reach the police in emergency or in dangerous situations.
The Jersey City Response Center used to pick up the phone and help residents. Now when I call at business hours, I am asked to leave a message and supposedly they will return my call at a more convenient time, e.g. when someone is working. This list goes on and on, I am sure others can add other endless lists to this.
Property taxes are obnoxiously high. People are forced to sell as they are not able to pay the increased property taxes. Property taxes directly affect the sky high rents. What can a property owner due if their taxes are raised above anything even remotely reasonable? They have to raise the rent to cover their costs.
New buildings keep being built, our city is filled with more and more residents. Traffic is a nightmare, parking lacking. Vision Zero has been broken many times just in this year. None of the services have improved. The opposite has happened.
The latest mismanagement is the closing of the beautiful swimming pools Jersey City has. We have been waiting for outdoor swimming all winter long. The outdoor swimming pools have always been open daily from Memorial Day till September, some years even till October. The morning lap swimming hours have been a godsend and hugely popular (from 7–10 am). During the pandemic sometimes one had to wait on the side of the pool because the pool was so full with people exercising. The pool was also open after school for open swim so all the school kids could go to the pool while school is in session during June. Now the kids don’t get to swim either! The outdoor pools are slated to be open ONLY on Saturdays and Sundays for open swim. This makes it impossible for lap swimmers. Rightly so, as during open swim the pool fills with families learning to swim and enjoy the reprieve from the heat.
If Fulop is capable of running down a city, just imagine what he will do for the State of New Jersey? He has lost my vote and hopefully countless others.
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