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Editorial: Mr. Mayor it’s Time to Lead on Exorbitant Food Delivery Charges

December 13, 2020/in header, Latest News, Opinion /by Aaron Morrill

Ward E Councilman James Solomon has announced that he will be introducing an ordinance aimed at limiting the exorbitant fees imposed on restaurants by third party delivery platforms like DoorDash and GrubHub. A state law passed in June limiting such fees is set to expire shortly and Solomon is eager to prevent a lapse in fee limits. Solomon is receiving advice from Andrew Martino, the owner of Downtown’s  “Ghost Truck Kitchen” a business built entirely around food delivery. Martino is a long time critic of the third party platforms.

Both Solomon and Martino are the first to admit that the ordinance — only legally possible because of the Covid-19 state of emergency — is, at best, a short term solution. On May 26th, we published an editorial (below) calling for Mayor Fulop to lend a hand. Shortly after, Trenton imposed its own caps. In spite of this, several local restaurants have closed since then. Those that remain are hurting.

As we argued in May, organizing restaurants into a co-op that can negotiate lower fees may be the only solution. Martino has said repeatedly that he agrees with this concept. But a city-wide approach is needed. We hope the mayor will step up and lead on this important issue.  Many Jersey City small businesses are depending on it.

Editorial published on May 26, 2020

If you haven’t heard, online food ordering platforms like GrubHub and UberEats are in the political doghouse. Not since the financial crisis have we seen as much legislation aimed at a single industry. Cities including New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Seattle and Los Angeles have enacted emergency legislation limiting the fees these companies can charge their client restaurants. On May 7, citing the declared state of emergency, Mayor Fulop, supported by the city council, followed suit with an executive order drastically limiting such fees.

The order will undoubtedly save local restaurants money, but here’s the rub: Once the state of emergency ends, so, too, will the executive order. The fees will return to their previous predatory levels. The problem of strangulating online delivery fees is a long-term problem. It needs a long-term solution.

The moral and political case for a limit on online ordering platforms is compelling. With many restaurants completely closed under the state of emergency, those that remain open are relying solely on takeout and delivery business. This has provided a bonanza for GrubHub and the like, which, armed with piles of venture capital, have gobbled up an increasing amount of your favorite restaurant’s online business, charging anywhere from 15% for simply taking the order to 35% for handling the actual delivery. For a struggling restaurant already hobbled by Covid-19, that’s real money. Before the pandemic, the high fees paid to these middle men were burdensome, but at least restaurants were operating on all cylinders and could rely on more profitable dine-in service and (for some) alcohol sales to help cover fixed expenses. Now, for many eateries these excessive fees are posing an existential threat.

These conditions set the table (no pun intended) for local politicians to step in to protect small businesses from rapacious Silicon Valley billionaires. And here, Jersey City lawmakers outdid themselves, imposing a draconian 10% across-the-board-cap on the online platforms. Thus, where previously GrubHub would pocket nine dollars on a thirty-dollar order, their cut is now three dollars. Now imagine that the order has to go from Downtown to Danforth Avenue in Greenville. You don’t need an MBA to know that three dollars isn’t enough to cover the cost of a driver, his car and his gas. While some services have knuckled under likely in the hope the storm will pass, UberEats has come out swinging and imposed a three-dollar “executive order” fee on Jersey City delivery customers, proving the adage that “there’s no free lunch” (again, no pun intended).

Those of us who own restaurants certainly appreciate the mayor and council’s efforts. However, the ten percent cap isn’t sustainable. And it’s unlikely that the online ordering platforms will put up with these restrictions for long. Under normal circumstances, Jersey City’s executive order would be patently illegal. The U.S. Constitution explicitly prevents a state or municipality from “impairing the obligation of contracts” such as exists between the online delivery platforms and their restaurant clients. Governors and mayors are given a little more leeway during states of emergency. According to Professor Marc Pfeiffer of Rutgers University Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, UberEats or GrubHub could haul the city before a judge. “A judge would decide whether the city had exceeded its authority. The city would have to justify it,” Pfeiffer said.

One need only recall the city’s ill-fated chain-store ordinance that banned the Gap and its brethren from large swaths of Downtown. Four years after the law’s enactment, a building owner dragged the city into federal court claiming the law was unconstitutional and a “publicity stunt.” The city folded, choosing neither to defend nor rewrite the law.

There is a solution, however. And one that could protect local restaurants from predatory fees while still providing delivery service to the entire city long after Covid-19 is a bitter memory: Mayor Fulop could help Jersey City’s restaurants unite and — with the bargaining power of a large group — negotiate lower prices with Grubhub and its peers. For now, let’s call it the “Jersey City Restaurant Co-op.” Sure, it would take buy-in from local restaurants and not a little bit of the mayor’s time and energy. But consider the potential gains. The co-op could decide to give all its business to one provider (say DoorDash) in exchange for better pricing. Or it could do what restaurants in Fort Collins, Colorado did and create their own platform (called NoCo Nosh), thereby circumventing the third party apps altogether. Either way, you have a long-term solution to the problem.

No doubt: Organizing this would take resources and credibility. It would take the city’s involvement and, yes, dedication of the mayor. But during Mayor Fulop’s tenure he has successfully negotiated with any number national businesses to provide services for Jersey City — think Citibike, Via and Airbnb. This kind of innovative public-private partnering is his sweet spot. A deal like this would significantly strengthen Jersey City’s restaurants and create a model for the country. It’s certainly worth a try. How ‘bout it, Mr. Mayor?

Note:  The writer, in addition to being founder and publisher of Jersey City Times, owns Two Boots pizzeria in Jersey City.

Juneteenth: A Broken Promise?

June 19, 2020/in header, Opinion, Uncategorized /by E. Assata Wright

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” — Emma Lazarus

“I can’t breathe.” — Eric Garner/George Floyd/Black America

 

Juneteenth is a two-sided coin that has always left me with a feeling of ambivalence. Ostensibly a celebration of freedom from slavery that dates back to 1865, Juneteenth is sometimes wryly known as “the Fourth of July for black people.”

Observed on June 19, Juneteenth — the word itself a blending of “June” and “19th” — is an odd day to commemorate. Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863. While many slaves had already escaped to non-Confederate states by then, slavery actually still existed in some places until passage of the 13th Amendment in December 1865. Yet no one throws an Emancipation Proclamation party or a 13th Amendment barbecue (maybe because they’re in winter?). No. Instead, the festivities happen on the day when Gordon Granger, a major general with the Union Army, traveled to Galveston, Texas, and informed the black population there that “all slaves are free.” The former slaves learned of their freedom more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, during which time they continued to serve as slaves, unaware they were no longer bound to stay on plantations, working for free.

Given the history, Juneteenth is a story about freedom delayed and a cruel ruse that was perpetuated on the freedmen. Thus, how can we celebrate this holiday without also acknowledging the trickery attached to it? As companies like Nike move to recognize Juneteenth as an official holiday, I wonder, which side of the holiday is being celebrated? Are we celebrating the freedom — or are we celebrating the ruse? How do we embrace the promise of the Reconstruction era that followed the end of the Civil War without also acknowledging that some of those promises have yet to be fulfilled?

These are questions worth asking in this moment of protest when people, white people in particular, seem more willing than ever to address systemic racism head-on. Meaningful discussions around inequality and the unfinished business of civil rights in our nation are at the center of a national dialogue we haven’t had in generations.

II.

Jersey City was once part of the Dutch colony known as New Netherlands and was home to a slave port in the 1640s. Because we’re a northern city in a northern state, it’s easy to forget that New Jersey (what the English renamed New Netherlands) was a slave state. But documents at New Jersey City University note that many prominent families here in the 17th Century were large property owners who held slaves. Nicholas Tuers and his wife Jane Van Reypen Tuers, the Van Vorst (Voorst) family, the Van Reypens, and Gerrit Newark and his brother Mattheus Cornelissen Newkirk are among the slave-owning families whose names would be familiar to current residents.

Van Reypen Street sign. Photo by Aaron Morrill

Slavery in New Jersey was slowly phased out over time beginning in 1804 and wasn’t eliminated entirely until 1846. New Jersey was regarded as a hostile state for freedmen and slaves alike even after 1846 because it enforced the Fugitive Slave Law that allowed escaped slaves to be captured and returned to their owners. But Jersey City’s proximity to New York and Connecticut made it a popular site for the Underground Railroad.  Four major Underground Railroad routes where escaped slaves would cross the Hudson River from New Jersey to New York came through Jersey City in the Harsimus Cove/Newport area; the home at 79 Clifton Place that was once owned by banker and abolitionist David Lee Holden and his cousin Edward Singleton Holden is also an Underground Railroad site in Jersey City — and believed to be the last remaining one here.

Prominent abolitionists of the period are also memorialized with street names: Former slaves John Vreeland and his brother Thomas Vreeland Jackson, Dr. Henry Holt, and John Everett helped escaped slaves reach New York via the Underground Railroad.

Which parts of our history will current Jersey City residents lean into at this moment of change? Will we be agents of change like the Vreelands and Holdens, or will we cling to the status quo, making only small changes at the margins?

III.

The essential question of this moment is who belongs? Who is this society going to work for? Who belongs downtown? Who belongs in Jersey City? Who belongs in Central Park? Who gets to sit on the public bench? Who among us gets to enjoy the full benefits of citizenship and civil rights and human rights — and who among us are second class citizens? Who does the law represent? Who is above the law — and who has the law on their necks?

These questions are directly tied to the issue of policing because police are the armed guards used by those in power to regulate people’s lives. They exist to confine physical movement in the way banks confine economic mobility, in the way voter suppression tactics limit political advancement. They’re all part of the same stew, and they all impart the same message: Stay in your place. That is, stay in the places we assign to you. Nothing connotes second-class status more than knowing you can be harmed, injured, maimed, or killed by a state entity without either accountability or punishment.

This is why there is discussion about “defunding” and “dismantling” police departments. No one is in favor of anarchy. Not really. What people are demanding is a reimagining of how we do law enforcement so that a possible drunk sleeping in a car doesn’t end up dead while a white double-homicide and home-invasion suspect from the University of Connecticut is captured without incident.

The international protests over the killing of George Floyd would not have forced the conversations we’re now having had it not happened in the context of a global pandemic and in the midst of a presidential primary and back-to-back-to-back incidents of racially motivated violence. The Covid-era ad slogan that “we’re all in this together” begins to ring hollow even for the least politically engaged among us. Consider these recent news stories:

 

  • While African Americans comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population, we are 30 percent of the coronavirus deaths in the nation. Local efforts by black mayors throughout the south to protect their constituents — from stay-at-home orders to mandatory mask use in public — have largely been overriden by white governors. This despite the fact that black and brown workers are less likely to be able to work from home and are more likely to have jobs that require them to work in unsafe conditions (warehouses, mass transit, nursing homes, food processing facilities and the like).

 

  • A survey by the U.S. Census Bureau found that 38 percent of businesses overall received needed aid through the Paycheck Protection Program, the emergency loan program passed by Congress to help small businesses hurt by coronavirus closures. But a survey of black- and Latino-owned companies by Global Strategy Group discovered that only 12 percent of these businesses received PPP loans.

 

  • On Super Tuesday, voters throughout Harris County, which is 43 percent Latino and 19 percent African American, waited up to six hours to cast ballots. Between 2012 and 2018, Harris County closed 52 polling sites. More recently, voters in and around Atlanta, which is 54 percent black, waited even longer — up to eight hours — to cast ballots in the Georgia primary due to long lines. Given that many black and brown people will have to miss a day of work and wages to vote, advocates have likened these wait times to a back-door poll tax.

 

  • Ten years after a Detroit police officer killed seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones during a no-knock warrant violently served on the wrong address, 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was similarly killed by officers with the Louisville Metro Police in Kentucky. Taylor was sleeping in her bed moments before she was killed; Stanley-Jones had been sleeping next to her grandmother. In 2013 a jury failed to convict Joseph Weekley, the officer who killed Stanley-Jones, of involuntary manslaughter, and charges against him were eventually dropped. Weekley returned to the Detroit Police Department in 2015. To date, no charges have been filed in the Breonna Taylor case. Tens of thousands of no-knock warrants are executed each year as part of a war on drugs that disproportionately targets black communities. Investigative reporter Radley Balko estimates that eight to 10 innocent people die annually due to no-knock warrants.

 

The confluence of these events seemed to demonstrate that, to the larger society, black (and brown) lives actually don’t matter whether we’re taking about our health, economic survival, or our ability to govern our communities. Even when we’re recreating or sleeping, we can still be subject to racially motivated violence.

This ether was already hanging around us, and then Derek Chauvin, hand in pocket, put his knee on George Floyd’s neck. The match was lit, both literally and figuratively.

IV.

So, on the eve of Juneteenth, how hopeful should we be about the apparent reckoning around race we are seeing right now? When corporate entities like the National Football League declare that Black Lives Matter, after years of quashing peaceful protests against police brutality and ostracizing Colin Kaepernick from the league, there’s reason to be cynical. Still, there are signs of progress. The multiracial demonstrators who are in the streets now are pressing for a slate of sweeping changes that were not being broadly discussed in the aftermath of the 1991 Rodney King beating or the acquittals of the officers involved a year later.

There is reason to hope, but I dare not hold my breath. We’ve been here before, the promise of freedom just within reach only for it to be snatched away. The ruse of Juneteenth. The promise of the post-Civil War Reconstruction-era, when the freedmen were supposed to be integrated fully into the American society and economy. What must it have felt like on June 19, 1865, to hear Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger declare “all slaves are free,” then wind up being a sharecropper indebted to a former plantation owner? The Jim Crow era came on the heels of Reconstruction. The Civil Rights Movement ended with Reaganism and the long, slow chipping away at some of the movement’s biggest achievements from affirmative action to voting rights.”

Given the leadership vacuum in the White House, the most promising reforms will likely come at the state and local levels. Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop has taken the Obama Foundation pledge to reform some policing practices, including the use of chokeholds. But he has faced criticism for not engaging local black activists about what reforms they’d like to see, a criticism he has faced in the past. And his reforms nip at the edges; they don’t get to the heart of systemic inequities.

In the end, perhaps it won’t matter. If the tide has truly turned and we’re ready to complete the difficult work of Reconstruction, our leaders and neighbors will join us or get left behind. If that were to happen, in my lifetime, I’d give up Juneteenth — because then I could fully celebrate the Fourth of July.

Downtown Pedestrian Mall to Get a Facelift

June 10, 2020/in Downtown, Food And Drink, header, Latest News, Neighborhoods, News /by Sally Deering

On a hot summer night, Jersey City’s pedestrian mall on Newark Avenue downtown would swing like a jazz quartet. People dined and sipped frosty drinks at outdoor cafes. Families walked their happy-to-be-outside pups, and couples strolled hand in hand after a cozy meal at their favorite bistro. Cut off from gassy transit buses and bumper-to-bumper traffic, the bustling thoroughfare became an urban walker’s delight, one long stretch of people running errands, hanging out with friends, and relaxing over dinner and drinks at trendy bars and eateries.

The mall initially opened in 2015 and turned out to be an economic boon to the city, which expanded it in 2018. But since then, the mall has lost its novelty and not a little of its allure. The strings of crisscrossing white lights that once festively hung over the street are nowhere to be seen. The number of iron picnic tables sprinkled throughout the space has diminished, and gone is the exuberantly painted baby grand piano that beckoned adventurous souls to plink its keys.

But that’s all about to change. With summer approaching and Jersey City residents getting antsy, Mayor Fulop has announced that the retail shops along the pedestrian mall will start reopening for business on Monday, June 15 and that the street will be snazzier than ever.

Plans are to embed lighting fixtures in the street and create a stage area near Barrow Street. The avenue’s surface will change from asphalt to brick. Sidewalks along the mall will be removed to allow for easier access for strollers and wheelchairs as well as a wider expanse for foot traffic and restaurant seating. There will also be aesthetic improvements like tree plantings and pavers.

Work will begin in the fall. Projected to cost $3.5 million, the city is currently completing final design and cost estimates.

But residents and visitors don’t have to wait til the fall to notice other positive changes.

Effective June 15 when New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy lifts current restrictions on restaurants that prohibit them from offering any table service at all, new rules will allow for a limited amount of indoor seating — and for more outdoor seating than they’d been permitted to have before the pandemic in order to make up the difference.

“The Newark Ave expansion will allow for restaurants to maintain their capacity as indoor seating will be limited,” according to Mayor Fulop. “With the weather warming, after nearly three months in quarantine, our residents are understandably eager to get outside and enjoy all Jersey City has to offer, and we are prepared to offer that in a way that maintains the health and safety protocols in place,” he added.

 

To apply for additional sidewalk seating, restaurant owners must fill out a form found on the city’s website. There are certain health and safety protocols to meet as well as any additional guidelines the state supplies once the restrictions are lifted.

“This will benefit the restaurants by giving them room to expand and add seating and help make up for what they lost over the past few months,” Rachel Sieg, Executive Director of the Historic Downtown Special Improvement District says. “By giving them some guidance now, they’ll have what they need in place to be ready to reopen.”

Mayor Fulop says that as the renovation continues, the city will be implementing restrictions on entertainment licenses to make the pedestrian mall more restaurant focused.

“That’s what we’re working through,” he explains. “We didn’t want doctors’ offices opening up repeatedly there. Newark Avenue has its own personality and has become a destination for people from across the river and across the state who come to visit.”

For other news about Downtown Jersey City, see Jersey City Times’ Neighborhoods Section.

Tom Bertoli, Former Fulop Consultant, Charged With Tax Evasion

June 4, 2020/in header, Latest News, News, Uncategorized /by Alexandra Antonucci

Tom Bertoli, a Matawan, New Jersey, businessman and former campaign consultant for Mayor Steven Fulop, is now the subject of a federal investigation for allegedly failing to pay his taxes, announced U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito in a press release Wednesday.

Bertoli, 62, has been charged with two counts of tax evasion, one count of corrupt interference with the administration of the Internal Revenue laws and one count of failure to file a tax return.

Bertoli operated The Doormen Inc., City Street Associates (CSA) LLC and Urban Logistics LLC. Individually and through his companies, Bertoli obtained payments from clients for services provided, including payments from developers and construction firms for expediting services on real estate development and construction projects, primarily in Jersey City.

Bertoli also collected payments from political campaigns for political consulting services across the state, notably acting as an advisor for Fulop’s campaign for Jersey City Council in 2003 and for mayor in 2013.

Bertoli, who is known locally in the Hudson County area as “the janitor” due to his ability to clean up political messes, denied having anything to do with the Fulop administration in a Crain’s New York Business article from 2019, saying “If it doesn’t have to do with a hammer and a nail, I don’t work on it.” Bertoli’s father was implicated in a bribery scheme with a state senator in the ‘80s and became a local legend for refusing to snitch.

According to an article published by Bloomberg in June 2019, a grand jury investigation revealed that “Bertoli’s woes could be politically embarrassing to the mayor.” In the same article, Fulop’s spokeswoman stated that the mayor had had little to no interaction with Bertoli since being elected.

The mayor’s office did not offer a comment at the time of this article’s publication.

Bertoli obtained hundreds of thousands of dollars in gross receipts for calendar years 2009 to 2016.

The complaint alleges that as of April 18, 2017, he had not filed federal tax returns or paid any of the taxes due other than a $5,000 nominal payment in September 2014. He also allegedly used the Urban Logistics bank account for personal expenditures.

Each charge of tax evasion carries a maximum potential penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The charge of corrupt interference with the administration of the Internal Revenue laws carries a maximum potential penalty of three years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The charge of failing to file a tax return carries a maximum potential penalty of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

Authorities have yet to schedule a first appearance for Bertoli before a U.S. magistrate.

For further Jersey City news, click here.

Editorial: Time to Unite Against GrubHub?

May 26, 2020/in header, Latest News, Opinion /by Aaron Morrill

If you haven’t heard, online food ordering platforms like GrubHub and UberEats are in the political doghouse. Not since the financial crisis have we seen as much legislation aimed at a single industry. Cities including New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Seattle and Los Angeles have enacted emergency legislation limiting the fees these companies can charge their client restaurants. On May 7, citing the declared state of emergency, Mayor Fulop, supported by the city council, followed suit with an executive order drastically limiting such fees.

The order will undoubtedly save local restaurants money, but here’s the rub: Once the state of emergency ends, so, too, will the executive order. The fees will return to their previous predatory levels. The problem of strangulating online delivery fees is a long-term problem. It needs a long-term solution.

The moral and political case for a limit on online ordering platforms is compelling. With many restaurants completely closed under the state of emergency, those that remain open are relying solely on takeout and delivery business. This has provided a bonanza for GrubHub and the like, which, armed with piles of venture capital, have gobbled up an increasing amount of your favorite restaurant’s online business, charging anywhere from 15% for simply taking the order to 35% for handling the actual delivery. For a struggling restaurant already hobbled by Covid-19, that’s real money. Before the pandemic, the high fees paid to these middle men were burdensome, but at least restaurants were operating on all cylinders and could rely on more profitable dine-in service and (for some) alcohol sales to help cover fixed expenses. Now, for many eateries these excessive fees are posing an existential threat.

These conditions set the table (no pun intended) for local politicians to step in to protect small businesses from rapacious Silicon Valley billionaires. And here, Jersey City lawmakers outdid themselves, imposing a draconian 10% across-the-board-cap on the online platforms. Thus, where previously GrubHub would pocket nine dollars on a thirty-dollar order, their cut is now three dollars. Now imagine that the order has to go from Downtown to Danforth Avenue in Greenville. You don’t need an MBA to know that three dollars isn’t enough to cover the cost of a driver, his car and his gas. While some services have knuckled under likely in the hope the storm will pass, UberEats has come out swinging and imposed a three-dollar “executive order” fee on Jersey City delivery customers, proving the adage that “there’s no free lunch” (again, no pun intended).

Those of us who own restaurants certainly appreciate the mayor and council’s efforts. However, the ten percent cap isn’t sustainable. And it’s unlikely that the online ordering platforms will put up with these restrictions for long. Under normal circumstances, Jersey City’s executive order would be patently illegal. The U.S. Constitution explicitly prevents a state or municipality from “impairing the obligation of contracts” such as exists between the online delivery platforms and their restaurant clients. Governors and mayors are given a little more leeway during states of emergency. According to Professor Marc Pfeiffer of Rutgers University Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, UberEats or GrubHub could haul the city before a judge. “A judge would decide whether the city had exceeded its authority. The city would have to justify it,” Pfeiffer said.

One need only recall the city’s ill-fated chain-store ordinance that banned the Gap and its brethren from large swaths of Downtown. Four years after the law’s enactment, a building owner dragged the city into federal court claiming the law was unconstitutional and a “publicity stunt.” The city folded, choosing neither to defend nor rewrite the law.

There is a solution, however. And one that could protect local restaurants from predatory fees while still providing delivery service to the entire city long after Covid-19 is a bitter memory: Mayor Fulop could help Jersey City’s restaurants unite and — with the bargaining power of a large group — negotiate lower prices with Grubhub and its peers. For now, let’s call it the “Jersey City Restaurant Co-op.” Sure, it would take buy-in from local restaurants and not a little bit of the mayor’s time and energy. But consider the potential gains. The co-op could decide to give all its business to one provider (say DoorDash) in exchange for better pricing. Or it could do what restaurants in Fort Collins, Colorado did and create their own platform (called NoCo Nosh), thereby circumventing the third party apps altogether. Either way, you have a long-term solution to the problem.

No doubt: Organizing this would take resources and credibility. It would take the city’s involvement and, yes, dedication of the mayor. But during Mayor Fulop’s tenure he has successfully negotiated with any number national businesses to provide services for Jersey City — think Citibike, Via and Airbnb. This kind of innovative public-private partnering is his sweet spot. A deal like this would significantly strengthen Jersey City’s restaurants and create a model for the country. It’s certainly worth a try. How ‘bout it, Mr. Mayor?

Note:  The writer, in addition to being founder and publisher of Jersey City Times, owns Two Boots pizzeria in Jersey City.

News Briefs

Hudson County Community College has been named the recipient of a one-year, $850,000 investment from the JPMorgan Chase. The investment will be utilized for a program the College developed to address the challenges of the economic crisis in Hudson County that were brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. The program is designed to provide lasting improvement in the County’s workforce ecosystem.

Mayor Steven Fulop and the Jersey City Economic Development Corporation (JCEDC) have launched the latest round of emergency funding to provide over $2.5 million in direct aid and support to Jersey City’s neediest residents, regardless of immigration status. The city will partner with  York Street, Women Rising, United Way, and Puertorriqueños Asociados for Community Organization. 

Mayor Steven Fulop is joining forces with Uber to announce a new agreement that will expand residents’ access to COVID-19 vaccinations with free Uber rides to and from Jersey City vaccination sites. Phase 1B includes essential frontline workers and seniors 75 years old and over.

The federal Paycheck Protection Program, which offers businesses loans that can be forgivable, reopened on January 11th. The revised program focuses first on underserved borrowers – minority- and women-owned businesses.

Keep abreast of Jersey City Covid-19 statistics here.

Governor Murphy has launched a “Covid Transparency Website” where New Jerseyans can track state expenditures related to Covid.  Go here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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