In a development that could mean trouble for Mayor Steven Fulop, a lawyer at the center of a scheme to route money to candidates and elected officials through “straw donors” in exchange for legal work has pleaded guilty and is now cooperating with prosecutors.
Straw donors are used to evade the $2,600 legal contribution limit for individuals and businesses.
In September, northjersey.com reported that in 2013, Fulop and his campaign team received $35,600 in donations from the straw donors. According to the report, the Fulop administration subsequently hired the lawyer, Elizabeth Valandingham, and her firm O’Donnell McCord, to handle its tax appeals, netting the firm $744 thousand in legal fees. Jersey City Times, confirmed many of the donations through a review of ELEC reports.
Valandingham’s law partner, Matt O’Donnell, pleaded guilty in 2018 in connection with a separate bribery scheme that led to the indictment of former Jersey City Board of Education President and Fulop ally Sudhan Thomas.
Under the plea agreement, the Attorney General will recommend that Valandingham be sentenced to a term of probation conditioned upon her serving 364 days in the county jail. She will also forfeit her law license and pay a $75,000 public corruption profiteering penalty. She will be prohibited from any public contracts for a period of 10 years. She is reportedly assisting prosecutors in the continuing investigation.
“By recruiting straw donors and falsifying contract proposals and ELEC reports, this defendant tried to evade our campaign finance and pay-to-play laws,” said Attorney General Grewal. “We will not tolerate those who engage in criminal conduct to skirt these important laws, which are meant to stop politically connected firms from purchasing public contracts with campaign contributions.”
“Fair elections and open public contracts are vital to our democracy, and that is why we have strong laws to safeguard them,” said OPIA Director Thomas Eicher. “This guilty plea reflects our determination to hold dishonest operators accountable if they break those laws and threaten to undermine those critical bulwarks of good government.”
On December 3, Mayor Steven Fulop, local officials, and representatives of environmental groups gathered on a windswept field underneath the Pulaski Skyway to announce the construction of Skyway Park, a thirty-two acre park along the Hackensack River on the former site of the notorious PJP Landfill. Standing quietly among the assembled audience was Mario Verdibello.
Thirty-five years earlier as a young engineer Verdibello had masterminded the cleanup of the chemically contaminated site. Now a new park would feature walking paths along the Hackensack River and a grove of 500 trees to commemorate Jersey City residents who died from Covid-19 but did not receive proper funerals due to safety protocols in place at the time.
Mario Verdibello
But back in 1985 when Verdibello went to work, the idea that the land would one day become a park would have been laughable. Since its closing, the PJP Landfill had literally been on fire, an apocalyptic hellscape belching toxic gas across Route 1 and 9 into the nearby Marion neighborhood. Indeed, the federal government had declared it a Superfund site. Putting the fires out and removing the thousands of barrels of toxic waste would fall to Verdibello and his crew.
I thought it would be interesting to sit down with Verdibello and hear how he got it done.
Verdibello tells the story of the PJP cleanup with the enthusiasm of a proud father. And like any good parent, he has multiple photo albums of his baby. I’ve included some of the images here.
JCT: I understand that you that you got involved with the PJP landfill early on. Can you just talk a little bit about when you first realized it was a problem and something that you needed to get involved with?
Verdibello: It was 1984, and my boss told me that he had a new assignment for me. ‘We’ve got this big job in Jersey City,’ he said. I said, ‘Jersey City, wait a minute! I live in Jersey City. What are you talking about?’ He says, ‘There’s an environmental project at the bottom of Duncan Avenue.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, I live at 47 Duncan Avenue. What the hell are you talking about?
Aerial photo of PJP Landfill before the cleanup
We were having this conversation on the 90th floor of Two World Trade Center. He says, ‘Let’s go to the window, I’ll show it to you.’ So we go to a window, and he says, ‘You see that smoke over there?’ I said, ‘Oh, my God, you’ve got to be kidding me. My wife and I and a bunch of my neighbors have been demonstrating against that problem for something to be done for years.’
And he says, ‘Well, guess what, it’s your job. You’ve got to fix it.’ So, that was my introduction to PJP.
[Verdibello submitted his plan to clean up the site and waited for his boss’s response.]
At the beginning of April, 1985, [my boss] walks into my office with a big smile. And he says guess what? Everybody agrees that your recommended way to go is the best way. My recommended way was to excavate the whole thing. Wet it down with a special wetting agent to kill the deep fires that existed there for decades and then re-compact the whole thing; take away some bad stuff if we found it while we were doing the excavation and then cap the whole thing.
JCT: During the time that this landfill was on fire from the seventies, were you aware of people in and around it getting sick?
Verdibello: Oh, yeah. That’s exactly what drew the attention because this partial combustion gives off carbon monoxide. In fact, it was so bad that many times the traffic on the Pulaski Skyway had to be stopped during rush hour. And that’s why we had demonstrations — myself and my wife included — because when the wind shifted especially in summertime sleeping with your windows open, all of a sudden you’d wake up with your bedroom smelling of smoke like there was a fire around. We had to close the windows in the middle of the summer because this smoke was horrendous. It was very upsetting. So, when we started hearing the word ‘demonstrations,’ we participated.
There was also a big housing project right across from PJP, and those people had been living with those fumes for years, and they were having asthma problems and other respiratory issues.
Verdibello’s team taming the PJP Landfill
JCT: Do you know how many years this had been going on for?
Verdibello: You know, the fires apparently were burning since the seventies, but PJP had been a problem for years according to my father-in-law, who was at the time in his high seventies. He remembers going there as a kid, scratching around for unburned pieces of coal to bring home to his mother to burn. And he remembers that even then it was a mess.
JCT: That’s in the early 1900s.
Verdibello: Yeah, that’s when it started. But the real problem with the fires from what I understand dates back to the seventies.
JCT: Was your contract with the federal government?
Verdibello: No, the contract was with the NJ DEP [Department of Environmental Protection]. They took the responsibility to do something because PJP had been put on the Superfund list, but it was like 13 hundredth down the list. And they said, Jesus, you know, by the time the federal government gets around to remediating PJP, people in Jersey City will be dead from inhalation of this smoke that was coming out. And so, the state decided to actually take it upon themselves to do something in the interim.
And then it was our luck that there was this engineer at DEP by the name of Marwan Sadat who took the initiative to do something.
If it hadn’t been for Marwan, probably the DEP would have done nothing, and we would have waited for God knows how many more years for them to get around to it.
JCT: What was actually burning?
Heavy equipment under Pulaski Skyway
Verdibello: These were deep pyrolytic fires because PJP for years had been used for illegally dumping all sorts of substances. Some of these things started chemical fires down deep.
[Pyrolysis is the thermal decomposition of materials at elevated temperatures in an inert atmosphere.]
JCT: So, they were just spontaneously combusting these chemicals?
Verdibello: Yeah, it was spontaneous combustion, if you will. And now you have to appreciate that in order for me to write the specs, I had to really learn a little bit about this site. But I was not allowed to go on site. It was too risky not only because of the fires and the gas but the risk of craters opening up and swallowing you since the fires were burning underneath. So, I was not allowed to go anywhere near it.
So, we did two things: Number one, I flew over the site several times in a helicopter to see where it was smoking the most, where the hot spots were. And number two, we did what is called a thermographic study, which is a thing that is done during the night in the dark. And we did it with these special sensors from the Pulaski Skyway. I have movies of that, and it gives you goosebumps when you see it because you really see the smoldering hot spots. So, with my observation from a helicopter and the thermographic study, I was able to establish where the really bad areas were.
So, the first step was to really squash down the fires before we got to the excavation or re-compaction. And for that I hired this famous company from Texas called Boots and Coots. They were the ones that were called to put out oil well fires not only in Texas but in Saudi Arabia and all over the world. But I told them that at PJP it had to be done in a very controlled fashion to not only put out the fires and really wet the mass of stuff that we were excavating but also to squash the odors and dust.
Mayor Steven Fulop announcing the plan for Skyway Park
I got the green light to start preparing the engineering specifications so we could actually go out to contract with some subcontractors to do the actual remediation. The plan was to excavate the entire area, douse it with a wetting agent to kill the fires, and remove in the process anything we found that was highly objectionable like highly contaminated material, drums of material, etc., that I had been told by DEP that I may find once I started excavating. And then once we did all that we would re-compact the whole thing, the whole mass of soil and garbage, and then cap it with an impermeable cap, and leave it until such time as the EPA would get around to do the final remediation.
JCT: Do you know specifically what chemicals they were?
Verdibello: [Laughs] You name it, and we found it. When we actually started digging, we found all sorts of terrible stuff that had been dumped there: petrochemical residues, other chemical residues. We even found near the Broadway ramp, picric acid, which is actually an explosive. If you handle it roughly, it could explode. And that was only one of many, many things that we found in there. In fact, the Jersey City Fire Department tried many times to put out the fires by dousing the place with tons of water. And incredibly after a few days the fires would be back worse than before. They were scratching their heads trying to figure out what was going on over here.
What they didn’t realize is was that by hitting the surface of the landfill with these high-powered jets, they were stirring it up. They were thus allowing oxygen to get down to the deep fires. So, while the fire seemed to be squelched on the surface, only a few days later with the additional oxygen, the fires were back worse than ever. So, you knew something was wrong.
Former Jersey City Corporation Counsel Bill Matsikoudis conserved the land for Skyway Park and worked with Mayor Fulop to bring the plan to fruition
Parenthetically, since I lived in Jersey City, I had been breathing those fumes every time the wind changed direction.
JCT: What did you do with all of the chemicals and the drums?
Verdibello: This is another little side story. When I started writing the specification, DEP said to me, ‘Mario when you write this, include a little spec for removing the drums because you may find some drums with objectionable materials.’ So, for the purpose of engineering cost estimates, I’d assumed a thousand drums. And when they saw that they said, ‘Are you crazy? We told you a few drums.’ So, I said, ‘Listen guys, it’s only an engineering estimate. If it’s less, you’re ahead of the game, and it means we will spend less.’ Well, by the time we got through with the actual thing, I found over 5,000 drums that could actually be handled as drums and probably over 20,000 drums that could not be handled as drums because they were rusted and decayed.
JCT: Had, they just buried them?
Verdibello: Yeah, this was all illegal. So, we found at least 5,000 drums that were actually recognizable as drums. And those we picked up using a special drum handling machine. It was like a backhoe fitted with a grabber at the end instead of a bucket. And we grabbed those drums, and then we over-packed them in steel overpacks for safety. And then those drums were sent to licensed facilities. The other drums had deteriorated beyond human recognition. You could see parts of the drum the drum in the contaminated material, so we scooped up many thousands of cubic yards of those highly contaminated materials, and those were actually sent to a licensed facility.
JCT: You capped it with probably some kind of a plastic?
Verdibello: Well, the cap is a composite consisting of three layers. You have initial drainage layer. Then on top of that, you have a compacted and impermeable clay layer. And then on top of that, you have a layer of topsoil to establish and maintain a vegetative cover. The topsoil had to be at least six to eight inches. I think the clay layer was two feet, and there was a drainage layer under it. But the key element was the compacted and impermeable clay layer.
Bill Sheehan of Hackensack Riverkeeper which worked to conserve the land to become Skyway Park
JCT: How many years did the whole process take?
Verdibello: We started in October or early November 1985, and we finished the beginning of 1987, so about 18 months.
I remember the timing because I entered PJP in a contest for the outstanding environmental engineering achievement for 1987 sponsored by the Consulting Engineering Council of New Jersey, and we won.
When the federal government finally came around, they sent their own team to inspect. They found that what we had done was all that could have been done short of removing the whole million- and-a-half of cubic yards of soil there. So, they said that there was nothing else that they could do except continued monitoring.
JCT: Basically, you took that job off the federal government’s plate.
Verdibello: Essentially, yes. What we did as an interim remedial measure was above and beyond that scope. It was in fact as good a final measure as they would have done, so they didn’t do anything else.
JCT: By the way, you speak English like a college professor, but you have a slight accent, just a slight accent. Where were you born?
Verdibello: I was born in Italy. I came to the United States when I was 13 years old not speaking one word of English.
JCT: Did you come straight to Jersey City?
Rendering of the future Skyway Park
Verdibello: No, no. I lived in uptown Manhattan. I went to George Washington High School in Manhattan, and then I actually went to the City College of New York. This is where I got my degree in civil engineering.
JCT: Back in the day when City College was considered the Harvard of the poor?
Verdibello: Yeah, it was the called the Harvard of the proletariat. At that time City College was an incredible institution with one requirement: You had to have a 90 average from high school in order to be accepted. And you had to maintain a minimum of a C average to stay in. If you didn’t, you were expelled to make room for somebody who was more serious about studying than you were.
I married a girl who was born and probably will die in Jersey City. And so she dragged me to Jersey City at the time kicking and screaming, and now Jersey City is my town.
JCT: Fantastic. That’s such an amazing story.
Verdibello: That year-and-a-half was, you know, like the love of my life.
JCT: It’s your magnum opus as an environmental engineer?
Verdibello: Right. And it’s obviously very meaningful work. So, yeah. This was an incredible start of my environmental career, which lasts to this day.
Note: The final remedial work was done and an additional cap implemented in 2011 after the Healy Administration acquired the property. The site is expected to be officiallydelisted from the Superfund in the next year.
This is the final installment of a four-part series. To read earlier installments, begin by clicking here.
“Very Costly Penalties”
For over two years Jersey City developer Peter Mocco had stalled, postured, obstructed, litigated, and cajoled. And by any reasonable measure he had come out ahead. His oversize penthouse—recast by city Zoning Officer Nick Taylor as an attic—was still standing albeit with a few inexpensive “wellness” and “sustainability” tweaks that gave it a patina of environmental and social responsibility.
I was curious what Gerry Bakirtjy and Eric Hofmann, two local architects intimately involved in local development issues, thought of Taylor’s decision.
Said Bakirtjy, “In my professional opinion it isn’t an attic. The definition [of an attic] talks about a sloped roof. Any reasonable person would say this isn’t an attic.”
Hofmann agreed. “The text seems crystal clear to me.”
To drive the point home, Hofmann pointed to a passage in the International Building Code Handbook, that provides that “once such a space is utilized for some degree of occupancy, it is no longer deemed an attic.” With its two kitchens, bathrooms, a game room, a lounge and bar, a reception area, and a tele-conference room, “some degree of occupancy” was the very purpose of Mocco’s penthouse.
No one I talked to could offer an explanation for Taylor’s decision. But what is clear is that after the fact Mocco had succeeded in forcing Taylor to unilaterally change the well-settled definition of “attic” so he could renege on his promise to take down the illegal penthouse. Why would Taylor have agreed to do this?
I decided to put the question to Taylor’s boss, Mayor Steven Fulop, by way of his press secretary Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione. Had the mayor, who is known to have a longstanding relationship with Mocco, interceded on his behalf?
She replied tersely. “Peter Mocco’s actions resulted in the largest penalty ever rendered in the history of Jersey City.” She added that “the Mayor does not get involved in decisions with the Planning Board as it is an independent body. The Board’s strict and very costly penalties imposed on Mr. Mocco due to his violations sends a clear message that Jersey City is not the place to come and try to build outside of approvals, unless you want to pay severely.”
I asked Wallace-Scalcione if I could interview Taylor. I received no response.
Wallace-Scalcione’s claims, though, begged another question. Had Mocco really paid “severely” as she had asserted? Without access to Mocco’s books, arriving at a precise cost-benefit calculation is impossible. But using some commonly known metrics, one can arrive at a rough answer.
Take 333 Grand Street, where Mocco illegally added 6,198 square feet to his penthouse. According to Realtor.com, each of those square feet is currently worth approximately $840. Thus, the penthouse enlargement added the equivalent of $5.2 million in value to the building. After deducting his additional building costs of $1.5 million [assuming an estimated building cost of $250 per square foot], Mocco’s property is now $3.6 million more valuable than it would have been had he followed the law.
Union rat outside Mocco building
In addition, a source close to Mocco reported that he saved approximately $1,000,000 by using the unapproved EIFS (exterior installation finishing system) bringing his total gains to $4.6 million. (In order to keep things simple, this analysis leaves out the numerous other improvements Mocco made without approval.)
In the end, after paying the fine of $580 thousand—apparently the largest penalty ever rendered in the history of Jersey City—Mocco’s gains on 333 Grand Street may have totaled as much as $4.1 million.
Given this windfall, the fine may not have sent the “clear message that Jersey City is not the place to come and try to build outside of approvals” that Mayor Fulop thought it would.
At 245 Newark, Mocco’s gains are a little more difficult to calculate with any certainty. If the mezzanines remain closed off and unusable as the city has apparently ordered, he will undoubtedly take a financial hit. But those who know Mocco consider that outcome unlikely.
Insuring that the mezzanines remain unused would require the city to make yearly inspections for the life of the building. Most observers consider it doubtful that the city will have the will or resources to do so.
Just as Mocco was able to make massive changes to both buildings during construction without the city’s officials knowing about them, so too would he, or a subsequent owner, likely be able to reopen the mezzanines unnoticed. This is because the city doesn’t have enough manpower to inspect new construction let alone follow up on completed buildings.
Commenting on the Mocco case, Ward E Councilman James Solomon said that the city is dealing with a “resource crisis.” Solomon continued, “We don’t have enough construction code officials…The city’s leadership is doing the best it can, but we don’t have the tools.”
Hofmann agrees with Solomon. “As a decade-long Jersey City resident, I believe development is so prevalent there is definitely a staffing issue [in tracking and monitoring projects]. Getting boots on the ground and policing what’s happening is a monumental task.”
And indeed, I asked Wallace-Scalcione if the city had inspected the building. She responded by saying that the penalties against Mocco were being “strictly enforced by Planning and Zoning.” However, when asked for dates of such inspections, the spokeswoman did not respond.
If Mocco reopens the mezzanines as seems likely, he will enjoy another windfall. The spaces added a total of 7,500 square feet of usable space to the building. At $678 per square foot, the additional space may have added as much as $5.1 million in value. After deducting $1.9 million in building costs, Mocco would still have netted $3.2 million in increased property value.
While Mocco did reportedly pay the neighboring building $100 thousand in settlement over its blocked views, he likely offset most or all of that with his unapproved use of EIFS on the façade, which lowered his building costs substantially.
It’s “an attic…or a penthouse or a level”
There was one piece of unfinished business.
To settle his lawsuit with the Planning Board, Mocco had made two concessions. First he agreed to make the “wellness” and “sustainability” changes to 333 Grand Street.
The second concession involved a future building at Liberty Harbor North, 333 Morris Street (not to be confused with 333 Grand Street).
On October 5th, the Morris Street piece of the settlement came before the city council at its caucus. Director of Planning Tanya Marione called in to explain the deal. Her words immediately highlighted the confusion that Taylor had wrought. As punishment for his violations, Mocco, she said, “would lose an attic…or a penthouse or a level. So, it’s a penthouse for a penthouse or a top floor for a top floor.”
No one noticed that Marione had conflated three words” “attic,” “penthouse,” and “top floor.” But it spoke volumes. The words’ differences had been eviscerated in service of Mocco’s need to keep his penthouse, which was now officially an “attic.” Apparently, in Marione’s mind, the words were now interchangeable thanks to Mocco.
Mocco had succeeded in getting the rules changed ex post facto. In building a penthouse over twice the permitted size, he had won a seemingly calculated bet that he could skirt the city’s rules. But he had done one better: With Taylor’s help, he had re-written them.
It isn’t clear whether anyone on the city council fully appreciated the deviousness of Mocco’s feat. But when Marione had finished, Ward C Councilman Richard Boggiano, clearly sensing that Mocco had pulled a fast one, shook his head and said, “What a joke.” City Council President Joyce Watterman laughed. Her words can’t be made out.
And, as it turns out, Boggiano’s reaction was fully justified. A review of the redevelopment plan shows that at 333 Morris Street, Mocco gave up only an “attic story,” not a future penthouse as Marione, Mocco’s lawyers, and the administration wanted to spin it. The zoning didn’t permit a penthouse on the “M class” 333 Morris building.
So, in the end, Mocco with Taylor’s help had outmaneuvered everyone. He had “given up” a “penthouse” on 333 Morris Street that he didn’t have to give up in the first place to save a penthouse at 333 Grand Street he had never had the right to build. It was a trick that would have made illusionist David Blaine proud.
Mocco did not accept Jersey City Times’s request for an interview and declined to answer questions put to him in an email.
Epilogue
Eric Hofmann (who is president of the Village Neighborhood Association in addition to being an architect by profession) commented that, “Peter Mocco was the straw that broke the camel’s back…Now we are all poised and alert.”
“The big lessons already learned from our experience have to do with vigilance on behalf of the community” because “there’s no mechanism in place for the city to catch deviations during construction.”
But some would ask whether the future that Hofmann describes is a solution. Should neighborhood associations have to shoulder the responsibility for policing developers’ compliance with the zoning laws, a core responsibility of the city?
Mocco looks on (in grey sport jacket) as Mayor Fulop speaks at October, 2020 fundraiser at Surf City.
The building 333 Grand Street is a prime example of the pitfalls of such an approach. The often-litigious Van Vorst Park Association was apparently lulled into grudging acceptance of Mocco’s behavior believing that the fix was in. Architect Tom Ogorzalek, who, along with his architect-wife Ceci De Leon, heads up the VVPA construction committee, explained, “I reached out to somebody at city planning and said what’s the story with this? They said it’s a fait accompli, it’s a legal matter; nothing can be done.”
Of course, had the city forced Mocco to take down the penthouse and deconstruct his mezzanines, some feel a message would have been sent that the city was serious about enforcing its rules. Then, the thinking goes, civilian enforcement of the zoning laws would be less necessary. But the city appears to have little incentive to hold developers’ feet to the fire when so much real estate money finds its way into the campaign war chests of city officials.
The “Coalition for Progress” political action committee linked to Mayor Fulop and managed by his wife’s business partner has received 3.2 million in donations largely from developers. Dixon Advisory, a property owner and developer in Jersey City which figures prominently in a scathing article about the mayor in Bloomberg, gave the PAC $300 thousand. Roseland/Mack Cali donated $250 thousand. Many other developers have made contributions to the Coalition for Progress ranging from $15 thousand to $50 thousand dollars.
Whether the mayor pressured Taylor to cut Mocco a break is unknown. His relationship with Mocco is opaque. While he has used Mocco’s Zeppelin Hall and Surf City bars almost exclusively for local fundraisers and victory celebrations, he or his committee did pay for the use of these venues on several occasions, according to public records.
I asked Wallace-Scalcione whether the mayor has received cash or “in-kind” donations from Mocco. She did not respond.
There are few people familiar with Jersey City who haven’t heard of Peter Mocco. His ambition, audacity and cynicism are the object of both derision and grudging respect. How, people wonder, does this guy get away with it again and again?
In a 2012, The Jersey Journalwrote, “With his political acumen, Mocco has been sought out by almost every city administration. What is the main thing people should know? Whatever Peter wants, Peter gets.”
It appears that nothing has changed.
Header image is of faux stone façade at 333 Grand Street.
Ron Leir assisted in the preparation of this article.
It’s hard to deny the initial allure of the mayor’s plan to build Liberty Science Center High School, a $45 million “state-of-the-art” facility that would “offer skill-centric science, technology, engineering, and math classes for 400 science-talented high school students in grades 9–12.” Throw in the promise of “a work education program” for students at “200-plus technology startup companies,” and it seems like a no brainer, a “lay up” in the mayor’s parlance.
But like that house you came close to buying that was bigger than you needed and way more money than you could afford, the more you think about the mayor’s latest splashy project, the more you realize it doesn’t make sense.
Let’s start with the cost, which is attracting the lion’s share of outrage on social media. The memorandum of understanding (“MOU”) commits Jersey City to kicking in $2 million per year for thirty years for the operation of the county-run school. At first blush, it doesn’t sound like that much in the context of the city’s $628 million budget and the recently adopted $827 million Jersey City Schools budget. And if, as the mayor does, you divide that $2 million by the 240 students from Jersey City who are guaranteed to attend, it looks like a terrific deal. It’s a huge discount when compared with what Jersey City Schools spend per student, the mayor says.
But there are problems. First there’s the simple matter of the mayor’s math. Sure, the cost would be less per student if the board of ed were to cut the school budget by its cost to educate 240 students. But the Jersey City School’s administration has, as far as we know, made no such commitment. If the school budget doesn’t go down and the city spends more, that’s no savings at all.
Then there’s the problem brought up by Ward C Councilman Richard Boggiano. Why is there no similar commitment from the other Hudson County municipalities that would send their students to the school? Jersey City taxpayers have every right to an answer.
Apart from the cost, there’s the equally important question of whether another gleaming, tricked-out, high school is what Jersey City or Hudson County, for that matter, needs. Currently, only 49.7 percent of Jersey City students meet or exceed state English language arts expectations and 33.6 percent of Jersey City students meet or exceed state math expectations. Only 75.3 percent of high school students graduate in four years.
These catastrophic numbers speak not to the need for more programs for high-performing students who already have multiple options including McNair, Infinity, High Tech and County Prep but to the need for massive intervention with the many at-risk students.
Finally there’s timing. The potential attraction of the SciTech site for the school would be the presence of “200-plus technology startup companies” that would theoretically provide internship and employment opportunities to students. Building the school before those businesses are a reality would be taking a huge risk. Let’s hope they materialize. But if they don’t, the school will end up an out-of-the-way white elephant.
Mayor Fulop has demonstrated a fondness for large, newsworthy projects be it the massive Bayfront development, the new police headquarters or the construction of Skyway Park. These hugely expensive projects have been announced at the very same time that the budget for youth recreation has been cut. One can only imagine the after-school programs and facilities that could be built with even a fraction of the funds going towards them.
If the mayor wants to improve educational outcomes in Jersey City, he will focus not on shiny “branding” opportunities like Liberty Science Center High School but on the thousands of struggling Jersey City kids crying out for his help.
Mayor Steven Fulop and his city council nemesis Councilman-at-Large Rolando Lavarro sparred yesterday over the mayor’s plan to fund the operation of a new “state-of-the-art” public high school adjacent to Liberty Science Center.
At issue during the semi-monthly council caucus meeting was a resolution that would commit the city to contributing $2 million every year for thirty years towards the operation of the public school, which will be run by Hudson County Schools of Technology (HCST) which currently operates five schools open to county residents.
Along with Liberty Science Center, the school will be part of the future SciTech Scity, a 30-acre “innovation campus” billed as a “future technology hub for students, innovators, entrepreneurs, and scientists.” According to the administration, the school will “offer skill-centric science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) classes for 400 science-talented high school students in grades 9–12.” The administration claims that students will have access to “a work education program” at “200-plus technology startup companies…that will call SciTech Scity home.”
The school would be built with the proceeds of a $45 million bond offering.
Before yesterday’s caucus, activists like Chris Gadsden, principal of Lincoln High School, questioned the mayor’s plan. “I find [the plan] to be a little bit disrespectful to the budgetary process that’s taking place right now where the Jersey City Board of Education is asking the city to come through on its commitments to fully fund the Jersey City Schools.”
In a letter to Hudson County View, McNair Academic High School Athletic Director Kristen Zadroga-Hart asked “why are we paying the county to build and run a school that will house students from outside of Jersey City on top of the money we already pay from our County taxes? Why not invest that money in our own Jersey City Public School students?”
Several council members expressed concern that Jersey City was shouldering too much of the financial burden given that the school would be open to students from across the county. Ward C Councilman Richard Boggiano said he supported the school but added, “if you’re going to include all 11 other municipalities in the county, they should be kicking in also.”
Council President Joyce Watterman said, “My concern is for the kids who may need extra help to get to that level to even get into a school like this. Lavarro concurred, opining that if standardized tests were the measure for admission, the school would not provide “an equitable opportunity.”
To these concerns, Paul Hoffman, the President and CEO of Liberty Science Center, told the council members, “We’ve already raised $300,000 for 7th and 8th graders who are really into science, but maybe their skills in math are behind some of the other children who are entering the school. So we will work with them to get their skills up so that they can enter the school on equal footing with the other students.”
Hoffman said students would be admitted based upon “science interest and science talent” but that the county had yet to develop the specific criteria.
Hoffman also said that a program in the works called “High Schools of the Future” would train Jersey City students “for 21st century jobs that they could get when they graduate” and involve commitments from employers to hire such students out of the schools.
Lavarro said, “I’m not in favor of a county school. I would like to see every single seat go to Jersey City kids.”
In a similar vein, Ward E Councilman James Solomon questioned why the city would only get a portion of the seats having donated thirteen acres of land for SciTech Scity.
With Hoffman fielding a barrage of questions, Fulop asked if he could jump in and comment.
According to Fulop, Hudson County has committed to allocate sixty percent of the available spots in the school to Jersey City students. “Hopefully it’s more than that.” Normally, based upon its population, Jersey City would receive forty percent of the seats in a county school.
Fulop called it a “gross misrepresentation” to link the city’s donation of land to the plan for the high school. “The idea behind [donating the land] was not just the high school…it was an entire ecosystem that would create scientists… and foster a global brand for Jersey City around science and technology.” The mayor predicted that the 200-plus businesses incubated at SciTech would build their headquarters in and around Jersey City.
“We explored with them this apparatus because there was no other mechanism to create the same kind of educational opportunity, the same kind of flexible curriculum, and we’re having a cost savings for Jersey City residents.”
As to the cost, Fulop said that the $2 million per year “is a massive discount to what the Jersey City taxpayers pay per school…less than $10,000 per student is a huge discount to what we pay for the Jersey City public school system.”
“This is a good thing. And it’s really sad that it’s falling in the social media world into a political conversation.”
Both Fulop and Hoffman said that the previous Jersey City Public Schools administration had been offered the opportunity to build the school but that there hadn’t been a funding mechanism by which it could be done. Nor, Fulop said, did the Jersey City Schools have a way to create “the same flexible board and the same flexible curriculum.”
The mayor called the school a “layup” for the residents and taxpayers.
To Solomon’s concern that the city doesn’t have a written promise from the county to guaranty the number of Jersey City seats, Fulop said that that’s the mechanism used at the county’s Explore 2000 School. “They’ve kept their word and exceeded it every year.”
Hoffman noted that private philanthropists have donated $5 million dollars to a public school. “They don’t have control over this school. That is something which is very unusual that we’ve been able to bring to this.”
“This is not at the expense of the Jersey City public school system.” said Fulop. “We have committed a lot… in the last year alone.”
Lavarro said he wanted to look at the neighborhood and demographic breakdown of students admitted to the Explore 2000 School. “If that’s the model for admission that’s going to be utilized…to make sure that that’s the model that you want for admission to go into this proposed county STEM school.”
The mayor said he had promised Council President Watterman that the city would “set up a program to make sure that the south side of the city actually has an infrastructure around it to support children actually getting into this school.”
Lavarro called the mayor’s promise to Council President Watterman “a recent conversation” that “didn’t go into the overall planning.” Fulop called it “an absolute false statement.”
Fulop said that Lavarro, as former Jersey City Redevelopment Authority chairman, was “the architect of the deal” and knew that making it a county school was an option. “The only thing that’s changed is that it’s an election season now.”
Resolution 21-260 is on the agenda for tomorrow night’s meeting of the Municipal Council.
A lawsuit brought to declare as unconstitutional the grouping together of party-endorsed candidates in primary elections has taken a step forward. Chief Judge Freda L. Wolfson of the Federal District Court of New Jersey has signed a scheduling order providing the timeline for a key step in a lawsuit that has garnered statewide attention. The defendants have been given a March 29 deadline by which they must move to dismiss the case.
According to the lawsuit, New Jersey is alone among the states in assigning primary candidates endorsed by the party leader of each county to an official vertical “line.” The lawsuit is asking the court to strike down the practice as a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and the Civil Rights Act.
Last week, the Jersey City Municipal Council passed a resolution sponsored by Ward E Councilman James Solomon supporting the lawsuit. The resolution passed with only two votes in favor; those of Solomon and Councilman-at-large Rolando Lavarro.
Council-members Mira Prinz-Arey, Yousef Saleh, Daniel Rivera and Richard Boggiano all abstained, citing the need for more information and further deliberations. Their “Team Fulop” colleague, Hudson County Democratic Organization Chair Amy DeGise, who will be running for Jersey City council-at-large on the mayor’s re-election slate, would stand to lose significant power if the lawsuit is successful.
Mayor Fulop’s office has not responded to a request for comment.
Jersey City’s municipal elections are “non-partisan” and group candidates on the ballot by office. Thus, the ballot design avoids conferring an actual or implied endorsement from the party or a state or national candidate. The line appears in county, state and federal elections.
Hector Oseguera
Hector Oseguera was a case in point last year when he mounted a primary challenge for the congressional seat currently held by Albio Sires. Sires was endorsed by the HCDO and was placed directly underneath Joe Biden and Cory Booker. Sires went on to win with 68 percent of the vote to Oseguera’s 28 percent.
According to attorney Brett Pugach, who along with co-counsel Yael Bromberg brought the lawsuit, Oseguera’s result was pre-ordained by his ballot position. “Getting on the county line has become virtually synonymous with winning the election.”
For Pugach, the implications are dire for democracy. “What you end up with is a system where those who are seeking office really don’t have to represent the people. The only thing they really need to do to maintain their position is to appease the party chairs.”
Pugach relied on research by Rutgers University Associate Professor Julia Sass Rubin showing that a candidate’s “share of the vote varied by as much as 50 percentage points based on whether or not they were on the county line.”
Sass would probably concur that Oseguera was running at a distinct disadvantage when his opponent was grouped with Biden and Booker. In her report she notes that “the county line is further advantaged by the placement of better-known candidates, such as those running for President, U.S. Senator, or Governor at the top of the line and the inclusion of candidates for most or all of the offices on the ballot.”
Ballot with party line
Taking a more nuanced view of the line is Matthew Hale, an associate professor of political science at Seton Hall and coincidentally a councilman in Highland Park, NJ, who ran himself on the line.
“Parties and local parties tend to have a moderating influence. One of the things we would see from getting rid of the line is you would have either more progressive candidates for the Democrats and, if the Republicans wanted to get rid of the line, they would probably have more conservative candidates. When parties are stronger, you get less controversial and less polarized candidates.”
But, he adds, “I think there’s no doubt that the line is not idealized democracy.”
“We’re in an era right now where people are impatient for change on both sides of the political spectrum. The institutions that govern us are designed to move slowly. If you get rid of things like the filibuster or the line there is less of this institutional barrier to change. That means you can have it swing one way today, and tomorrow it can swing another way,” Hale explains.
For Oseguera, getting more progressive candidates elected is exactly the point.
“Running off the line creates nearly insurmountable disadvantages for candidates not chosen by the political bosses.”
Oseguera charges that progressive candidates like himself were double crossed when, despite a promise to the contrary, the party put Joe Biden on the HCDO line.
“This deceit reveals how necessary the line is to maintaining power in Hudson County and how the machine will do anything to protect their hold on that power.”
Jersey City Times reached out to the HCDO for comment but has not received a response.
In a new report, Jersey City had more excessive force complaints than Newark over a five year period, according to northjersey.com. When compared to Newark, Jersey City also sustained many fewer complaints against police officers over the same period.
Paterson Press looked at five years of Internal Affairs reports for New Jersey’s three largest cities. From 2015 through 2019 Jersey City had 123 excessive force complaints, Newark had 122 and Paterson, 156.
Adjusted for population, Jersey City’s rate of excessive complaints over the period was higher than Newark’s at .47 per 1,000 residents compared to Newark’s rate of .43 per 1,000 residents. Paterson’s rate was substantially higher than both, at 1 per 1,000 residents.
Jersey City came in slightly higher for excessive force complaints despite having substantially less violent crime than Newark, according to FBI statistics.
At 145,710, Paterson has a substantially smaller population than Newark (281,054) and Jersey City (261,940).
According to the report 3% of excessive force complaints were sustained in Jersey City compared with 19% for Newark and only 1% for Paterson.
The lion’s share of excessive force complaints in all three cities were filed by residents.
Ward E Councilman James Solomon and Ward A Councilwoman Denise Ridley have been working together on an ordinance that would create a Civilian Complain Review Board to investigate alleged incidents of police misconduct. The ordinance was withdrawn from the council agenda last month in order to make changes to the method for choosing members. Assemblywoman Angela McKnight is sponsoring a bill that would give a CCRB subpoena power, something New Jersey law currently prohibits. Mayor Steven Fulop has come out in favor of the creation of such a board.
The report cautioned that such statistics are considered to be only one method of evaluating police conduct in a particular city.
He was here for just 15 months, but the impact Jeffrey Trzeciak had as director of the Jersey City Public Library will likely be felt much longer.
That was the theme of an outpouring of plaudits from colleagues and patrons alike voiced at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Jersey City Public Library Board of Trustees marked by the director’s last official appearance.
Trzeciak, who took over for Priscilla Gardner as the city’s library head on Nov. 18, 2019, will return to his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, to run the Dayton Metro Library.
At the JCPL board session, residents Moriah Kinberg, Bev Brown, Eleana Little, Arlene Stein, and Eiko La Boria praised the outgoing director for advancing library programs that focused on the city’s diversity even as the pandemic forced closure of branches.
“Congratulations on excelling during a crisis,” said Brown. “I am a very appreciative patron.”
The speakers urged the library trustees to conduct a transparent search nationwide for a replacement with expertise comparable to the departing director’s.
JCPL bookmobile driver Eddie Perez, president of AFSCME Council 52, Local 2265, representing library employees, credited Trzeciak with having “inspired us all throughout a very difficult time, and we shined.” Under the director’s leadership, Perez said, staffing “has grown dramatically.” Trzeciak “has accomplished in 15 months what no other director has in my 43 years of service at the JCPL,” Perez said.
Rachel Paulus, the JCPL’s reference/LGBTQ community outreach librarian, who previously worked with her boss at the Newark Public Library, said Trzeciak helped the library develop “the second-largest LGBTQ library in the state. I’m excited to see where we go next.”
And JCPL board president Al Anton said, “News of your leaving stunned us” and added he was grateful “for all the good staff you put into place.”
Trzeciak was hired in November 2019 to considerable fanfare. Prior to arriving, he headed up the Newark Public Library where he increased grant funding by almost $2.5 million. He received the Director Recognition Award from the New Jersey Association of Library Assistants in 2018.
Jeffrey Trzeciak
Trzeciak also served as University Librarian at Washington University in St. Louis where he founded “Documenting Ferguson,” a digital repository chronicling protests and other events that cropped up throughout the country in response to the shooting of Michael Brown. For that work he received the Innovation Award from the National Digital Stewardship Alliance in 2015.
While at Washington University he raised he raised $30 million for critical renovations, $10 million more than his goal.
Mayor Steven Fulop, who attended Tuesday’s meeting in his capacity as an ex-officio JCPL trustee, offered no public tribute and left early after participating in an hour-long private caucus with JCPL trustees on a personnel issue. Library spokesman Shane Smith said that relations between the pair have been amicable.
Asked why the mayor failed to thank the director for his service—a traditional political ritual—Smith said, “You’d have to ask the mayor about that.”
The mayor’s office has not responded to Jersey City Times’s request for comment.
In his final director’s report, Trzeciak said it was “an absolute joy and honor” to have worked with all JCPL board members. He said he took pride in having kept his pledge to keep JCPL staff safe and employed during the pandemic and to maintain the library’s connection to the community at large.
He lauded workers for keeping branches “clean, functioning, safe, and secure” during the health crisis; praised IT staff for distributing digital hotspots to patrons in need and providing laptops to staff to help serve patrons; hailed communications aides for updating residents on services; hailed branch staff and the bookmobile operator for helping the library become the “first in New Jersey to go curbside” with book pickups and drop-offs; and thanked the grant writer for finding outside revenue sources.
During his tenure, Trzeciak said the library acquired its “millionth book,” thereby achieving the largest collection of books and also of Spanish-language books in the state; gained “significant” new donors; forged partnerships with various community groups; initiated a $10 million renovation of the main branch; added new staff including many locals and “forty percent people of color”; and became the first in the state to eliminate fines for overdue items.
But Trzeciak said he felt his biggest achievement was “the thousands of hours” of virtual programming assembled by staff resulting in more attendees at the library’s online events. Higher costs for COVID-related expenses such as protective shielding at branches will be reimbursed with federal aid.
Trzeciak’s last day on the job will be March 24. The trustees have yet to name a temporary replacement. Whether a search will be undertaken for a permanent director or even whether the trustees want a new permanent leader is still unknown.
In the meantime, trustees authorized the employment of Alison Blumenfeld as head of information services for the reference department and programming for adults and outreach at $75,000 a year; Jessica Campbell as social worker at $54,953 a year; and Ridika Butler as security guard at $28,702 a year.
Last night, with only two votes in favor and four abstentions, the city council approved a resolution supporting a change in the way candidates for office are listed on the ballot. Sponsored by Ward E Councilman James Solomon, the resolution calls for “the elimination of rows, line and columns” that research shows tend to advantage party favorites at the expense of independent candidates.
In a 2020 paper, Rutgers University Associate Professor Julia Sass Rubin found that under the current system, candidates placed in the coveted “county line” or “party line” have an automatic advantage over those who don’t “regardless of the office being sought.” In order to receive such ballot placement, the candidate must be approved by the mayor and party chairperson, in the case of Jersey City, Mayor Steven Fulop and Hudson County Democratic Party Chairperson Amy DeGise.
In January, a coalition of progressive organizations and candidates filed a lawsuit which claims that the current ballot design process violates several constitutional rights, including freedom of association and equal protection.
Team Fulop members Mira Prinz-Arey, Yousef Saleh, Daniel Rivera and Richard Boggiano abstained, making approval of the resolution possible with only the affirmative votes of Solomon and Councilman Rolando Lavarro. Council President Joyce Watterman, Councilwoman Denise Ridley, and Councilman Jermaine Robinson were absent.
Saleh asked “what is the line going to be replaced with?” Both Saleh and Rivera objected to the resolution’s mentioning of Bayonne Mayor Jimmy Davis’s recent announcement that Assemblyman Nick Chiaravalloti would be removed from the party line in the June 8th primary in favor of a William Sampson IV.
Said Solomon, “At the end of the day, voters should pick their representatives, not the other way around. And the line provides such a strong advantage to the party machine across the whole state that it really undermines the core idea of democracy.”
The resolution had overwhelming support from public speakers. Mark Devins noted the many great musicians produced by New Jersey but complained that “our ballot design is not something worth celebrating.”
There was more debate from the public on an emergency resolution imposing a rent increase freeze on regulated apartments, excluding owner-occupied homes with 2 to 4 units, and prohibiting the collection of penalties for late rent payments.
Yvonne Balcer called the measure “nothing but socialism.” “Where is my tax freeze?” she asked.
Ron Simoncini of the Jersey City Property Owner’s Association complained that the council had not studied who needed relief from rent increases and late penalties. “We see that many people people who are on unemployment received greater benefits than they got as wages when they worked.” He claimed that many people who had kept their jobs had stopped paying rent because “there is no threat of eviction.”
The majority of speakers, however, sided with the ordinance. Eleana Little offered that “to abandon our most vulnerable residents at this time and exacerbate the problem would be a moral failure.”
Today the mayor announced the launch of an online application process for Jersey City Youth Works,a multi-program initiative providing summer employment and enrichment opportunities to more than 3,000 youth, ages 15-24 years.
This year’s Youth Works program will focus on outdoor jobs at the city’s two public pools, six summer camps, and various sports leagues. Working in partnership with the Department of Recreation & Youth Development, the Division of Parks will also assign Jersey City Youth Works participants to park maintenance with the goal of ensuring that “safe, clean spaces are available for athletes, campers, and park-goers throughout the city,” according to today’s press release.
The application process for Jersey City Youth Works begins with the online application, which is now open through April 11, 2021. Individuals who are selected are then interviewed by representatives of participating organizations.
Department of Recreation & Youth Development programs including basketball, soccer, track & field, tennis, skateboarding and bucket drumming, are set to return the week of March 15, 2021. To apply, go here.
Summer camps will soon be offered at six locations citywide: Berry Lane Park, Enos Jones Park, Bayside Park, Martucci Field, Pershing Field, and Thomas McGovern Park (Country Village).
Said Mayor Fulop, “We are making strides towards a return to normalcy, which is particularly critical for our youth. We’ve worked to safely bring back our youth development and sports programming in order to empower our young residents who are at a pivotal age, because providing this hands-on approach to professional development will ultimately help shape their career paths and long-term goals.”
