Issue 142: A quickie
Includes: JCBOE update (sort of), some articles for you, and the much requested crossword key!
Hi everyone,
This week, we’re gonna have a quickie as life is intruding (aka I have to work on my taxes)… but there’s a few things to bring you up to date on.
One, there’s no real update about the JCBOE situation, except that the DOE is looking into it, the caucus meeting has been canceled, and they’ve (that would be the new “president”) accepted the bid from the law firm that was at the center of the ethics complaint while other, time sensitive issues are still waiting to get resolved. Also the new budget is due on the 20th, no big deal I’m sure. Things are great!
Then, there’s a lot going on about “the line” (aka — and this is the very, very short version — the way that counties print their ballots that give the “establishment” candidates a potential edge over more independent ones). I’ve stayed out of talking about this, since there is so much being written about it, but if you’re confused or would like me to weigh in, please let me know. I’d be happy to write about it, but I just figure everyone is up to their eyeballs in articles about it already. Here’s an article by Nancy Solomon to fill you in, and let me know if you want more.
Lastly, you’d think someone as tall as I am would have even the slightest understanding of how basketball works, and yet I don’t. But the St. Peter’s Peacocks won a really big game yesterday and people are happy — and yay!!! Woo hoo! Strut up! I have no idea what I’m talking about but happy people are great. (Lots of fun tweets I don’t fully understand can be found here.)
Have a fun St. Patrick’s Day!
ICYMI
Really interesting article by local resident Andrew Townsend about the recent development approved for Ogden Ave and residents’ fight with the Planning Board. A quote to make you click: “[W]e have never experienced the ignorance, incompetence, and indifference that has plagued this project.”
I keep meaning to link to this article on Jersey City Today written by a St. Peter’s professor, Why So Much Luxury Housing in a City Where Most Can’t Afford It?
Safe StreetsJC member Tayla Schwartz sent me the following: The [NJ Transit] budget hearings are about to begin. While many of our legislators have come out against the fare hikes, they haven't attended a single hearing about the fare hike. We'd like people to fill out this "send a letter" so that our representatives show up for hearings. Also, the NJ Transit Board meeting is coming up, and representatives need to show up for that as well.
Union City mayor and state senator Brian Stack, who routinely wins his elections by more than 95%, is really mad at several electeds in Hudson County, and the best I can figure is that it has something to do with a guy with a relatively small Youtube channel who lives in Staten Island has been making videos mocking him. Please, someone who knows Stack personally and cares about him, talk him down? He’s doing fine. No reason to nuke North Bergen because some guy with a few thousand views is going after him.
The key! To last week’s crossword! (Listen, if you didn’t know White Mana was the diner of the future, you have to move — sorry! — but if you missed that The Smurfs were at the opening of the Newport Mall in 1987, I wouldn’t take it too hard. Also literally no one got the one about the A. Harry Moore School — that one was just unfair.)