Issue 195: I'm not mad, just disappointed.
Sighhhh. Prinz-Arey steps down/gets a new gig, errors re the upcoming JCBOE meeting and voting stuff, a helicopter tragedy, and more
Good morning! Well, a whole bunch of things happened this week that just sort of bummed me out. Also, this weather? Let’s just say my hopes are sky high for some May flowers soon enough. Anyway, I hope you’re doing well and as always, thank you for reading! — Amy
Not mad just yet, but preparing to be disappointed
Ward B Council member Mira Prinz-Arey abruptly announced on Thursday that she was stepping down, effective basically immediately, to become the new head of the Jersey City Economic Development Corporation:
“It has truly been the honor of my life to serve as your councilperson, and I am honored to continue my work for Jersey City in a different capacity,” Mira Prinz-Arey said in a statement.
“In my new role with the JCEDC, I look forward to advancing the five-year plan recently approved by the state. We will support for-profit and non-profit businesses of all sizes leveraging UEZ funding to drive economic development across all parts of the city.”
[…]
The mayor’s office indicated that she will be vacating her council seat to start her new job on Monday, April 14th.
Applicants for the position at the EDC were accepted through mid February according to this article on the topic, and here is the job description if you’d like to know more about it. No salary is noted.
Prinz-Arey was facing a really rough time running for re-election in Ward B this year. Four years ago, she narrowly beat DSA candidate Joel Brooks by only a couple hundred votes, and she was not invited to be part of the slates of either James Solomon or Bill O’Dea, leaving her with few options. With Brooks running with the endorsement of O’Dea this time, she was going to be facing a lot of heat. None of Fulop’s slate members really have their own fundraising in place, so the idea of running without that support had to be pretty overwhelming. In some ways, this position makes a lot of sense for her to take, at least from a personal POV (from a “good government” position… well, I leave that up to you).
So, what happens to the seat now? Technically, it’s up to the city council to pick a new member, but typically they go with whoever Fulop puts forward — remember that Fulop’s slate holds a strong majority on the council and they generally vote for whatever the mayor puts before them. I say “typically,” because they’ve had to do this twice now under Fulop’s tenure, the first to replace former Ward B council member Chico Ramchal after he got into a drunk driving accident, and then Ward D council member Michael Yun after he passed away.
I was trying to remember how things went down when Ramchal left, so I looked up some old issues of the Jersey Journal at that time. Back when that happened in 2016 (I was so much younger then!!!!; John Hallanan would be chosen to fill the seat which, somewhat ironically, Prinz-Arey also applied for), here’s how it’s described as working: the city solicited applicants, getting about ten resumes, out of which Fulop interviewed four candidates. The one he picked was then presented to the council and they voted to approve him.
It’s funny to go back to articles from then and read about where the various council members were on this issue. Rich Boggiano — who at the time was not on Fulop’s slate and actually had the reputation of being a strong critic of the mayor, but then in the next election would go on to join his slate, only to now flip and join the slate of Jim McGreevey, Fulop’s sworn enemy, for the upcoming election — spoke out about the process used to pick Hallanan. Rolando Lavarro — then an ally of Fulop’s and a member of his slate who later denounced the slate, ran as an independent and lost, and is now running with James Solomon — supported the mayor’s ability to run the search the way he did:
At last week's council meeting, Boggiano, a frequent Fulop critic, blasted the administration for seeking resumes and interviewing prospective appointees without involving council members. This elicited some pushback from his council colleagues.
"Just keep doing your fake grandstanding and pretending you know what the process is," said Council President Rolando Lavarro, a Fulop ally. "Clearly, you don't."
"Rolando, cut it out," Boggiano replied.
"Would you knock it off, Rich?" Lavarro shot back.
"That's right, Rolando," Boggiano said. "I'm not giving away the city like you." [Link]
Fun! In another story from that time, it was floated that Jim McGreevey himself — then described as a “key all[y]” of the mayor’s (now they hate each other) — might take the position. McGreevey said no.
In 2020, after the death of Michael Yun, it was announced that two council members were going to hosting interviews for the vacancy, which would be available for the public to view online:
Two Jersey City councilmen will interview candidates for the seat vacated by the late Ward D Councilman Michael Yun.
Councilman at large Rolando Lavarro and Ward E Councilman James Solomon will conduct interviews with four candidates who have expressed public interest in becoming the next Heights councilperson until a special election is held in November.
It’s hard to remember exactly how this played out, what that being 2020 aka The Worst Year Ever (so far!) — I had to dig up more articles because my brain just wouldn’t cooperate with me. They did go ahead and interview potential candidates and make those interviews available to the public. But in a subsequent story, the following was reported:
Despite two councilmen’s plans to interview candidates to replace the late Michael Yun on the City Council, the council president and mayor have selected a former Board of Education candidate for the Ward D seat.
Council President Joyce Watterman has nominated Yousef Saleh, a lifelong Jersey City Heights resident, to fill the Ward D seat until a special election in November. The City Council will vote Thursday during a special meeting to determine if Saleh will take the helm of the Heights council seat.
The ensuing vote to eventually install Saleh didn’t go super smoothly, with it eventually passing 6-2 (Solomon and Lavarro voted no), after an initial vote to slow things down and table the vote failed 5-3 (Solomon, Lavarro, Boggiano all voting no on that one).
The way the vote played out seems to have left at least one Fulop slate member in a contemplative state:
“This might sound odd as a member of the council, but I feel like, as a council – in this case – we dropped the ball. The council president didn’t drop the ball because she made the nomination. So, this wasn’t something that was rushed because we knew that we had a certain amount of time to fill this seat,” said Ward A Councilwoman Denise Ridley.
“And if there were other people that we wanted to nominate, if there was a process that we wanted to put in place, then we had time to do that – and we didn’t – and now we’re up against the clock and all of these different things are coming out.”
She also called for a better decision making process by the council as a whole going forward.
I mean, agree — and now (in 2025) would be a great time to push for “a better decision making process by the council as a whole going forward,” especially now that Ridley is running on Solomon’s slate and one would assume he’d push for her to wait for a more transparent process when replacing Prinz-Arey. I mean, I’m hoping that’s how this works.
More on that vote, and the overreach Fulop was being accused of at the time:
Furthermore, Solomon said he felt is was “improper” for Fulop to vet candidates before he and Watterman endorsed Saleh on Monday, given that the nomination is a council decision.
“My complaint in the process, and I think why so many members of the public are upset, I’ll just be frank, is the way that the mayor handled it. This is a council decision, by law, and he was posting name of people that reached out to him then blasting out a press release with a recommendation,” he explained.
“And if you are trying to argue that this is an open, transparent process – where everybody had a fair shot to make their case … that didn’t convey that.”
So look. The process in 2016 was maybe not super great, and the same thing played out in 2020 in a way that was even less great. But third time’s a charm, right? Here we are, nearly 10 years after the first time we went through this, and we’re gonna do better this time? I mean clearly, this time we’ll have an open process where the council will be fully involved in soliciting resumes and choosing a potential replacement, and the mayor can chime in with his thoughts and ideas but he’ll just be one voice among many, right? And the public will have a chance to see the whole process and have faith in it… right?
By Friday night — so about 30 hours after Prinz-Arey’s announcement she was stepping down occurred — there was already a name making the rounds as her replacement. Is this accurate? Just a rumor? Who knows. But I’m not feeling great about any of this.
Error #1: JCBOE’s upcoming meeting
Well, the situation with the Board of Ed’s budget just keeps getting more and more confusing. Remember how I mentioned that there was a meeting coming up this week to discuss it? Well.. I got this from a reader:
I had wondered about the mixed messaging about the JCBOE Public Budget Hearing date and wrote to the Acting BA and the Board President on April 3. I had not heard back on this by the weekend, so went with the date as posted on the JCBOE website front-page calendar.
Once the District's internet was partially restored on Monday, April 7, Acting BA Dr. Luce replied that the public budget hearing is scheduled for April 30, as listed on the calendar from the March 19 School Board meeting. She thanked me for bringing the other website misinformation to her attention, and she has since gotten that changed. The April 16 mention of budget hearing is gone, and only the regular workshop/meeting is listed. However, they have not advertised/posted the correct April 30 date.
Of course it is still true that the budget can be addressed during GENERAL public comments at the April 16 regular School Board meeting.
(The NJ Dept. of Education calendar states the official public hearing should not happen before April 24...and there is precedent for the Board to add additional public hearings and still meet its early-May deadline for passing a final budget.)
Just to recap: last week, on the district’s schedule of meetings, April 16th was marked as the time they were going to discuss the budget, and I heard from a number of you that you were willing to go to that meeting and offer public comment.
However, now the mention of the budget discussion on the schedule is gone. If you look on the right hand column of the April 16th meeting, it used to say that the meeting that day was specifically focused on discussing the budget; now it reads “workshop meeting/regular meeting.” Meanwhile, the meeting that they’re putting aside to specifically discuss the budget — April 30th — has not been added to the list. And yet, that’s the meeting they want people from the public who want to discuss the budget to show up to.
This is incredibly upsetting. The public has every right to show up and be heard about the budget and the district ought to be doing everything they can to facilitate that and encourage it. As this reader points out, you can certainly still go to the April 16th meeting and give your comments, but it’s disheartening to see this level of confusion and messiness. (If you would like to make a statement at either meeting, here are the rules just FYI.)
I’m a broken record at this point but I’m just going to keep saying it: there are a lot of people in our midst who want to gut and defund public education. By being this sloppy over and over, I can’t help but think that the district is inadvertently helping them. It gets harder and harder to defend this system when at every turn, it feels like they’re trying to shut the public out and exclude them from a process they have every right to be a part of. This has to stop. I’m so incredibly disappointed to see them behave this way.
Error #2: County Clerk
You might have received a weird mailing from the Hudson County Clerk’s office that read in part:
Your voter record indicates that you were on the list to receive Vote-By-Mail ballots for all elections since 2020 or earlier, and that you have not cast your ballot at any time in four consecutive years beginning with the 2020 General Elections cycle. As such, you will be removed from the list to receive Vote-By-Mail ballots automatically and will not be furnished with mail-in ballots for future elections.
What. I don’t think I’ve ever voted by mail, and — a much bigger issue for me personally — I vote in every single election so just, what?!
I’ve heard from some folks in town that they’ve called the Clerk’s office and been told that the mailing went out in error and everything is fine. And, mistakes happen, I get it. But I’m disappointed that the office — which has a pretty robust social media presence, all things considered (well, considering they’re a county clerk’s office, I mean — also they’re on X and other platforms) — doesn’t seem to have put something out clarifying what’s going on since an awful lot of people got this mailer.
Generally, I have been nothing but impressed with the Clerk’s office. But this was just kind of a bummer. The good news is, if you got a notice like this, you’re almost certainly fine. If you want to check to put your mind at ease, here’s a link to their office with their phone number at the bottom to call.
More mad, more disappointed
As anyone who has watched the criss-crossing of a dozen helicopters over the Hudson River has wondered, yes — those things crash. And there was a horrific crash this week in which several people died. The crash was awfully close to the shore side in Jersey City, so things could have been even worse, but as it is an entire family was killed in the accident which is absolutely horrendous. I’m not going to get too into it, since it was widely reported and I try to focus in this newsletter on news you might not hear elsewhere, but what an awful tragedy. But nothing prepared me for the crappy statement from the CEO of the company that the helicopter flew with. From Newsday:
Michael Roth, CEO of New York Helicopter, told Newsday Thursday: "I’ve been in this business 30 years. I’m devastated because all the lives, especially children. I’m a father and a grandfather, and we would never do anything to jeopardize anyone ... I don’t want to make any assumptions, but you have to remember: It’s a machine. Sometimes machines break."
Yeah, ok dude. Ugh.
ICYMI
The mayor’s race got a little spicy this week with Bill O’Dea yelling at the back of a council meeting in an attempt to point out that the council members didn’t seem to know the details of what they were voting on, and James Solomon using a swear word in a campaign pitch. As anyone who knows me in real life — as opposed to just reading this newsletter, where I have somehow gone over 200 issues (I didn’t number all the early ones) without swearing — I am here for this. I curse like a sailor normally and I’ve been known to yell in meetings, so I’m all for this. More cursing, more yelling, please. The first candidate to yell the f word from the back of a council meeting, I will happily donate $50 to your campaign. Come on. Rip the bandaid off. Someone has to say it. This is New Jersey, after all.
Ward C residents are organizing to make sure a proposed park remains on track. While it seems that the new County Courthouse has been delayed, residents are now trying to make sure those delays don’t also push back the creation of a park in one of the most densely packed areas in the city. The Journal Square area has so few open green spaces that local families and kids are stuck riding their bikes and skateboards in the JSQ PATH station because there’s simply few other options available to them (this is both potentially dangerous and also not a fun place to ride? but it’s hard to criticize when there’s few other options available to them). Advocates have a website worth checking out, and I’m hoping for some calls to action soon.
Feral of the week
Obsessed with this cat. Also, why doesn’t he have ears? I hope he’s ok — he seemed incredibly hearty and rambunctious. I’m hoping the spay/neuter vet just got a little overly ambitious when it came to clipping his ear. This guy’s a survivor.
Random PSA: Now I’m really disappointed and also mad
Guys? Can we please not do this?
Friends, I am begging you: please do not strip the various little libraries of all books and then leave food you don’t want behind. I appreciate that the person who left this jar of jelly probably wanted to find it a new home (and was probably totally unrelated to all the books disappearing), but this really isn’t the best place for it. Little libraries are for books (and also occasionally free COVID tests — you can see one all the way to the right in this pic and I’m totally fine with activists leaving them there because there is no other place to readily distribute them). If you bought too much jelly… I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to text your friend group to see if someone will take it. Or donate it to a food pantry. That’s a great idea too.
I once worked for a mayor who would occasionally joke about making appointments of insiders to senior city posts after conducting “ intergalactic searches” for the very best candidates.