Issue 227: Jersey City, anew

What just happened?? Also: Fulop to birds: Drop dead; Transportation Master Plan!

First, a sad note:

It is with heavy hearts that we at Neighborhood Character announce this newsletter will be going dark later this month. We had very much wanted to keep the spirit of Amy Wilson’s enterprise alive and even expand it, but with raising our family and our own careers, we’re not able to devote enough time. Our eyes were bigger than our brains.

If any devoted communicators are out there and are interested in taking the reins, please email us at neighborhoodcharacter@gmail.com. We’d be happy to advise and contribute. If not, we’ll probably have one more issue forthcoming before the holidays.

Thank you to everyone who’s read and subscribed.

(Shoutout to the ladies of 227, to whom we dedicate this issue.)

Meanwhile, in our fair city…

What just happened?

We know numerically what happened in the runoff: 1. James Solomon emerged with a mandate and mostly supportive Council and 2. The people of Jersey City summarily dismissed Jim McGreevey and all who sailed in him.

Up and down the ticket, McGreevey’s folks got hammered by more than two to one when it was a head-to-head runoff. It was not just a defeat, it was a repudiation. It was embarrassing for the county machine, it was embarrassing for Brian Stack who spent so much time recruiting him and it was embarrassing for McGreevey, who, for many years, had developed a reputation as a nice guy — the ever-so-rare recovering Jersey politician who put his energy and connections toward helping incarcerated people come back to society in a positive and healthy way.

So what metaphysically happened in the runoff? Why did it ever come to this? Wherefore art thou, Jim McGreevey?

McGreevey once said politics is like an addiction and he’s right. That’s probably why he refused at first to be recruited. He had no business running for mayor of a complex and dynamic city he only recently moved to amid a field of candidates who’d put in years of public service.

The real screw-up wasn’t his though, as much as the county political “machine,” which at this point is more just a collection of parts. Steven Fulop did a lot toward defanging HCDO in Jersey City. Then Andy Kim came along and delivered a seeming death blow with the obsolescence of the county ballot line. If anyone still needed proof the machine is dead, you saw it this election cycle.

Had the county backed Bill O’Dea, there’s a good chance we’d be calling him “mayor-elect” right now. There’s a lot of love on the West Side for O’Dea because he’s been delivering results for his community for decades. But petty squabbles and political vendettas were more important to the county apparatus than the smart political choice. O’Dea wasn’t loyal enough to the machine, which is what happens when you put your own convictions before your convenience.

Had county leaders been shrewd, perhaps humble, enough to recognize their weakened state, they would have lent support to someone who comes with a loyal voting bloc already, but who could have used an ally. Then O’Dea might have been a more friendly mayor.

Instead, people who don’t live here decided they knew better: they’d recycle a former governor who presided over one of the most spectacular political disasters in American history and convince Jersey City voters he’s their guy.

Still, even if the county hadn’t tripped over their own shoelaces, Solomon would have been hard to beat. He ran a smart, professional campaign. He had detailed policy proposals, a strong command of how he’d achieve his goals and he’s a disciplined communicator. More importantly though, it looks like he had loyalty and strong relationships across a plurality of leaders, groups and voters. Yes, most of the folks coming out in Ward E are newer to the city, they’re more affluent although they do still have affordability concerns. Those concerns are not as acute as they are in parts of Ward F, where Solomon’s alliance with Councilman Frank Gilmore proved to be decisive. That kind of turnout suggests Solomon’s delivered results across these different groups, just as O’Dea has in the west.

Speaking of O’Dea, in this cycle we saw from him again not just a politician but a political leader. The day after coming in third in the general election, he stood next to Solomon and pledged his support. That’s humbling for any politician but you see it with some frequency. What you don’t see as much is the third-place guy really go to work. O’Dea made multiple appearances, invited Solomon to St. Al’s, the Catholic capital of the West Side, helped with GOTV resources on Runoff Day and now he’s co-chairing the transition.

With Solomon comes a leftward shift in city government. We have two Democratic socialists on the City Council for the first time in the modern era. Here in Ward B, Joel Brooks, who came within a breath of winning the seat four years ago, had a decisive victory with about 65 percent on runoff night last week.

While Solomon’s not a socialist, the undergirding principle of the campaigns is the same. Solomon would have wealthy developers subsidize affordable apartments at a much higher level than they are now. Brooks and democratic socialist Jake Ephros campaigned on universal rent control, along with universal child care and safe, green streets.

“Things that you could touch. Your day-to-day quality of life,” Brooks told us last week, after the election. “That’s what we’re gonna fight for.”

Brooks’ 2021 campaign was strong and he’d been laying the groundwork for this victory for a long time since. But he said the fact that he was a democratic socialist was rarely if ever mentioned by others, even during the general election.

“It didn’t really come up until McGreevey made it an issue,” he said, pointing to comments toward the end of the general election and into the runoff: “He said we can’t afford to have Jersey City in the care of James Solomon and ‘his socialist gang.’”

If it was ever an issue, Brooks won by a mile so it didn’t move a lot of hearts and minds.

And now he and his “socialist gang” have to deliver.

The tension of course is paying for programs while keeping taxes stable, because rising property taxes aren’t just an issue for the wealthy. They’re part of what makes Jersey City affordable for homeowners too, across economic and demographic lines. That’s important for the long-term health of a city that needs to embrace and defend its diversity. So then it becomes a matter of budget cuts elsewhere. And any time there’s a cut, there’s a fight.

The first city budget next year will be where rubber meets road and we see how the Council and Solomon plan to govern for the next four years.

Brooks says the best way to quiet the haters is to do the job. He said the right has become synonymous with ineffective “harmful” government and the left needs to model the alternative.

“I think we have a chance citywide to show how effective government can be,” he said.

Transportation master plan!

Speaking of effective government, it’s impossible to overstate how important equitable and efficient transportation is to the lives of every resident of the city. Please take a look at the Let’s Move JC materials and take the survey: “Jersey City is developing a Transportation Master Plan, called Let’s Move JC, to guide how people and goods will move around in the future. The goals of this study are to create an inclusive transportation system that accommodates people of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds, address the impacts of aging infrastructure, an increase in freight distribution, and climate change, and accommodates a growing population. Your input will help us develop a plan that reflects the community’s needs and values related to transportation.”

More here!

Steven Fulop to birds: Drop dead

Folks are not pleased that Mayor Fulop vetoed a unanimously approved City Council bill that would require developers to use bird-friendly building facades in future construction. Lorraine Freeney, whom we have chronicled in these pages, shared a statement condemning the move as little more than another in a long history of Fulop needlessly screwing over his enemies in petty and petulant ways. Fulop’s veto statement co-opts the developer argument that using materials that discourages birds from flying into the side of buildings will make construction so costly, it will discourage affordable housing. Freeney and her allies point out that that argument has been proven a steaming pile of hooey, many times over, in cities like New York and Newark where these materials have been adopted for years as part of the building code. In the meantime, about a billion birds die each year in the U.S. by colliding with buildings they can’t see. We would point out that Fulop, of late, has been adjusting to his new role as spokesman for NYC’s corporate community.