Between budget/tax blues and having your cake and eating it too
How did previous JC administration follow in footsteps of Pres. Lyndon Johnson's struggles for "the Great Society"?
By The Chilltown Blues
Jersey City Mayor James Solomon and Governor Mikie Sherrill have been on the same page about the responsibility of the city’s $250M budget deficit; they blame three-term ex-Mayor Steve Fulop, who has disputed that claim and called Solomon’s claims, which preceded Sherrill’s, playing politics.
A 15% property tax hike to account for the budget deficit was voted down by the city council on July 1. In an email Ward F Councilman Frank Gilmore lauded the participatory process in lieu of “complaining” — the June 28 meeting at the City Hall Annex was far more attended than usual — while also encouraging homeowners to begin saving with his hope “that you won’t need every dollar you save—but if additional costs do come, you’ll be in a stronger position to weather them.”
Jersey City’s government will apparently be looking at what it can cut across the board, before moving forward. Mayor Solomon’s proposed budget as of late last week is similar to the same property tax hike the city council voted down; that number was done roughly 5% from Solomon’s initial 20% proposal.
Earlier in the day on June 28
In the early hours of June 28, there was a shooting less than a block away from the City Hall Annex, and roughly 30 feet from the city’s Public Safety Building, in which one person was killed and one was seriously injured.
The City Hall Annex, and resulting complex of a few government buildings around it, was arguably the most tangible result of Fulop’s efforts to fulfill his initial mayoral campaign’s creed of rectifying Jersey City as a tale of two cities — an affluent downtown and well, what, else embodies the opposite of that like the historically redlined sections of Bergen Lafayette (with areas now named Jackson Hill) and Greenville?
