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Bret Schundler Media Archives

Let Us Run with Perseverance

The 1995 State of Jersey City Speech

By Mayor Bret Schundler

Citizens, councilmembers, members of the judiciary, we all share a common vision for Jersey City.

We want lower taxes, so that our city can become more affordable and prosperous.

We want our streets to be safe and clean, and the physical environment of our city to be more beautiful and well developed. We want our city to meet the human and spiritual needs of our residents, from the educational and recreational needs of our children, to the medical and cultural needs of our seniors.

And we want Jersey City to be a place where good jobs are abundant, so that every resident who is willing to work hard can earn a decent living.

We have a long, long way to go before this vision becomes a reality. But I am here to report that in the last two years, we have built a foundation for progress of which we can be justly proud.

Progress Lowering Jersey City Taxes

Let me begin with a progress report on the city's finances.

In 1992, the year before I was elected, Jersey City was on the brink of financial collapse. Property taxes during the prior decade had grown 14% a year, and many people could no longer afford to pay their tax bill. "For Sale" signs were everywhere. Businesses were closing. Our tax collection rate had fallen to 78%, and instead of paying its bills with current taxes, the city was borrowing from the future just to keep alive.

The amount we were borrowing was staggering. It is common knowledge that the city bonded in 1991 for $128 million to help pay operating expenses and keep itself afloat. But until recently, few citizens, including me, knew that way back in 1989, the city had already begun, in a hidden way, to borrow over $30 million a year to keep from going under.

How had the city accomplished this secret borrowing? In 1989, two full years after the revaluation had been completed, commercial property tax assessments were arbitrarily doubled overnight.

Now, when you double someone's assessment, it obviously doubles the taxes they pay; and this enormous increasing of commercial property tax assessments -- two years after the Stock Market Crash had actually sent real estate prices plummeting -- did just what it was supposed to do: it increased city revenues. To cite the numbers, almost $1 billion in phantom ratables were created; and these improper over-assessments generated over $30 million per year in additional property tax revenues for the city, county, and school system.

It's nice that the city was able to get an additional $30 million a year in property taxes. And politically, it was nice that all of the extra money was coming from businesses, not homeowners. But the problem with what the city did is that it was and is illegal, and we, my friends, are paying dearly for it now.

The courts have been reducing these improper over-assessments, and as a result, the city is not only losing the extra $30 million per year it was receiving, but is also having to refund all of the excess taxes that were collected -- since way back in 1989 -- plus interest! The financial hit to the city adds up to almost $100 million in refunds that we are having to pay now, for money which the city already spent years ago.

That's why City Hall insiders considered the city's financial situation in late 1992 impossible. 1992 property taxes were already outrageously high, despite have been artificially held down by all of this improper borrowing. City Hall insiders knew that by the time I got into office, there was not going to be any borrowed money left to subsidize the tax levy; rather, all we would inherit were huge amounts of debt that had to be repaid. It made for an ugly picture, and most insiders presumed that the city would either have to increase taxes dramatically or file for immediate bankruptcy.

But that's not what we did. We didn't hike taxes, and we didn't go bankrupt. We rolled up our sleeves and went to work!

With our nationally acclaimed bulk lien sale, we increased the city's tax collection rate from 78%, where it stood when I was elected, to 94% today -- its highest level in forty years!

We audited every major tax abatement, and increased the payments we receive from developers by almost 50%!

We stream-lined our workforce -- for the most part through attrition, with very few lay-offs -- and saved enormously through bidding out contracts that had never been bid out before.

And we became the first governmental entity in the country to institute Medical Savings Accounts, which saves us on the cost of providing health care to our employees, even while improving their coverage. Congress is about to follow our example and offer Medical Savings Accounts to all federal employees. It makes me very proud that we blazed a trail which now the entire country is pursuing to control health care costs.

These several actions allowed us, in just two short years, to cut Jersey City's tax levy by almost a third, and were it not for the fact that we are now having to pay out that $100 million in refunds from the 1989 over-assessments, these actions would have been enough for us to maintain our massive tax cut. As it is, because we did start much more deeply in debt than I had ever imagined, we have only been able to hold the city's tax levy down 9% from where it was before I was elected. So, admittedly, we cut taxes too rapidly in 1993 and 1994. But we have made the necessary adjustments now, and unless the state or federal government slash their current aid levels, we presently have the power to ensure city property tax cuts this year, next year, and well into the foreseeable future!

Jersey City is no longer on the brink of bankruptcy. Rather, even though we started in a deeper hole than any other city in New Jersey, we are now doing financially better than any other city in New Jersey.

Two months ago, I submitted a fiscal year 1996 budget in which the city tax levy is one million dollars less than our 1995 levy, and is almost $9 million less than it was when I took office in 1992. This is the fourth straight budget I have submitted in which the city tax levy has been less than when I started.

We are the only city in Hudson County, and, I think the entire state of New Jersey, where for four straight years the city tax levy has been lower than its 1992 level. The average municipal tax levy increase during this time in the rest of Hudson County has been 30%. That's quite a contrast: our city tax levy has been cut, while in the rest of Hudson County, tax levies have sky-rocketed.

Now, I know that Freeholder Hank Gallo has sent out letters trying to make you believe that we have actually increased the city controlled portion of your property tax bill, so I thought we might want to look at the real-life experience of an average Jersey City taxpayer to settle the question once and for all. In 1992, the year before I was elected, the city property tax bill on the house in which Freeholder Hank Gallo lives was $1,687. In 1993, the first year after I was elected, his family's city property taxes were cut by $194. In 1994, we cut taxes again, and saved his family $572. This year, Hank's family saved an additional $2 over what it was paying the city in 1992. Add it up, and already in my first three full years, we saved Hank Gallo $768 over what he would have paid to the city if property taxes had been frozen at their '92 level.

The property taxes paid on Hank Gallo's home to the county are another story; they've been increased since 1992. Hank Gallo might like to deny this, but the truth is revealed by the official tax records -- which are public documents. Instead of sending out letters trying to confuse the public, I think Hank Gallo should write a letter thanking our Jersey City Council and me for saving him money, and I think he and his cohorts on the County Board of Freeholders should get to work on cutting County spending and taxes.

In fact, let's contrast our Jersey City record on taxes with County Executive Bob Janiszewski's, and also with the school system's record since the state took control. Since Bob Janiszewski has been in office, the county property tax levy has been increased $46 million, even though the state now pays for many functions that were formerly covered by the county. Every single year that I've been in office, city property taxes have been lower than they were before I was elected. Every single year that Bob Janiszewski has been in office, county property taxes have been higher than they were before he was elected. That's what he's done for the people of Hudson County -- he's raised their taxes!

When you look at the school system, it's even worse. The school portion of our property tax rate has increased 57% since the state came in and took control, despite the fact that the school district has been given almost $100 million more in state aid since the takeover.

One hundred million dollars in extra state aid is a huge amount. To give you a sense how huge, if the city received an extra $100 million in state aid, I would be able to wipe out the entire city portion of your property tax bill, and still have enough cash left over to send every Jersey City homeowner around $300 in cash. Instead of you having to pay city taxes, the city would be able to send you money. But the state administered school district has gobbled up all of this extra state aid, and has increased your local property taxes by $32 million to boot.

What do we have to show for it? Reading scores in our public schools are down since the state took control, and the incidence of violence in our public schools has soared 113%! Now you know why I spend so much time fighting to have the state implement real education reform. Our children need a chance, and our taxpayers need a break!

For four straight years, the city portion of your property tax bill has been lower than it was before I took office. But because of county and school district property tax increases, your total property tax bill is up. We in city government cannot control what the county and the school district do, but we can speak out against their tax increases -- and we must!

We also have to speak out against the excessive borrowing of the county and the school district, because today's borrowing will turn into tax increases tomorrow when the borrowed money has to be paid off. At the city level of government, we have essentially frozen the total amount of bonds outstanding. But since Bob Janiszewski has been in office, the county's bonded indebtedness has increased by almost 300% -- 300%! And since the state took control of our school system, the school district's bonded indebtedness has increased 39%. Moreover, just one month ago the school district announced that it wants to borrow another $270 million. This soaring county and school district borrowing will cause you massive future tax increases. It must be stopped!

I've called for a freeze on the total amount of county and school district debt outstanding, for at least a period of several years. When their old debt comes due, they can roll it over. But they must not increase their total indebtedness. Our taxpayers just can't bear the extra burden; and they shouldn't have to, because it should be possible for the county and the school district to improve public services even while reducing spending.

That's what we have done here at the city level of government. We have reduced total city spending, and yet at the same time, we are providing improved public services.

Progress Improving Jersey City's Physical Environment

I'd like to turn now to a discussion of how, even though we are spending less, we have made progress improving Jersey City's physical environment, including making our streets safer and cleaner.

I want to begin by noting that we have kept our promise to put more police officers on the street. When I was first elected in 1992, we had a police force of 842 officers. Today we have 853 police officers. In 1992, only 564 police officers worked in street patrol. Today 665 of our police officers are on street patrol. That's an increase of over 100 officers. In 1992, police officers worked only 188 days a year, on average. Today they work 202 days a year, in connection with a work schedule which provides the greatest continuity of supervision possible under their contract. So we have hired more officers, put a higher percentage on the streets, increased the number of days they work, and improved the continuity of police supervision -- all while decreasing total city spending!

There are a lot of additional changes which we are going to have to make if we want to improve our crime fighting effectiveness, and you can be sure that we are going to press on and make them. In the end, our goal is to have a Police Department which is more effective, more disciplined, more courteous, and more ethnically representative of our people. And I am not going to let anyone stand in the way of my making these necessary changes -- not the police union, and not the people who picket in front of my home. No one is going to be discriminated against by this administration, but neither is anyone going to be treated special because of the color of their skin.

Now, in addition to improving the effectiveness of our police department, establishing a sense of order in our streets also requires that we clean our streets, and that we turn our empty lots into housing or commercial space, so that our city no longer looks so disheveled and disorderly.

Accordingly, we are doing more to clean our streets today than ever in recent decades. We still have mechanical street sweepers, working as they always have. But we also have prisoners from the Kearny jail picking up litter every day. We have Occupational Center workers, and city workfare workers, cleaning our streets with the Jersey City Litter Patrol. We have new Business Improvement Districts along Central Avenue and at Journal Square, which have already made those shopping districts cleaner. And we are presently working, one by one, to organize Business Improvement Districts and Neighborhood Improvement Districts all throughout the city, so that all of our streets become cleaner and more orderly.

All over the city, ruble strewn lots are being turned into brand new housing. Five years ago, the city built 70 units of new housing. This year, we will build three times as much -- almost all of it, non-tax abated! The year before we were elected, there was almost no private housing construction in Jersey City. By the end of this year there will have been over a thousand new units built or announced: with Franklin Park, Avalon Cove, a second Portside Tower, and new construction at Newport, only the most dramatic examples. By the end of this year, almost every lot which was owned by the city when I was first elected will have been redeveloped.

Abandoned buildings are another blight that we are dealing with. They are much harder to redevelop than empty lots, but we are committed to meeting the challenge. We have formed the new Bureau of Abandoned Buildings as an inter-departmental taskforce to get abandoned buildings renovated and back onto the tax roles. We have had some successes already, and I am particularly proud that in some instances we have been able to get local community organizations to serve as the re-developer of abandoned buildings in their neighborhood, with local contractors and local laborers doing the work. Putting all these pieces together has allowed us to benefit not just that those who live in the neighborhood of the redeveloped building, and not just those who need housing, but also many local residents who were in need of jobs. These successes represent real and significant progress, but they are not the end of the story.

We have also improved sidewalks and streets throughout the city. In fact, soon we will finally begin repaving the Monmouth Street and Coles Street access roads to Hoboken. You know the roads I am talking about, passing under the Turnpike where it descends towards the Holland Tunnel. These roads have been a disgrace for decades. We are set to fix them up!

When you drive into Jersey City, your first impression is no longer going to be that it's a mess. Instead, the streets are going to be decently paved. There are going to be beautiful signs welcoming you to "Jersey City: America's Golden Door." Along major entrance roads, like Christopher Columbus Drive and Garfield Avenue, you are going to be greeted by huge, lovely murals which let you know that you are in a community brimming with artistic talent and proud of his cultural and ethnic diversity.

In fact, you won't even have to be driving. You'll be able to travel from and back to Jersey City using one of our many new ferries, or the new light rail system that is going to be built, or one of the many buses servicing the renovated transportation centers that we are building at Exchange Place, Journal Square, and the new Hub at Martin Luther King Drive.

When you step out you will be able to walk along our expanded Waterfront Walkway, where a new section will be completed shortly within the Newport and Hudson Exchange tracts. Or, you will be able to enjoy our soon to be rebuilt inner-city business districts, where we have already initiated our facade restoration program to brighten up the store fronts of scores of dingy commercial buildings.

Maybe you don't know it, but by the Spring of next year we are going to begin rebuilding all of Journal Square. Journal Square is the heart not only of Jersey City, but of Hudson County. It is a disgrace that it has been allowed to deteriorate so much. It should have been rebuilt twenty years ago, but Administration after Administration did nothing. This coming Spring, we are going to break ground on a $4.0 million reconstruction of the Square that will restore its beauty and grandeur. Together with the newly enhanced security and sanitation services we have put in place in the Journal Square Business Improvement District, the result is going to be a Square that is beautiful, safe, and clean -- and that will be kept beautiful, safe, and clean.

The same holds true for the new Hub we are building at Martin Luther King Drive and Virginia Avenue. When I campaigned for office, I said I was going to redevelop Martin Luther King Drive -- and that I was going to do it with the full input and participation of the community, so that the redevelopment truly benefitted the local neighborhoods. I am keeping my promises. The city recently won a national award for the amount of community participation it brought into the MLK planning process; and now, to make sure that our ambitious plans are carried through to completion, my administration has committed $16 million for the first phase of redevelopment.

That's real commitment, not just talk, and it stands out in sharp contrast to the records of some of those who politically opposed us. They let the Drive deteriorate. We are building it up. All they know is how to tear down people's reputations. We are trying to lift up not only buildings, but the spirit of a community!

City Hall is itself an example of the new pride and spirit sweeping Jersey City. The roof of City Hall burned down in 1979, and for sixteen years, the wreckage was left to stand as a symbol of Jersey City's decline and despair. Now our roof has finally been repaired, and like the wall which Ezra rebuilt around Jerusalem, it stands as a symbol of faith in our city's future.

My critics will say that some of the projects I've mentioned were planned before I was elected. But the fact is that the plans sat on the shelf. Every dollar that we have spent on these projects in the last two and a half years has been spent because we made the commitment. We spent the money. We moved beyond talk and gave these projects life.

Look at the city's parks. By the end of my term in 1997, nearly every city park will have been renovated, including, finally, Country Village Park, where, for years, a dangerous steel plate in centerfield has been a testament of disregard for our children. We'll be rebuilding that park, and we're going to take that steel plate away, so that our children can finally have a safe place to play. Meanwhile, all over the city, we are taking empty lots and constructing brand new pocket parks for neighborhood enjoyment.

Even that's not all. We have constructed new athletic fields, so that we can accommodate more sports leagues for both Jersey City's children and its adults, and for its women's leagues as well as its men's. And we will soon, finally, have a new hockey rink at Pershing Field; while at Pershing Field, and elsewhere, we are also constructing brand new bocci ball courts.

Listen, we still have a long, long way to go to make our streets safe and clean, and make our physical environment beautiful and vibrant. But we've made a good start in bringing Jersey City back. And remember, we have done all of this while spending less, and taxing less, than our predecessors. We have had a very tight financial situation, but we are stretching your tax dollars to the limit.

Progress Meeting the Human Needs of Jersey City's People

Of course, man does not live by bread alone. It is not just the material improvement of our city's physical environment for which we must strive. We must also be concerned with the human development of our residents. And so I will now report on the progress we have made improving educational and recreational programs for our children, improving services for our senior citizens, and improving the various programs we run to help our poor.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that the many educational reforms I have proposed have not yet been passed into law by the state legislature. But I am not going to surrender. I am going to keep pushing for educational reform, because our public education system is not sufficiently helping our children, even while its cost is overwhelming our taxpayers. School taxes keep going up, and our children's test scores keep going down. It's intolerable. But the good news is that change is coming!

The State Department of Education is moving on recommendations made by the Governor, myself, and others, to refocus school accountability away from regulation and towards results.

Meanwhile, the charter school proposals that I drafted to reform our public school system have been incorporated into a bill passed by the New Jersey Senate Education Committee to help all of New Jersey's public schools. If this Senate bill becomes law, it will go a long way toward fixing our public school system.

My private school voucher proposal has not been passed by the legislature yet, but commission hearings are being held on my proposal, and I am convinced that it will pass eventually -- if not this year, then within the next several.

When all three elements of my education plan have been passed by the state legislature, educational opportunity for ALL of our children in Jersey City will finally be a reality!

Of course, our children's day does not end at 3:00 p.m., even though the school day does. That is why I created the new Department of Recreation and Cultural Affairs, and assigned it the mission of getting our schools open for after-hours tutoring and recreation. The Department has been hard at work, and I am pleased to report to you that by the end of this current fiscal year, with the support of Superintendent Frank Sinatra, we will have numerous public schools open from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. for academic tutoring and organized recreation. To complement these after-school programs, we have also expanded the schedule of city sponsored children's events, leagues, arts programs and sports clinics.

And since our children are not the only one's in need of recreation, the city is now also coordinating, or providing logistical support for, a record number of adult athletic leagues, block parties, festivals, concerts, and art shows throughout every Ward.

There's a lot that we are doing which you may not know about. We have provided financial support for the renovation of a number of community spaces, like the Barrow Mansion. We are finalizing preparations to construct a new city owned community center on Martin Luther King Drive. We are working to open a new cultural arts center, managed by a private developer, in Harsimus Cove. We are examining the possibility of constructing a private or state managed amphitheater in Liberty State Park, or by Caven Point. We are working hard to restore the Loews. And we have provided significant financial support for the construction of a new Jersey City Museum.

Jersey City is becoming a Mecca for artists, and I am convinced that these investments in arts venues will pay huge economic dividends for us in the future, even while adding to our cultural life today.

All of these new adult recreational and cultural opportunities should particularly benefit our senior citizens, but this is not all that we are doing to help our seniors. We are also in the process of building an enormous amount of new senior citizen housing: Wittenberg Manor, the Jewish Home, the Fairmount Hotel, Padua House, and the Orchard Street home, just to name a few. We have also expanded senior health related services, including a brand new phone contact system for shut-ins. Senior transportation services are being expanded through increasing the number of city buses dedicated to senior transport, and through tougher enforcement of taxi discounts. Meanwhile, we are lobbying in Trenton for legislation which mandates that all bus companies, private as well as public, offer special senior citizen discounts, 24 hours a day.

These improvements in service make us proud, but they are only the beginning. Our Director of Senior Citizen Affairs, Joan Young, is working to develop a whole slew of additional new programs. So stay tuned, there's more to come.

In the meanwhile, let me address the service improvements that we have directed at those residents who, for whatever reason, find themselves in tough economic circumstances.

We have increased Jersey City's support for private food pantries like Let's Celebrate, and of the homeless shelter at St. Lucy's. We have expanded our anti-drug education programs, and treatment programs. And we have also worked hard to improve and expand our job training and job placement services.

The new Office of Employment and Training, run by Ben Lopez, is doing a superior job. To bolster its efforts further, we are toughening enforcement of the city's first source agreements with developers, so that a greater percentage of the new jobs that come to Jersey City will go to Jersey City residents.

That said, it is time to talk about public assistance. The obvious goal of government policy should be to move citizens from welfare dependence to work, and that's what we have been doing. In relation to our general assistance programs, we have reduced fraud, mandated work in exchange for benefits where possible, and improved our private sector job placement programs, as I just mentioned. As a result, since 1992, the number of residents on general assistance has declined from 2,106 a month to 1,331. This huge reduction is something we can be proud of, because when someone gets a paycheck instead of a general assistance check, it not only saves you money, it lifts their spirit as well.

I have drafted A Blueprint For Economic Justice, which I have had the opportunity to present both to various cabinet secretaries in the Clinton Administration and to various Republican leaders in Congress. The Blueprint outlines federal welfare and tax law changes which together would enable us to ensure that every American who is willing to work would be able to find a job, that every person who takes a job would be able to earn a decent living, and that every person who works hard to increase family income, would be benefitted for doing so, and would not, as is currently the case, be penalized through the loss of benefits.

In Hudson County alone, our federal and state governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year for food, housing, health care, and cash benefits to welfare families. We should be allowed to use this money to give people paychecks for work, instead of being forced by federal and state regulations to use that money to pay welfare to people who do not work. This would allow us to lift our poorest citizens out of the despair of welfare dependence, and significantly improve public services in Jersey City, using these federal and state dollars, and without having to raise local property taxes one cent.

That's why it angers me that our County Executive, Bob Janiszewski, recently went to Washington to say that he wants to keep welfare just the way it is. This is a scandal. Today's welfare system does not work, and it is time to fix it!

Progress Attracting Jobs to Jersey City

This speech has been a bit long, but before I close, I would like to give you one final progress report -- this one on job growth. It shouldn't surprise anyone that when you cut taxes, yet at the same time improve services and a city's quality of life, new jobs are attracted. But who could ever have predicted the absolute boom in job growth that Jersey City is enjoying!

We are leading the cities not just of New Jersey, but of the entire North East in percentage job growth. This boom in jobs in Jersey City has not just been limited to service sector jobs on the waterfront. We are also experiencing a boom in construction, both housing and commercial. Manufacturing jobs are coming back to Jersey City, as is the case with the Daily News moving its printing operations here, and with Alpha Metals expanding its operations in Jersey City. New retail jobs have also been created, for example at B.J.'s on the waterfront, and along Central Avenue in the Heights, where eight new retailers have filled what had been empty stores. New distribution operations, such as Sysco's and Budweiser's, are coming here, taking space in our industrial parks.

In fact, as a result of our vibrant economic growth, Jersey City will probably soon become New Jersey's largest city, surpassing Newark.

For Jersey City's unemployed, this job growth has been more than academic. State labor statistics demonstrate that since this Council and I were elected, thousands of additional Jersey City residents have gotten jobs, and thousands less are now unemployed. There is nothing of which I am more proud than the fact that many Jersey City residents who were in poverty have been able to escape because we have brought jobs back to Jersey City!

Conclusion

There you have it. We have cut city spending and taxes, yet even as we have done so, we have increased the number of police officers on our streets and improved most city services. Not surprisingly, this has attracted job growth, providing new hope for Jersey City's future.

We have not yet received the state's permission to implement the school reforms I've proposed, and as a result, the cost of our school system is still soaring, even as our children's test scores continue to flag. But we haven't given up the fight for our kids, and we won't. We will eventually win our battle for education reform, and those who have been fighting to preserve the status quo will lose -- because true educational opportunity for our children cannot be denied forever!

We have a lot of work to do to make Jersey City fully match our vision, but we have turned the financial morass we inherited into a firm foundation for future growth. We have, in fact, already passed through the shadowy valley, and as we look ahead, the future for Jersey City is bright.

So I ask all of you listening today to stick with Jersey City and not lose hope in our common vision for the future. The work before us is hard, but it would be a sin to give up on this struggle as long as one Jersey City resident is denied the opportunity and quality of life which should be the birthright of every American.

We must run with perseverance this race that is set before us, for it is what we have been given to do.

God is watching over us, people. Let us be faithful to His call, and know that we, and all of the people of Jersey City, are in His hands.

And as we leave from this place tonight, let the word go forth that Jersey City is coming back. It is the place to live, and it is the place to build a business!

God bless you all!

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