##VIDEO ID:XBY21LccxAY## gotta love technology right it's fine I have a is it for the live stream it we had to create another event for some reason the first event ended and it shouldn't have um so what we're going to do is we're going to start now a little late but I talk fast it's okay okay so yes okay good morning everyone we are on the record today is Thursday the 19th day of December 2024 this is a budget hearing for the Department of Health and Human Services with the Jersey City municipal Council we had a scheduled 11: a.m. start the clock on my cell phone is showing 11:12 a.m. May we have a rle poll for the commencement of this budget hearing council person britley council person Zer council person bajano council person Cay here council person Solomon council person Gilmore council person Dees council person Rivera council president Waterman okay we have two members UHC members in attendance at 11:12 a.m. in addition at its time of its preparation the notice of this meeting was similarly disseminated on Monday December 9 2024 at 5:31 p.m. to the mayor Municipal Council business administrator Corporation Council and the local newspapers so I can certify as to our total compliance with the Sunshine Law uh we will have you guys present before you do can you please introduce yourself for everyone watching at home um my name is Stacy Flanigan and I'm the director of Health and Human Services for the city of Jersey City I'm Brooke Hansen I'm the chief of administrative services for the Department of Health and Human Services and Paul Bell and Boyer Health officer there we go Kyle Greaves uh Finance director's office Danny beut finance department Billy Wilson from the finance department as well um so in front of you you have two documents one is the Department's organizational chart uh if you would like a online version we can have Jayla submit that to you uh this organizational chart gets updated in the mayor's office as HR updates at their DocuSign meetings there are not many changes from last year but I will go through the or chart first uh and align it a little bit with the first few pages of of the actual deck uh that I provided as you know that there are 10 divisions community relations and social services that manages our partnership for healthier JC animal care and control that manages our JC's shelter food and nutrition immigrant Affairs environmental health injury prevention disease prevention Community Health and Wellness senior citizen Affairs and Veteran Affairs so in your packet on page number three you have an organizational overview of the director's office which is the top layer obviously the chief of administrative Services manages the operations team who are here in the back um that's Evelyn uh Jacob Ray and Jessica and then we have our health officer and he manages our assistant Health officer along with two communicable disease support team members that's Dr siren uh Victoria Gaden and Jessica Torres so that's the first page oh and up here right behind me is Michelle Catz she is my admin assistant um one of the first or charts in front of you is Animal Control um and we'll get to the nitty gritty with that a little bit later we currently have um sever several openings uh a animal health technician that's our Vette Tech animal attendant a part-time animal attendant to manage uh weekends and holidays because as you know we are open uh 365 days a year because we must feed and care for our animals uh and we have a TBD uh request for additional animal attendance CU we're seeing a lot of turnover it's an extremely exhausting physical job and um it becomes overwhelming we um had a retirement of our Animal Control supervisor uh and so we have two vacant Animal control officer positions this is a very difficult position to fill for uh We've interviewed I'm going to say nearly 50 candidates over the last year many of them have difficulty um passing some of the city's background um we have hired staff and worked with HR to get staff in because we have the need and then two weeks later something in their background check causes us to have to terminate and so we are um really hopeful to try to lead from within and we reached out to other department to see if we can train up some staff into Animal control officer positions um we're working with HR on what what was exactly disqualifying them or some is U maybe possible car accidents uh too many because obviously of them are driving some of that it's a range of of issues um I think over the course of the last 12 months we've had to let go of three or four people we hired and then brought on um as we were waiting for uh background checks uh and it you know obviously you know the the process um with HR you need to by 10 a.m. Monday morning give them names to be approved by Thursday at the docy sign meeting so it's a at least a three-week process if there is a docu sign meeting every Thursday and I would suspect there might not be one for the rest of the calendar year because Thursday Falls after both of the holidays uh and I know on my my team I already have 50 people um on vacation on December 26th so uh I can imagine HR having a very similar uh so community relations and Social Services uh we came to you last year with five positions uh we uh had uh turnover reti retirement we brought on um Stephanie Daniels as an internal advancement promot from another part of the city and when she reassessed the org chart we found a much higher level staff than one of the other staff members that left and we um merged the two jobs into one and we're pretty satisfied with the outcome for that so we decreased uh someone on that employment uh team uh Community Health and Wellness uh we are designed to have w-based education uh we have a vacancy in Ward e because we promoted Victoria Gaden to support Paul in the health officer team as one of his staff members was promoted into another part of the department and and we'll get to that so we have an opening for our Ward e Health educator um all of the stuff that do not currently have a chz that is the community health education specialist title from the State Civil Service um are taking the exam in April and um at that time um based on uh historic work with the city those individuals that do receive their chess um are eligible for a $5,000 increase just like the um Union contracts uh because that is a required license to do this job uh however Health educator is a civil service job title that many of them hold and half of this staff um do have degrees directly in um public health and or Masters and obviously we have a doctor Dr Lindor that works directly with uh Linda Ivory green um that supports our special events in disease prevention uh this um and you'll see in the deck um we lost uh a major grant for ending the HIV epidemic this year we are told there is new money coming out next year the timing of Hiring Our nurse practitioner did not allow for the nurse practitioner to to a state training they just hosted the the state training last week so over the course of the last nine months of the grant uh we did not increase the number of uh HIV rapid testers so we're doing that right now any any opening that the state has we are working really hard to get our staff into those trainings oh wait we we lost the grant based on not enough time to get the nurse in no so the state only offered two trainings this year one was in January one was just last week in December we weren't able to hire our nurse practitioner till February so she was not able to go to that train training they gave us one opening in the December training uh and we did get a staff member in that training so we're trying to get into another train we don't believe a nurse practitioner really needs right rapid HIV training but this the the state is um you know requiring ing this for us too we are very lucky to have um through people leaving our team going on to other things we brought on board uh Quincy Bell from hin and who already had an HIV rapid testing certification so we now have what the state wants and now the state um will put out a new RFP with new money around HIV um not as much as we were getting over the last several years but that's because the number of HIV cases in the state of New Jersey are declining so they obviously know this extra funding does work and I'm sure you've seen um our team at many events doing rapid HIV testing so wherever we can we do um but because of that loss we moved one of the staff members here onto our Wick program because we had several opening new openings in Wick that opened October 1st with the new budget uh and Wick allowed us to bring on new uh health aids so uh Jackie Covington left that one program and moved into another for disease prevention is this all diseases or is it just disease prevention does it runs our City Clinic we do immunizations for children up through 18 and if you are a victim of hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico you have the ability to get vaccines up until the age of 26 in our city this is for low cost no cost insurance and we serve the undocumented here uh in addition to that we do STI STD HIV and uh testing and we do the IM immunization auditing for the city of Jersey City so in January some of the team that is involved in immunization they go out to every single school and the preschools and they check immunization records uh and then we offer immunization and we host immunization week in addition disease prevention uh monitors and supports the test and go kiosk pilot uh and uh that is very successful to date I only ask CU California declared a state of emergency over the Aven flu you know yesterday so yeah we wait for the state um the only we in 2017 had a you know a major syphilis outbreak here uh so we focus pretty strongly on that some of the staff after we test someone they interview the individuals they get um up through 6 months of their partner um information and then we reach out to those partners and see if they would like testing or we try to get them in for testing uh and if we have to show up at their door we we do that as well uh because we're trying to maintain that then on the other side of diseases that are not sexually transmitted that's what Paul's team does so that's the that we partner with the city clinic on but hepatitis A uh pink eye uh Kawasaki recently um and not so very clear measel case that wasn't a measles case and so sometimes this happens when we we have a communicable disease reporting and surveillance system it's an online system that's all over the country every morning our staff comes in and they see who was tested for what disease whatever disease pops up Paul's team um addresses or well both Paul Paul Bell and Bo's team addresses if it's not sexually transmitted and Paul Kate's team addresses if it is sexually trans Stacey you said HIV we decreased in correct so what did we increase in money infusion across the state um the commissioner you know presented um a few weeks ago but what did we increase in we hold on I've been told that the live stream's not working I don't know is that um is that going to be an issue or is it recording still or no steady it's still recording sorry you can proceed I apologize so what do we increased in I know about HIV but what have we increased in as so I don't think we have a a tremendous increase in anything right now we very very much maintaining but that's that's correct we're kind of steady state uh the things we spend really the most time on are the hepatitises uh because it's so infectious and uh immunization rates are not totally where we'd like to be anytime we get a suspected measles case we jump on that and so far they've all turned out to be no cases we're very thankful for that uh but this is really daily work to uh find cases and case reports when they come in and make sure that uh the patients as well as the care team are doing the right things to protect the public health how we with Co how was the co level Co numbers have been have been pretty moderate uh fortunate the the thing I'm most concerned about is the low vaccination rate with the new ones but we still see very low hospitalization rates and death rates although there's still cases all the time uh we we get covid test kits out there and encourage vaccinations wherever possible Stacy could so the next or chart is environmental health um this is a very broad division we have our Bureau of inspections that's many of you get emails from me when um Chuck May our director his team will see a restaurant or a location that might uh be violating state law and then our Bureau of healthy homes that's our child Le prevention uh program and through that we we have an opening for a lead inspector the lead inspection class is difficult the exam is difficult um but we're continuing to train our staff so that one of them can get that uh lure and then we can give them a promotion we just promoted Anthony Costa last week he passed the uh Regional environmental health specialist exam uh and that's an exam for staff that have a BS and go to the uh 7 week long program at Ruckers they have to sit at a health department for over a 100 hours of uh understanding and then they sit for the lure exam and those are the actual Health Inspectors versus our par Professional Health investigators uh that support the inspection team and then we have our Bureau of Licensing we just transitioned uh to gov pilot um from sdl uh our team is working with HDC on places where we can uh work better together with their Tyler system because all of our locations that have health lures require certificate of occupancy and we know that's changing the way it's interpreted in the uh Tyler system for us we have uh a double page AG of our food and nutrition it's our largest division um ofer Cohen our our resident Rd division director uh manages Meals on Wheels our youth food program our senior food program our healthy greens JC program along with our Wick program our youth food program operates summer meals and starting we're hoping January we're just waiting for confirmation from the state uh revive driving the After School meals program uh with our local nonprofit agencies and at that time will'll be able to bring on the um the team that's underneath uh Katarina uh they are seasonal so they may come back they may not come back um in the new year but those are positions how many do we service how many um organizations we partner with when it comes program do you know so for summer meals we had uh over 60 agencies join us this summer uh not all of them make it through the summer because our program is very defined by the federal government and we have to follow these programs strictly and we get surprise visits so somebody will tell us they're going to have 30 kids over the summer and we show up and there's four kids those 26 meals don't get paid for right and then have to pay for the out of the city uh tax dollars and we are very tight in the management of that so I think we ended the summer with 53 53 uh organizations we do have about a dozen organizations ready to work with us and after school meals the cacfp program it's the child and adult care food program it's one of the largest Federal food programs in the US we had that program um we kicked it off in 2014 and then uh we at the time we didn't have a great uh Staffing program behind it and Dr elardo Webster was also running the program inside the school so he reached out and said hey like we're competing can you like step back and we graciously step back for the local nonprofit to rise up uh after the passing of Dr Webster the came to us and asked us if we would run the program it's uh it's a lot of uh Hoops to jump to be involved with the program and so we need to make sure that all of the local churches have proper cosos or have proper refrigeration and figuring out funding so we can get that to those agencies so they can have all the tools in place uh for that uh but it we we're hoping for great success and we're hoping to kick that off in January I think you know our nutrition services um efforts with the senior congregate sites um while we are running 10 locations we only have four I mean eight staff on the food and nutrition budget because there are staff that sit on the senior affairs budget that also manage food uh so we um serve our farm to table lunch program we expanded this year did not add um Staffing support we expanded to Booker T um and Booker T has local support through Easter Seals to program and we work very well with their team and we're just waiting for some upgrades from the Jersey City housing authority to expand the work that we're doing in healthy greens JC at Maran and um at Curry's to have a compreh ensive lunch program there as well so we're really excited about that and then obviously our healthy greens JC um program um chandela joined us uh early February and Roslin and Tanisha um some of you may have met uh work out in the field um managing two of our farms and several other Farms that we have out there are managed through our partners so the Jersey City Medical Center Farms are managed through Jersey City Medical Center the farm at the bethon center we provide some support for but we get support from the bethon center uh and so forth so the one at Collier we've got some support from the team at Coler the one at Connors we have some support from the Connor Center and then we also have some support from our Vista that's in the veteran affairs program because we thought that would be a great partnership for our veterans to get healthy greens okay and in our Wick program we have um one opening for a bilingual nutritionist and one opening for a bilingual health aid uh and that's because of new dollars that came forth o October 1st and uh I think we're doing a really great job with a lot of uh really unique pilots in Wick I think we'll um you you know about our Planned Parenthood pilot this past year we piloted um with a organization called it takes a village to provide parenting um expert support um to some parents and we're constantly looking at ways to increase those Partnerships we have a really great partnership with the local Head Start uh and we integrate them into healthy greens JC where we can here your question any dayare that would like to be involved with that type of program they could reach out to HHS absolutely so you know we first we license daycares right second cacfp while I call it the after school program cacfp also Services daycares and we can provide a a meal and a snack to daycares that have uh enough students uh and they can absolutely benefit from our program and obviously Partnerships and we also go in and do immunization record review so you know they know to call us and we anywhere we can support daycares uh we want to because something going on nationally around Wick so there's about 8 million people in the wick program across the United States um there's 8,000 in our program but we run one of the largest programs in the state of New Jersey uh what we see is that people come to wick for year one because we give a lot of breastfeeding support services and and or formula which is very expensive uh year two we give a lot more milk and vegetables but by year three we see parents getting kids into uh prek 3 and stop leaning on Wick for their food service support uh and the wick program operates to the age of five so we really want all of those kids and families and daycares which is why Head Start because Head Start already has the income racket um for us but in any um Head Start that has Partnerships and we do partner very closely with the schools that have designated support for children with disabilities sometimes parents will come into Wick and say but I can't my kid can't go to that daycare because they don't have enough support services for their autism and then we'll help them fill out the proper paperwork to get their kid into a school that's supportive and get them that uh bus services addition um so you'll see see a growth in our immigrant Affairs uh Team uh so uh Lee has been doing a really great job um we still have Mike mlan with us part-time so that's always helpful on our difficult cases uh and mad in Diana do pretty standard operating applications and now we have an entirely new team led by Angelica Rees like I mentioned earlier an internal promotion because we received a grant from the state from the office of new Americans and this program literally just kicked off uh a week or two ago to support employment application support for anyone here with temporary protected uh you know status and we have originally when the grant started it was to support Venezuela uh Nicaragua Cuba and Haiti so we hired someone that speaks a haian cre and French and someone that speaks Spanish and then the leader of that program angelicas is also bilingual Spanish so and she's been with us for about three years she came on board during covid um and so uh that whole program we are partnering with six different local nonprofits we're giving all of those local nonprofits some funding to host Outreach workshops monthly and then we come into those uh programs and walk through the application process and then some of the staff review those applications to not put the burden on the staff that are doing uh green card or uh civil surgeon exams and support for citizenship and it's 100% paid for by the state let me ask you something Stacy in your immigration department what what language uh increase more so are you getting a lot of French Creole we're we're we're seeing French cre because we have uh a lot of people here with temporary protected status from Haiti so we have very large Haitian population um that came here through experience from either you know political or um past hurricanes I think remember that um we have a NE you know we have an Arabic speaker uh Mandarin speaker uh Haitian Creole and Spanish but when a particular group we know is coming um so you know years ago when we had a lot more Afghani refugees here we hired someone that we supported through the citizenship process so they can translate but we also have a translation services line that you can call and we translate a lot of our new American Materials in those languages so in the past we've translated it into erdu um I don't know what others right now but obviously Arabic and Spanish and now Haitian Creole our our Veteran Affairs um in addition to the staff we have a Vista but because they're not paid for in our department they're not on the orc chart but um Michelle Spencer joined us about a month ago um and she's helping uh the director Juliet Foster really expand the different tiers of of service and we have two Veteran Affairs service officers and they are you know permanent titled civil servants uh that um Lawrence took the test and just transferred into our organization last month we also have our senior affairs team uh and that is set up in four different um ways so we have our drivers and oftentimes it's Carol Pascal that's managing the drivers Jo and obviously um our director of senior affairs works with Kim ACO who's funded through our County Grant and Kim's role is really to support all the facilitators that go out and do the social wreck across the city and then uh Jeanie uh supports Joan and then we have our Coler Center and our Connor Center Staffing and they are all funded which is not recognized in the the budget at this time because we don't have an official letter from DCd but Darlene Cynthia Gina and ESP bronza just like the congregate meal team are funded um now through uh DCd funding that's earmarked for us that you approve on an annual basis and then injury prevention um led by Cynthia Vasquez um we have three programs one is our uh hygiene homeless services our bus Ruby that travels around the city that is managed by Gail and her team Jonathan taian and Brian uh we are currently finishing a grant proposal to the Bloomberg philanthropies um it's part of the mayor's it's a contest um we've been uh working on a video and Grant proposal and then we run the peaceful families program that's our domestic violence PR program um Antonia Costello she's our licensed social worker and she works both with our Sam sha Grant that's led by Kare um that does the mental health first aid courses across the city I believe we're hosting courses on Fridays for City staff uh and then we're we host them whenever we can to with partner agencies the grant is to serve um Hudson County and some of Essex and then we run the courta appointed domestic violence program and we support firsttime offenders of domestic violence through a 26 week uh group uh program and we hire facilitators to help us with that um so some you know off the top of my head we we have you know uh Reverend Bertha reel she's one of our facilitators uh Paul moonlights uh as one of our facilitators uh but we have trained chaplain and or um staff members um running these courses we run about 10 courses a week uh and we'll show you on the deck uh what that looks like uh as far as our success and so um because I kind of highlighted page three of the organization overview and four and five sort of the specifics that the divisions are doing is sort of get a little bit into the budget and success so I mentioned um year-over-year um where our budget has grown um so from last year to this year uh you see an increase of uh 133% but again we haven't booked every Grant so are fiscal officers only allowed to book the grants that are in that are federal that we know are 5 years at a clip so there several grants we're waiting for or several new grants that we'll apply for and once they come in um we're able to offset the budget so you'll see by um division the first one is food and nutrition that's representative of what I just said so you know we're waiting for $271,000 from DCd so what you see is we need $641,000 to operate that division more than what we have but it'll probably be half of that or even less once new grants come in uh at the end of we get three different grants from the county we get our initial um proposal allocation and that uh council president that's what I presented to you the other day that we got it so late that we were hoping to get it on the January 2nd meeting so that we can start using that um and then in the mid year we just got our year application I think ofer presented that you know at one of the last Council meetings it came so it we still haven't gotten our final allocation from the year so we still don't even know how much money we're getting for the year uh and the year ends in you know 12 days uh and that's because the state gives the money to the county and then the county gives us the money and then how we bring the money into the city uh it it's this a very long process in environmental health you see an increase based on right right now um we have several staff that at five years of having the particular license I mentioned earlier the regional Environmental Health Specialists there's a state law that we have to increase their salary to the salary of the highest like person in that team so someone that's been here 20 years versus someone that's been here five that person that's been here five gets paid now what that person that has been here 20 years based on a state law so there was a significant amount of uh raises for that team when we increased the rhs's right before covid you know we had like five and then we went moved up to eight today we have nine um so let me at you some based on a state you say that they have five excuse me they have five years if they have five years yes and get increased person worked here 20 years yeah so if the person is in the same Civil Service title corre RS um and and I'll just the example one person on that rehs team has been with the city almost 20 years so their salary was you know $80,000 uh but at rehs that was with us for five years also like a caveat their local 246 and local 246 hasn't gotten a raise um in two or 3 years so that also factors into so that that person may be making $60,000 right now uh based on a state law with this because they after five years the state feels that their experience is equal to any person that's been there even longer that this title requires the same uh salary and so we just had to increase four of our staff to that level uh just recently I think it was in September and yeah this was a a lawsuit many years ago before I was here but it's a state law not a city law and then Animal Control um you know we took on a Yan's job this year you'll see some of our amazing um success but we do feel that we could use uh more Staffing and we you know every new set of cages we order they get filled you know within a week or two so um we do see a vision um in fact Brooke has been working together with uh mark on moving the container Village as it's no longer operating all four of those containers we are moving down to the shelter we're waiting for psng to uh El give us more electricity so that we can do that and then we'll have um a full and concrete from DPW uh and then we'll have a full campus um for animal care and control and we think that will enable us to bring in more volunteers we um kicked off our volunteer program um late this summer uh with the support from local 246 in anou and um I think when animals are spending a lot of time in cages uh they also are very rambunctious so there's a lot of things the volunteers can't do right now but we are still working with volunteers for fostering and we'd love to be able to have more volunteers join us but we've been very successful to date but I think we can get more volunteers and more adoptions out with a little bit more Staffing support um so like I said earlier this is a very physical job and all day long they're walking animals and cleaning animals and um cleaning up animal cages and um seen some injuries over time because of you know uh early onset burnout um and or you know difficulty following directions but um there's uh there's definitely room for for us to give greater support to animal care and control um in immigrant Affairs uh the increase is because uh we had a large Grant from the enhancing public uh enhancing local public health infrastructure that came through the New Jersey Association for City and County Health officials that trickled down from the CDC and that is taking a new shape next year a sustaining local public health but it's significantly less money um across the entire State um but this year we leveraged it to offset all uh as many salaries so a lot of these increases you're seeing are based on the salaries that we were able to offset this year and last year um so you know small upticks in uh the director's office we put uh Dr San on loan to animal so he didn't really present on our budget all year um some of our staff were offset through L uh they won't be offset through Alie in the future um the same with uh immigrant Affairs and Veteran Affairs and Community Health and Wellness uh but you'll see a decrease in senior affairs because we're getting more funding and we're offsetting more staff salaries with this DCd funding for congregate support and injury prevention we um have been very successful with the peaceful families program um the city does not fund it at all um this is funded through Congressional Appropriations uh and these Congressional Appropriations are somewhat delayed in getting to us really uh in a timely manner through the federal government so while we put in the budget of injury prevention last year we didn't have to use that money because by August the money came in uh and then we were able to offset uh the funding you know back dated to January was going to ask um you know there's like a looming government shutdown will that impact will there be a staff impact will you know a lot of this is grant funding do you know what our exposure is at a city um from the federal level that's where this um in this ending HIV money came from so that was federal funds the Elfie money came from CDC and Wick money uh is from the USDA and those are the largest levels of exposure but um in the in congress with the extension so they're kind of pushing um typically food programs don't get uh cut because they're reimbursable programs so they do ask us to continue working on those programs what we're seeing is we might not get new funding from CDC or we have requested and it is part of Senator Booker's appropriation to continue funding the domestic violence work that we do um at a level of $800,000 that's not reflected in this um right now and that's because we're really unclear we got like a letter saying you're going to get this money but we haven't gotten any of the proper paperwork from the federal government to be able to book it um that's really when we come to you to be able to book that thank you so you'll see and that the things that I just mentioned are a little bit more clear in the next two pages eight and nine and that's the grant offset so you see on page8 with the Elfie the enhancing local public health infrastructure we offset um almost 3 million well 3,889 527 in the 20124 budget uh and that was with monies we didn't spend as quickly as we hoped in 2023 they allowed us to spend in 2024 and we're we have a a little bit left over and that they're letting us take that into 2025 and then on top of that we have a sustaining local public health infrastructure grant that we are designating for staff being offset in Veteran Affairs and immigrant Affairs uh and then another Grant offset so for many years we received this funding for Bergen Hudson chronic disease Coalition it started off as like $45,000 and it paid for one person that was like seven years ago this year they were like oh well we're going to give you 15,000 but it requires us to go all over the county and we're like 15,000 is just not enough money for us to be running leaving Jersey City so we said you know what we don't we don't want that money um because $155,000 to take staff out of Jersey City and go do things in other parts of the city when we're already down one um Health educator just was not a good return on investment for us so that um we chose on our own to just like not go jump through the hoops and all of their protocols for very limited uh return and like I mentioned earlier ending HIV epidemic along with uh a transition of what is called the office of local public health um it was a grant that came out during covid during covid we really didn't need this money so we put all of that money towards Ruby and we integrated it with the he B work that you heard Paul talk a little bit earlier and we see had be traditionally um in hygiene situations so we were able to use that funding to pay for the bus up through June 30th after June 30th you know we've been working on Grant proposals submitted something internally to DCd to pay for uh Ruby and the bus team uh but there the new money that's coming in from a office of local public health is very focused on it was only $78,000 so we putting that into the City Clinic to pay a portion of the nurse and the um other expenses for testing which uh sadly has been delayed because the state doesn't have the proper tools at the state lab to support us and so we're just waiting to move that for forward um so you'll see again um this salaries and wages is really a part of um the Elfie loss so you you kind of see right here we offset Elfie at uh you know one mil 300,000 uh last year and this year we don't have that funding so you see an increase in salaries of all of that Elfie money loss plus some of those required promotions that I shared with you and then operating expenses going down because of other Grant supports I think we run a very tight uh uh other expenses you know all of those items that you see in front of you were funded through um l so uh didn't really come off um city tax dollar will we be able to get lfie back again next year or Elfie was a part of that um you know America recovery program and so it was a a large amount of money that went into the CDC it won't come back as Elfie um but it there are new grants coming back to us so where we got $2.1 million for two years in Elfie this we didn't apply for it it's just based on the number of people in our city this year we got 178,000 right 168,000 and and and then they let us take into the new year what we didn't spend in lfie this year and that's about $100,000 that we didn't spend uh and with eie we also because we didn't want to just take full staff for the whole year so that you didn't see it we spent about $200 ,000 the last two years so $400,000 total offsetting Recreation staff uh on their budget with Elfie money so we supported that and uh over time so um this year uh finances you know focused on helping us organize better so we did this pre-solicitation so just to give you some numbers um we're very busy so uh we shared with Finance sort of what our needs are related to contracts uh to be able to operate at minimum and that's about $4.1 million um covering different aspects of our work so uh they wanted to be better uh aligned with how we're putting in PRX as they transition to their new system so this um slide number 12 is just sort of the 78 different diverse vendors that we know that we've been working with for years uh that we probably would need to continue doing that business so that we can continue uh doing the work so for example food and nutrition majority of that money is you know witson or wealth or you know what uh I think we yeah witson we worked with for summer meals and Meals on Wheels along with wealth for congregant meals and uh all of those are already approved in resolution for the New Year by Council so that's required money but majority of that money is in a cost share with the county uh animal care and control majority of that money is for veterinary services you know Mark and I talked yesterday about the possibility of just hiring a full-time vet uh so that we don't have a lot of that uh contract exposure we don't always spend all the money in every one of our contracts because some people sort of you know things happen in their lives and they you know don't show up all the time injury prevention majority of that is our facilitators um we have uh english- speaking facilitators Spanish speaking facilitators and arabic speaking facilitators for our domestic violence program and for our Mental Health First Aid so that we train the trainer and we have trainers out field so things like that that's just where our vendors are so just giving you um some aspect of like what we need just to do the basics uh and then some of our results so we're sharing from 2023 to 2024 the growth in our partnership program so you can see um nearly 130 new partners this year at on healthier JC uh this year we have uh a new website coming so we're really excited about that it's going to be a lot more userfriendly and our partners will um be able to benefit from that uh last year through our partnership for healthier Jersey City we gave out over $600,000 um ranging from $4,000 to $15,000 um servicing these five Health needs that came out of healthier JC's first five-year vision and as the new healthier JC website comes forth you'll see the 2030 Vision um and then uh a little bit about our Twitter X and um we just started a new Instagram uh because we thought that would really help um guide also some activity around uh our work and our adoptions and we wanted to share with you some of our meal delivery um we had over um you know a quarter of million meals uh over last year and in congregate meals uh we've seen such a great increase because of our quality of food uh with a 1% food waste which is really important because food waste is also money that comes out of the city tax Dollar pocket uh because if we don't serve the meal um we don't get paid for it so the kind of fin fial work that we're doing on the back end uh to say that a meal cost us $13 plus Staffing we get reimbursed at you know $20 say this is not accurate but I don't have that number in front of me for the meal if uh one of our centers doesn't do their job properly and we have 18 leftover meals that cost the city you know a good $500 that we didn't anticipate and we can't recoup from the grant all of our maal programs work like that that's why our meal programs are very strict uh and we need to have the meals to the people and get their names and we we put that all into a database and the county actually reviews the database even if we send uh meals on meals to someone on Monday and Tuesday they went into the hospital the meals that we sent them m day is paid for but Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday until they're out of the hospital they won't pay for it and the county sees it because every name goes into the database um so it is a lot of that kind of work our healthy grain JC program and the partnership with aura is growing all of our farms are in um uh we have farms in six of our Public Schools uh we have a commitment from the public school to pay for maintenance for their own Farms so that at the end of this Administration it continues and they make decisions about their future we have um two Farms with the Jersey City Medical Center we've installed a farm at Barry Gardens we' have uh farms at Coler Center we have a farm at uh the new uh Connor Center we uh have a new farm at the bethon center and we're kicking off our growing season so we're going to start putting seeds down so that in the New Year all of those locations um will just have a an abundance of healthier options how is it distribute once it grows how is it distribute so each Farm has a farm membership program so you can go to wherever the farm that's local to you join the farm as a farmer member uh if you're interested in additional support so that's weekly distribution you can come on the weekly distribution day uh we have Wellness Wednesdays um at Maran and Curry's um and when you come for your greens you could stay for a workshop you can grab a recipe if you want so we like to say that we have a vertical program aligned with the vertical Farm you can uh sign up for Diagnostics in your neighborhood so that we do blood work we send it to City Medical Center they process it for us they have a follow-up doctor call you and share with you like you might have high A1 or you might have high cholesterol you should keep eating your greens you should really go to the classes and if you get your Diagnostics done and you want to continue with more of our programming we offer you an aura ring the aura rings were paid for by RB during covid we got 119 aura rings uh we have ordering contests with Maran and Curry's and our staff that work there have them as well and they're they're tracking their sleep they're tracking their temperature they're tracking some of their so we're kind of giving them data to help them with their health while we are also are pulling in data seeing if the monies that we're spending on this program are providing a return on investment and we've been working with Ruckers for uh doing a review of work we've done to date um and we have a contract with IBM to pull all of that data together uh to start analyzing that data when when do you think the uh new Conor Center uh the greens program is that going to be up we're going to kick it off um next week right janary I hate saying that date but uh the first week not a good day first full day of January New Year the first Monday of January uh so yeah it's and and we'll let you all know uh because we're going to integrate that program not just with the seniors but also our veterans okay um and and our you know anyone that comes in we've got our immigrant Affairs there and then the community health worker that um will have some time there along with Paco one of our partners there and the Wei project uh and so we're trying to you know do some vertical work around that as well uh sharing with you some of our Wick numbers uh this year very exciting Wick approved uh Outreach coordinator for us um you know this is something we've wanted for a really long time but our services have steadily risen um as covid um and we see the need is really great in our community one thing we did this year is we partnered with the county so in inside our Wick Clinic you can get support for tanif you can get support for housing and Medicaid or Medicare if you're a a senior caregiver um and so we have some staff from the county that sit in the front of the wick Clinic uh and they're supporting uh anyone that comes in with additional wraparound Services it's it's really exciting for us obviously I mentioned earlier our Planned Parenthood and you may have seen over the summer um we were awarded uh a Gold Award from the uh USDA um breastfeeding work because our our breastfeeding team is clearly top-notch um like I mentioned earlier Paul's team um and the health officer uh staff address communicable diseases so over the course of this past year they did uh over 2,000 uh communicable disease invest vestigations uh in our immigrant Affairs staff you can see the the work effort with our small But Mighty team uh we assisted over a thousand residents uh we most normally support the N400 and that's a naturalization form and all the uh different items you know that we are supporting our immigrant population with in environmental health we did almost 3,000 inspections our our kiosk um we have had 650 visits to our kiosk since May we're working very closely with the Jersey City Medical Center to expand this effort across all Wards and uh we're still in uh conversations with them about that this is funded through our opioid settlement money uh our peaceful families um as you can see uh you know this we have grown since 2021 it's a very uh comprehensive program it's 26 weeks um with you know orientation on the front end and and support and referrals on the back end and this is for um you know individuals that we've served so we've served over uh 200 people over time uh we are continuing to work um with Ruby and our team to address some um issues in our undomiciled uh community we visit and we're working with a lot of the local SIDS uh because they're really interested in working with us in this aspect so that's very great uh good and um we work alongside the County's comprehensive program around homelessness our community health and wellness team and we're sharing you there's some times of year very similar to Christine where we're doing all of these activities bringing people to the table our large scale activities uh obviously December we decided to um give you some numbers to date as of yesterday because we had a significant number of people come through World AIDS day uh and the work that we've been doing there um and you know most of the work that we do is uh email Outreach with Community Partners many of them the partners of healthier JC uh but we do a lot of phone support services and curriculum development we're doing a lot of development um in the school system and Linda's team is just out in the schools um pretty often doing that so you can see some of the wellness uh events versus um Health faires versus some of the other curriculums that we highlight whether it be our um our ship program that's uh Insurance support perp uh HIV uh efforts healthier choices that's a curriculum we mostly use in the school system also substance abuse education and general you know what our our team sort of creates based on the need in the community we get a lot of really great support um our seniors are continuing to be on the Move um providing rides to our seniors we highlighted this uh because we only have two drivers and if someone calls out sick uh we can't pick up our seniors uh and so we got permission about a month ago to bring on a contracted driver so that we can call them if we know someone's out sick so that we don't stall services for our seniors there a reason why there w d is like so small compared to uh well you'll see on the next page what typically um because we have a very large senior center in w d people go there okay um these are rides that we provide and and and I will share one one place in w d happens to be on a day that one of our drivers calls out and we weren't able to service for quite some time uh and we're working that out in HR uh but I do think it's most of the time it's services that we're providing to supermarkets or events and a lot of times we're providing events through the Connor Center got it so they're arriving to us D we're happy to host so yeah no that's a job right so now we starting with a contractor just in case right well we have a contractor just in case um because we don't have full service and we don't have the ability to hire someone right rightly so um and then our Veteran Affairs we kicked off a really comprehensive uh program we call Vital uh veterans in total active living uh with so many different programs uh and so we've got some pictures alongside a partnership we started with the parks coalition and we'll continue that with some opioid settlement support uh and so we thought we'd share some pictures of we did things from networking events this year we do a RunWalk group we continue to do service day this past year our service day was at the harus uh historic Cemetery uh that was really excellent day and uh animal care and control we save the most comprehensive Leaps and Bounds for last but since we opened the shelter we have seen over 900 animals come through our doors um and that is very significant um we've seen almost 200 surrenders and we have a waiting list of people that want to surrender their animals because they feel they cannot care for them but at this time um you know we want to we don't have any more physical space to put any more cages so we are waiting for the uh containers and we'll be able to have more space obviously one of those containers will be the home of our food pantry and support services to help people keep their animals because we think that's really important animals are going to be better with families than in our shelter any day um and um we these pandemic puppies or their seniors we' beg to say any of them are pandemic related or we're seeing you know through evictions new rentals that people need that where they can't bring their animal it is not um a fun time it is a it is a very difficult time uh when people come to us and I think you know Mark has been trying really hard to help everyone that we can but um we're we're also trying to get more people to Foster to support um that process and I know this is uh something that you really want to hear um Elan buano but um we beat the mie fund standards for euthanasia of our animals um and that is really only medically necessary um when there's an injury that we can't fix or control or the vet decides that that animal is not able to be adopted um and that is about 6% um Maddie's fund suggests a no kill shelter um which they don't like to use that word uh as long as you're under 10% uh but you know when we started here in the administration um we saw that uh the local animal shelter was operating at a 20% uh euthanasia and now we're down to 6% um and so we think that that is just amazing success you'll see um only about 326 hopefully by the end of today they'll be 350 um but uh we currently have a $24 adoption promotion to end 2024 um and we're just you know inviting residents to really come and adopt and not shop uh if they're planning to get you know animals or pets for their children um this holiday season uh We've also seen an uptick reptilia so we've seen a lot of turtles bearded dragons Boors um yeah it's uh and many many um rabbits over the course of the year so um it is yeah it's been a it's been a great year and I think um Animal Control could do even more with the money that we're requested [Music] do we do we have any questions yeah I just have one question uh Juliet has only two people working with her with Veterans Affairs and probably one of the most important divisions to me is Veterans Affairs and I see every other division has all these people working there why doesn't she have more people especially now with all the problems we have with veterans yes um so so that is always a question for Staffing and meeting the needs of the veterans um when Juliet started she had one staff person uh and in 2022 I think it's 2022 we got permission to hire a second staff person uh and this year we have a Vista supporting the program and I think if we found additional funding because you'll note immigrant Affairs only has three people and then a part-time person who was paid for out of a Department of Labor Grant the whole year and the three new people that I shared with you are 100% paid for by a grant so yes we're always working on new grants and the way the city system works and and I don't it's very nuanced right so if you hire someone you give them a civil service title and then they take an exam and then they become a permanent employee but if we lose funding I can't afford them in that division right um so that's something that just happened someone didn't take the exam someone else took the exam in that title and I had to transfer that person to another role in the department uh where someone had retired right because there was only two people on the budget uh that budget um starting in 2023 was offset by the enhancing local public health initiatives um we hire Partners in contracted forms to support us with a lot of our veteran work at night um and like I just said um an RFQ that we just had out uh to support veterans we have two uh agencies that have replied to the RFQ to support the veterans work that we're funding through opioid money particularly around you know uh Suicide Prevention active total active lifestyle for veterans now if there's more money I we'd love another person in that team uh we right now leveraging the Vista to better understand like how would we add a third person to the team and uh if that's something you know the administration is interested in or the council and they want to put that in the budget we would we would welcome it gracefully and I don't really do a lot of things gracefully so let me ask Finance is is there any way possible well we we bring back the budget proposals to the administration um and we obviously Echo what the council members are looking for uh as far as adding into next year's budget so we'll do that um you know that decision is made by the administration but yeah we typically have a process where prior to introducing the budget we go through all of the requests for every department and you know whatever is Affordable or whatever is the priority that is when that is determined so possible you car all right that's it I was going to ask about the arriv together program mental health I'm not involved in the arriv together program that's jcpd gotcha um mental health work that we do that we're funded to do is mental health first aid courses it's very similar to CPR but it's an eight hour course we offer that Weekly at the department we can share updated dates we would love every city employee to take it uh we would love Council aids to be involved in it um we open to the public it's open to the public we serve about 3,000 people a year um and in addition to that we do our domestic violence program that we're funded to do but we don't have funding to do uh real one-on-one counseling um and with the Affordable Care Act you know we're in hopes that everybody has support uh and can go to a mental health provider one of the largest things we learned several years ago as we were looking at where the county of Hudson is and because we feel as as goes Jersey City goes the is this large disparity in the number of mental health providers in our community versus the need um and that's really um something critical the uh Crisis Intervention work um was not awarded to the city it was awarded to a local nonprofit uh they are working with a federally qualified Health Center I think that is also really great because it enables the federally qualified Health Center to provide additional Support Services through a medical arm and they get the funding to do those kinds of continued one-on-one mental health support so like I have uh a resident whose son is schizophrenic and he's homeless doesn't have a birth certificate doesn't have health insurance like I know yeah something like that um one because they're homeless two doesn't have a birth certificate well if they live here then I can work with Sean they were they are in Jersey City they're in Journal Square they're born in Jersey City um just you know no how do we sign them up for health insurance do well so we can get them signed up for health insurance uh after we get them a birth certificate most of that work happens at the county through uh this community support service program under the uh work that Frank Maz is doing and and Bobby nap and so we we we work with them and so we'll say hey help us we finally got this birth certificate help us get this person the mental health uh or medical support get them on Medicaid or SS Medicaid support uh then we work with the County's office of disability services so if there's a housing need uh lucky us our dear friend Aaron Ross formerly with the city runs that part of the County uh and we're in communication with her monthly because they fund uh the portion of Meals on Wheels that is under 60 so that's for people with disabilities that we provide meals for across the city through peer grouping and that's under Aaron and Aaron is very versed on the way the city operates she was you know a leader in DCd many years ago and uh we work with her on things like that but we don't we don't have the capacity we have one licensed social worker um who runs a comprehensive program and then goes home and teaches a course at night for us um so you know I was listening to the former hearing and you know a lot of our staff are already like over 100% committed to like a particular job that's funded um through a funer that doesn't really allow us to do other things so if there was other money I do think that some of these things really belong in the Partnerships of the federally qualified Health Centers because they're in the community uh they're they are not seen as governmental um we can build that trust and we do that when people are homeless with Ruby because we have you know a trained uh person who who was a Psychology major uh he's been trained on Mental Health all the staff have been trained on Mental Health First a but he's been trained as a trainer for mental health first aid we have a chaplain that's on our buses and we are building that trust and part of the grant proposal we're submitting tomorrow is to expand Mental Health Services with Ruby um but that's you know a goal of ours any other questions just thank the staff for coming you yes St I wanted them to see all the work that they do what you hear um and I think like I don't do this alone obviously everyone like sitting to the side of me and behind me uh do all the work I'm just um the one that pushes forward it's you the one that just push it all the ones that's here they're all doing do work do y'all want do y have do You' have anything to say we don't want to you know just close out without you guys if yall want to say something we want to give you I mean they deserve a round of applause so like if anybody want for them I know the staff works hard in in the city of Jersey City they really do they all do all divisions do and I know how short the Staffing are but I just want to make sure I get the opportunity for you guys to say something uh because we really do appreciate you and we want to hear from you too so does anyone have any feedback or anything to share how can we help you as a council you can you can form a line right here an extension of the budget hearing yes good afternoon I am Juliet Foster director for the division of Veterans Affairs I would just like to say thank you all for your support uh through the year thank you to division to our department director Stacy Flanigan for her support uh we would not be able to assist our veterans the way that we assist our veterans uh without your support um and they are getting vibrant support now versus 5 years ago uh when I started and that is a direct result of the uh opportunity to learn uh and train as management under uh director Flanigan's leadership uh and your support uh financially so thank you you're veteran she's a veteran yeah is very do want to say this budget was very comprehensive and like it really is a testament to all of your work and hard work sacrifice everything you've share with you I did not prepare any of this uh our new employee Jacob R he's our data analyst um we worked very closely he um making it very clear the results we have and mostly all of this and more will be on the website by January um we obviously over many years worked with Innovation when they had data team and when they did did not continue you uh bringing on data we ask the mayor for that support and so Jake Works under Brook and they're very thoughtful about um what we should share but uh we we do have our Animal Control Data up on the website now and we're just going to bridge all of this up onto the website um in the new year so we can have December because it's a little hard to give you a full year um now but uh I think it's important for the public to see uh this work and there is a return on investment for the the support for this department I appreciate you putting it up on the web site like that I don't know if people really realize it but when we first came in in 2013 we had a challenge with the budget here and because they didn't even the Departments didn't even have an organizational chart I remember that quite well and as a council person we looked and we said how can you present a budget without an organizational chart we don't know where the Staffing is in the city and um the administration start developing a temp a template so the budget hearings have improved over the years I'm a witness to it it has improved so I appreciate your service I appreciate all that you do I really do we have come a long way yes we've come a long way thank you hearing number 12 in the [Laughter] book motion to adjourn I have a motion to adjourn at 12:33 p.m. by council person CLE may I have a second second second by council president Waterman on the motion to adjourn at 12:33 p.m. all council members present by acclamation please say I I we are out of here at 12:33 p.m. thank you so much everyone okay good afternoon everyone we are on the record today is Thursday the 19th day of December in the year 2024 this is a budget hearing for the Department of Housing Economic Development and commerce with the Jersey City municipal Council we had a scheduled 100 p.m. start the clock on my cell phone is showing 1111 pm. and I'm just going to call out the council members that are present and can just say here council person bajano yeah council person SLE here council person Solomon that's okay and council president Waterman we have four council members in attendance at 111 p.m. in addition at its time of its preparation the notice of this meeting was similarly disseminated on Monday December 9th 2024 at 5:31 p.m. to the mayor Municipal Council business administrator Corporation Council and the local newspapers so I can certify as to our total compliance with the Sunshine Law before I turn it over to the council I just wanted to have everyone introduce themselves for the record um because members of the public who are watching the live stream may not know the name with the face as we do so um we're going to start with our director and let me just put the camera on you no pressure If you can just state your name for the record sure my name is Ania chelone I am the director of housing Economic Development and commerce here at the city of Jersey City and uh as our different directors division directors come up to the mic they can introduce themselves as well but we can start with the first one sure my name is Gigi gason and I am the director for the division of affordable housing beautiful and then on to our finance dle Greaves from the director's office Zakia Gregory fiscal office sir Danny bnot finance department excellent thank you so much and I'm now going to turn it over to our city council I'm not sure who's chairing but forgive me uh if it's council person Cay because at least he's got a big smile on his face that I can see on the monitor so I'm going to turn it over to chairperson S dead giveaway thank you Sean um I appreciate you uh coming here director and um would love to hear the presentation you have for us today regarding your budget great thank you chairman um uh thank you uh council president and council members for having us here today you should have received three handouts um one is a copy of the actual budget and spreadsheet format um one is a copy of the department or chart um in simplified form and then uh the PowerPoint a copy of the PowerPoint presentation and we're going to take you through that I know we have a tight schedule today so we'll try to keep it moving um and we'll highlight some of uh the work of the uh Department um as we go along um so we're going to move to um we'll move through the department stuff uh page number two um this is an O overall information about the headcount in the department um this budget that we're submitting for 2025 includes total of 149 um headcount include part full-time and part-time uh together right now currently we have 137 occupied uh positions that um the the numbers in between are the vacancies um go to slide three uh that shows our uh uh the amount of the budget requests um over time it Compares it to Prior years as well as our headcount compared to Prior years and what you see on that slide is that uh we largely remaining flat there's not much of a difference um from 2024 to 2025 both from a budgetary perspective as well as a headcount um if we move to slide four that does goes into a little more detail of how it breaks down um as in each division um and where the numbers have either gone up or gone down uh from last year's budget uh we we're using the amended numbers that the council voted in um compared to our request for 2025 now I'm going to move to the division um uh the director's office in particular um to talk about some of the so we're on slide we're on page five some of the um accomplishments um in 2024 and our goals for 2025 um as you know one of the major um initiatives that the department has had um has been our new um online permitting and Licensing portal um we went live with that in June of 2023 2024 was our first full year um having that software in place and really our Focus has been on getting that you know running functioning making tweaks to it as needed to make it work for all of the different divisions um and you know just refining it um throughout um we are in 2025 one of our big goals is to increase um our use of met metric and dashboards to be able to use it from more of a management side and a reporting side uh up till now we've really been focused on getting some of the Kinks out of it and making sure that it functions um and that's one thing I'd really like to spend a lot of effort on um in the future so if we go to slide six I wanted to show you a bit about some of the numbers of how that uh portal has been being used um I have a link on there to get to the portal if anyone um wants to sign in and look at it themselves but so um we have a total of 65 different application processes right now 29 permit type 32 plan and 36 license types we have over 12,000 registered users on the portal approximately 95% of all of our applications done in the department are being done on the portal over 46,000 total applications have been filed since we went live um almost 47,000 inspections have been conducted using the new system um uh we processed for over $46 million through the new system and one thing I had mentioned last year and I brought the business cards again just in case any council member wants to take any home um we have we set up a heline as well as an help help email at HED support HC support JC nj.org that email alone fielded 4,000 emails this past year since we set it up um or sorry 2,000 this past year 4,000 the prior year um that's when we you know first went live so um that kind of answers that but about 2,000 just in this past year and that's a service we didn't have before um and so we're you know that doesn't include phone calls and walk-ins and things like that so we're very actively engaged with trying to help people use the portal learn how to do it and we are going to be rolling out um in 2025 more sessions for the public both from a City Planning and Zoning side as well as a construction code side so approvals and permitting um more uh you know just support and and tutoring on how to use the system um are there any um oh so we'll go to the budget slide slide number seven um largely there's not really much difference in the department director's um office in particular one of the main requests we're asking for in 2025 that we put in it was the is the last line this data processing 412 line that's $10,000 that is specifically uh for the service for iPads we rolled out 40 iPads across our department for inspectors to use in the field so in the past what had been done was inspectors were given you know their rout for the day or whatever their different stops they would do those they' take notes on whether they were what their you know past fail the comments all of that stuff they'd have to come back to the office and enter that stuff in um back at the office now they're able to do that stuff in the field and so the budget request is just for the service the iPads were already purchased um but that's the the cost of having them you know they have to be able to have self self service to do that work in the field um that a newly rolled out thing we're still rolling it out to more we haven't rolled out all 40 yet but most of our inspectors um do have them at this point um and we're seeing it being successful we do hope uh that we're getting feedback that they like it but also we do think it would make us more efficient going forward so um if at this time if there's any questions on the director's office budget um um open do the iPads have like tracking on them in terms of being able to see where their inspector is and that they're doing the inspection at the right place at the right time that yeah they kind of it it gives them their inspections for the day and they can go from one one to the next and they kind of like check in at the one they can they fill stuff out and then they can close out at an inspection so it it does tell us like what's happening I mean we're not like monitoring that in super detail at this point but um we can see like how many they've done did they go to all the stops in their route okay just making sure that you have uh eyes on that you know yeah any other questions turn it over to our first division um div we're not going to necessarily have every single division director go up because I know we have only have a total of an hour but uh some of the key divisions that I thought you'd want to hear their metrics um and hear from them today uh and they have specific budgetary issues um uh we're going to bring up so division of affordable housing GG Gall thank you director uh thank you council members uh council president for having us here uh I want to uh start out by saying that uh very successfully the key thing I'd like to focus on is the launch of the Consolidated affordable housing portal that was a huge uh goal that we had uh since the Inception of the division so as a reminder we're about to enter our fifth year so small and mighty with a lot of really big big successes especially this year uh and with your support so the portal uh just so that you know um hold on let me get this back up here uh we have had so far on the portal 2,913 applications it was only launched in June and with a very limited amount of units um able to be marketed on that portal uh over 100 that average is about 121 applications per unit we do have reporting uh that we could get into detail uh but I just want to highlight that there were a thousand applications for one low income unit so just to say that one of the goals we have is to work with you to implement policies for more low-income units to become available uh we have served 770 constituents generally uh via walk-ins um you know just coming into our office and providing them with resources that we've had um we have done eight uh Community meetings to train uh staff uh allies other nonprofits and members of the public on how to use the portal uh and we also allow for folks to make an appointment to come into the office to receive one-on-one uh training on the portal uh so that's huge and we you know we have the staff uh to be able to do that um I will move on to uh some other really great things we are going to become Revenue generating we've already uh generated some Revenue this fourth quarter through the administrative uh fees uh it hasn't been high because there are a few but we are also on the system that the director mentioned which is that uh permitting portal we are now on there as well so all of our affordable housing Agreements are going to be processed through that portal uh for two things to generate the revenue to Bill more easily and also to do um inter interdivisional communication we are very linked to City Planning and we really need to be talking to each other and that permitting portal really does a lot to do that so that's a really big achievement um and I also want to point out that we are going to be releasing that 5-year housing Report with um the guidance of the director uh and all of you and we have done an amazing amount of data research and we have located uh over 16,000 affordable housing units throughout Jersey City and that's an increase of 52% in terms of data tracking that we've been doing now just as a caveat we don't monitor all of these units some of these are um senior housing some of these are things that belong to the state uh that were here that were Legacy Buildings but we are really working in partnership with the director's office to really make that data robust and provide tracking and dashboard reporting um and with that I will tell you that our budget uh itself um is actually decreasing um by about roughly under $200,000 and that's because the portal was our main uh source of expense and we're now moving into a maintenance um sort of Rhythm with that vendor uh so the uh expenses won't be as much and also the portal will be generating fees so um next year hopefully you'll see an offset even an even further downward Trend uh in the amount of money that we're going to need to maintain that portal uh and I think that's it with that um I'll open it up to any questions that folks may have do we have any statistics on the lead time from when someone signs up on the site to when they're actually put into the housing um if they're like an appropriate candidate within the income yeah it is actually quite a long time we are developing a dashboard through the portal through the Consolidated affordable housing portal that will tell us that and that's already in the works so it should be out by the first quarter of next year we'll be able to start reporting that out okay uh colleagues do you have any questions are there any developments in the affordable housing space uh nationally regionally or in another part of the country that um you know we can learn from and is there something that the council can do that we're not doing um I don't believe at this time I think you know really trying to figure out ways to create more lowincome units um there there really is a great need in the community for those I think we're actually to be fair with your support and all of us here um I'd Pat us a little bit on the back we're ahead of the curve we do a lot of research to see what other folks are doing uh are we doing the same are we doing differently we've done NYU Housing Solutions lab peer-to-peer uh working uh and we are always impressing our our colleagues um you know we do have some things that we need to learn a lot of it has having to do with programming and more public information and communication um making it easier for folks to apply there's there's that glitch but we're working on that proceed thank you very much for your time and your support I'd like to bring up um director Tanya Mario one thing I'd like to mention as she's coming up is that um uh I didn't I didn't report back the revenue numbers I did have it on an earlier slide on our looking at the total Department budget um right now uh looked like the revenue generated by the department was slightly above 34 million so just as a reminder that we are an income generating Department okay can you hear me yes okay um I am going to take the remainder of the hour just kidding Reay is um so just to go through some of our stuff I um can I talk about the accomplishments first real quick okay perfect I just want to kind of talk about the accomplishments really quick um one of the things that we launched this year um the director's office asked us to do an interactive development map um there's been um a real push U from the director's office for us to provide Rich data that's easily readable and available to the public so if you've ever come on the city planning website we have the interactive development map which means that literally anybody um can type in their address and get their zoning information it is very much that easy um and then she ask us to do the next step which is to take all the development maps that you usually see that are very static they're just maps and to make it interactive so now you can come on to our website and you can find out all the projects that are constructed under construction and even that have approvals and you can use all different tools if you even want to see how many project projects are coming up in one area Etc um so that's a great tool if you haven't used it we were able to launch it this year um we were able to finalize the uh historic element of the master plan uh of course we worked with councilman Boo's office to uh create mandatory affordable for General Journal Square um and then using the both I'd say the two affordable tools that we have through the affordable housing overlay and the inclusionary zoning I know this is something we talked about every year but we're finally seeing those numbers um come to life so just through the affordable housing overlay we were able to um create 17 units that's eight applications that utilized it um and the io 264 units and nine applications um and a lot of that is because of Redevelopment plan amendments that require the inclusionary zoning so you're finally seeing the Redevelopment plan amendments that were created under the io two years ago coming to a board for site plan approval and that's being reflected in our numbers so it's pretty substantial that's over 300 affordable units this year Alone um the new zoning is working and when we go through our metrics you can see um and for for zoning we are um also seeing uh folks utilize the affordable housing overlay at the administrative level which means that they are paying into the affordable housing for those additional units and just going through the permit process it it's being used um and we updated our fees and at the request of the council We are continuing to work on formalizing our curb cut front yard policy um so real quick for our our metrics you can see that um we're still pretty we're doing pretty well with development wise um 88 8,600 units were approved at the planning board again just to loop back to the same reason which is that you can see in the other chart where it says uh Redevelopment plan amendments that that number is a little higher than it was this year so that means the Redevelopment plans amendments that we made last year are coming to the board um so that's a really strong number uh it's almost not almost but double of what we approved last year um yep so I talk a little bit about the zoning and I want to tell you why the zoning is working so when you look at the zoning board activity it's misleading where you're looking at the planning board you're like great more development more applications everybody's working it's great when you look at the zoning board if you see that everything is wrong it means that your zoning doesn't work and everybody has to go to the zoning board and ask for variances because it no longer works so what you want is the least amount of applications at the zoning board the least amount of meetings and you can see just alone from 2023 to 2024 it went down 20 applications that were heard um and that's you could see just alone from 2019 that's the lowest applications that we've had that doesn't mean that the zoning board isn't Meet it it doesn't mean that nobody's working on those applications it means exact it's doing the new zoning that you guys put in place is doing exactly what it's supposed to and people are utilizing it again HBC it's pretty consistent with the amount of work that they put um demolitions are a little tricky and I know that you guys get annual reports from us um but there is no such thing as a determination of significance anymore is just a a permit for demolition that was overturned by the court so I think when we do those anual report I can give you a little bit better um understanding of what that actually looks like sorry do you want to be talk about the budet or um and then right so I mean I don't think we're asking for too much completely different in City Planning um again the thing that we're looking for I wanted to point out for the professional Consulting fees is that we have to continue doing those surveys um the historic surveys in the wards it's really important that we have the most updated information and that helps with the demolitions it helps with us being able to pull it up get an accurate picture and get that information back those surveys are also available online so if you did yourself wanted to look um on our city planning website you can see um which properties are on there or not if you also look in the historic master plan we have a huge inventory and you can look in that inventory and you can kind of see for yourself what it is we do need much more updated information especially in w I'm going to hop over to zoning real quick um I was able to uh break down uh the information for zoning a little bit differently um and you can kind of see I think at least what we're doing more than I was able to kind of tell you before uh we were always doing approvals for short-term rentals we were always doing driveway approvals they're always doing these other things that just kind of got into the mess of data for other things zoning terminations zoning reviews it all meant the same thing but this gives you a better picture of I think what we're actually approving and last month you know that we actually introduced fees for the driveway markings for the short-term rentals work on each application probably staff time is at least 10 hours so us being able to introduce those fees not only obviously as a revenue generator but it's justifiable because of the work that goes into it um and you can kind of see in the revenue alone uh eventually I'll get you be able to to get those driveway fees I it's a little too early right now but just uh in the last month alone I think we were able to um bring in an extra $100,000 for the fees the fee adjust the fee adjustment was so long overdue um that it it kind of showed up immediately um and then I broke down the violations for you because I think everybody's sometimes more interested in the violations the calls I get from you are usually from constituents who are complaining um so I wanted to give you better picture of what it is our enforcement is doing I wish that um so yes all right let me go back real quick 2023 for the front yard parking uh that in and of itself was given out and that was that could be anything from you're parking in your front yard and you're not allowed to you removed your landscape and you weren't supposed to you have a curb cut that is more than 10 feet and we want you to make it 10 it could have been a a plethora of things but we narrow it down to what it is exactly so you can get a picture so when you're looking at a violation for front yard parking you're looking at a very specific violation says you are not allowed to park in your front yard period If you're looking at a violation for curve cuts it means that your curb cut is too big if that makes any sense right so sometimes people's uh curb Cuts expand over time and they go out with their yellow paint and they make it much bigger than it's supposed to um and those are those violations uh separately the illegal units I wish this number was lower I can tell you as a result of the zoning we are actively seeing applications utilizing the new zoning that's to say that a building that would have not have been allowed to have three units or four units as of right are use are coming in we probably approved at least a 100 new units that would not have been permitted otherwise so dealing with the legal units yes it can be through enforcement I think though being pro proactive through zoning is another way that we've been dealing with it and dealing with it successfully um and the summons that are issued of course is not very different um than it was previously uh 100 summons and of course you I assume you know what that means but just in case you don't we give out a letter of violation if we don't hear back and they don't appeal it it goes to court as a summon that's that's uh necessarily that's really it for zoning and planning and not much budget changes either nope thank you director Woodson at Commerce we're on slide 19 afternoon council president and council members mayard Woodson division director of Commerce um I'd first like to start off with uh what I'm most proud of is the amount of Revenue that we bring in from such a small unit this year through uh November 30th we've uh brought in 11 a little over 11 million uh on the slide it shows slightly less than last year but we still are anticipating another approximately 800,000 in Revenue we have some unpaid uh parking lot taxes um that we're we should be collecting within the next week um the Park revenue just just by itself the 15% tax is $7.5 million which is an increase over last year uh the mass transit tax is $ 1.6 million everyone knows the Cannabis tax collection is new for for the city and we've brought in $371,000 that we're very happy about along with an additional $15,000 in medical tax one plus of these uh other tax categories it's the use of funds the recreation tax is dedicated to the Jersey City Public Schools uh the medical tax goes is dedicated to the affordable housing fund and the mass transit tax is used for Capital Improvements um the number of app I mean getting back to uh cannabis we've taken in uh year to actually Year from the time we started in 2022 over 77 applications have been heard by the CCB 69 of those have been approved approved and to date we have 15 stores that are open also we started the smoke shop uh licensing this year uh actually last year but this year we have a total of 33 that a licensed we've transferred 18 liquor licensees and the new third party food delivery um five companies have registered with us I was going to say for the um for for the uh smoke shops you said there's 33 and the cap is 48 correct correct and what happens to people that don't license their smoke shops as per the ordinance uh once we reach that cap of 48 they're not allowed to obtain a license we've done quite a bit of Outreach and we've identified I think approximately 70 businesses that are out there and code Code Enforcement they've gone out um visiting most these places so at that point then it'll just be an Enforcement issue once we reach the cap okay councilman um oani wanted to say why don't they just close them down that would be an enforcement responsibility once once we reach the cap and the Cannabis fees that we're getting how many cannabis retail establishments are we getting that from like how many have opened up that we're receiving this tax we have 15 open but I would be more comfortable saying we've collected tax from 10 because the last five it just recently opened so that wouldn't be due until January 15th how is it collected is it like automated or is it um it's quarterly um they report to you they report to us yes okay so do they have to send anything like a PDF file or send like a sales thing yes sales report to support what they're reporting okay they're required to do that with the state as well so we have a wave thank see most part as far as the budget itself it's pretty much flat um any kind of any increase in the salaries are based on Union increases for the most part and expenses um regarding the law that was passed uh for Uber Eats and Grub Hub and where are we in terms of compliance for that have they like registered with the Commerce department and um we have five companies that have registered with us so far okay I think we we probably I think we had identified maybe eight or nine so at some point we're going to have to move forward with enforcement to be able to track the different companies okay any questions from my colleagues questions on commerce's budget you're good okay you're free to go um we included Community developments um some some information on their accomplishments and their goals and initiatives um for the council I'm not going to bring up the director um because there's very little budget um requests there uh and so due to time we're going to focus though on construction code next but if there are any questions we do have the director here and we're happy to answer them this is director Ray Meyer construction code official good afternoon council members council president good afternoon um basically the site the accomplishments of the office is basic due to the fact of the implementation of Tyler software and by doing that it we've have increased on on application by 91% through training of staff and stuff like that the staff can take the process from the start to the Finish where before it used to be you know broken off to different factions and stuff like that and if somebody is out they can automatically pick up the operation and take it from there uh the iPads is another helpful Factor because it gives a more instantaneous response to people following along on the status of their inspections any looks like another good year I think that we'll probably have because the trends are showing that will be basically following along in along with the previous years that we've had and other than that that's basically it oh any questions from my Council colleagues yeah Ray uh I call you on Saturdays Sundays at night 9:00 10 o'clock uh evidently we don't have inspectors out there I don't blame you but we don't have inspectors out there or if we do they're doing construction in joural square at 10:00 at night 11:00 at night cement trucks are Block in the street what are we going to do about I've been bothering you about this for the last six months or more and nothing seems to get done well as I stated to you before I mean there is a police department to notify the police you Paul the police they don't show you know or they don't they don't know what to do that's uh we're supposed to have inspectors out there to these people I mean word it is though they don't want to bother the developers you know leave them alone uh but Ray something has got to be done because I'm getting my back broken constantly with people in Journal Square that are just tired of what's going on and you know they allow all this construction to go on here look at Summit Avenue it's a mess the two big buildings going up there and the buildings they block the street they block the traffic this morning they had the street sparked it's a shame and something's got to be done I know Ray you're retiring next month thank God no I'm not kiding you bu I'm kissing you can you put on the record that if you are are not retiring what's that are you are you retiring is that confirmed I am retiring he's moving to South Carolina thank God now Ray I'm so you know like I hate bothering you at night well rich rich the permits that I issue for constructing other buildings are for within the property line there are other agencies that basically deal with sidewalk closures street closures and stuff yeah I know and and enforced by other agencies so my office is not traffic cops when but the inspectors should be out there at night or during the weekends and stop these contractors I do I do have an inspector out there I do have an inspector on Saturdays that go out there yeah but the work goes on nothing's being done yeah it's a public just say that we that's not the structure that we have been asked to provide in the division of construction code official we've been asked to provide for inspectors for scheduled inspections of the building code during work hours right and that is what we're set up for if there's a different structure that is desired by the council we can meet your need um but that would have to be done through you know discussions with the administration and how they want to proceed that's we we are told to staff you know Monday through Friday we do staff a little bit on the weekends but largely even the weekend work is to set up for inspections that need to be done on the weekends we are also in general not we are staffed for scheduled inspections we're not staffed for patrol we don't Patrol looking for things if our inspectors see stuff in the field um when they're out doing their scheduled inspections they absolutely um will look into it see if it's a permitted work issue violations as necessary but they're not out looking for things that are being done wrong that's just not the way we're set up if if the council and administration would like a different structure they're you know free to let us know and we can do something different but that's that's just not how we're set up I mean you can look at our orc chart um you know to how the technical staff is set up we have one subcode uh for each of our different trades um we we range you know in how many inspectors we have for each one but that's the staff that's needed to do the scheduled inspections and keep construction moving here in the city Denise I just want to let you know people are sick and tired of what's going on I mean now it's spreading to other Wards course you know the development in general square is out of control and nobody seems to give a damn in the city that's something that's not controlled by us that's controlled by maret of the of the City have right why I call you all the time I drive you crazy I'm sorry you know uh I'm you're probably glad you're retiring so you don't have to hear from me but I'll call you in South Carolina anyway we're on a time crunch everyone uh we have all right but just there are other agencies that are also involved don't we have Traffic Safety that's another agency we have code enforcement that's another agency that all have powers that basically deal with those issues also so I'm it's not just my office because we issued the permit for them to do the work councilman Solomon sure I just want to ask on the salary line item for construction code you know in the amended 2024 budget it was roughly 3.5 million but the expended this is 2.8 I don't know if that includes the month of December here but but just you know where are we in terms of hiring and and Staffing and construction code to make sure we're able to keep up to dat with all the permits and if you want to look at the org chart um there's two different pages in The the file that looks like this like the white boxes that you can see the vacancies there we do have some vacancies not an enormous amount um on the administrative side we have one vacancy um which was a requested position that you guys funded last year and we very much appreciate that um it's to put a someone with a more fiscal background um onto technical the the administrative side of his staff um and so we're we have that posted right now and we're looking to hire for that and then the technical side which is with the inspector side we actually only have a plumbing vacancy and two building vacancies so you know it's not it's not bad right now we've actually uh we've had it a lot worse in the past um so that that's the discrepancy though were things that filled uh you know throughout the year you know and then people did leave and retire during the year as well so we had to fill those but that's the that's the difference and and we are fully staffed it looks like in the elevator department now I mean can we say hallelujah because um I mean I will admit uh two of those people are part-time um and we would love to have all those spots filled by full-time so though there's not on the chart it doesn't look empty we continue to post on our website if a full-time elevator inspector were to apply to the city I would call our lovely friends in finance and say please let me add them even though it's not in the OR chart if we could get another full-time one we would take it so that is you know a little deceiving in the chart but we do actually have three people plus a sub code that is you know we've not had that section filled the entire time I've been here so we are happy to have that we would love to have more hours from the ones that are part-time and it's not due to lack of trying um you know director Meyer here has sent you know uh letters to every single licensed code official in the entire State more than once um we continue to post for we leave it on our website all the time so if you know of anyone we are always open arms we will take we will take an elevator inspector thank you gray I wish you nothing but the best on your well-deserved retirement thank you for your service years ago what are you kidding how many years 30 35 wow that's my age okay we will miss him greatly I willon thank you be good um so the next slide uh in the packet is economic development um there you can see there are accomplishments um for 2024 as well as the sister city program for expediency I'm not going to have that director come up their Staffing their budget is only the two members of that staff um but I am going to move on to housing preservation but of course if there is a question for uh Comm for um for economic development the director is here um with us today um but I'm going to move on to division of uh housing preservation is there any anything that's coming up with economic development that we should know about for next year like uh sister city things that are in the works or director orango we can do that also I want to do mention on the economic development front we work very closely with JC EDC um they just released I don't I think maybe they came reported back on that they just released a new UE plan um and so a lot of the economic development work that we do with the director's office as well as director orango is on implementing that U plan it's a pleasure to be here uh we working in couple assisted cities and I have some things pending there because of different difficulties that we had in the last two years uh and we have to be very methodic I know we have uh some uh involv in the Middle East because we we supposed to have a assist city with the area of Gaza and Israel and and due to the inconvenience that we confront right now we had a but we also have uh some cister City spending in the Caribbean in Puerto Rico Mexico and and we're working on that right now because it's important and recently we had a a good connection with the c City in Spain overto they promoting and they promoting the city of Jersey City they name Jersey City street in in the principality of Spain promoting the city of Jersey City as the tourist point in the metropolitan area because we have Newark Airport we have the cruise line in Bon we so close to the city of New York so we we getting a lot of people from Spain visiting Jersey City right now so from the economic development point of view is excellent because we're getting extra people from all over the place on the business size we opening a new restaurant they're going to be a premier restaurant in Newport area uh probably supposed to be open this month but uh solars is going to open probably next month do we have any um timeline for the uee program now that um we approved it and it went to the state I believe uh what's the next steps for that the next step is we pending you know whatever the Department of Community Affairs uh decides to do they have their own Urban Enterprise on board and they provide the fundings through the city on Economic Development Corporation that is the independent Authority that we use to provide help to to the main streets here and you know I would love to I'm I'm very happy that they are now close to us in MLK and we can communicate better and also I'm uh I'm looking forward to to rebuild the facad program to the minority business in the city because we they really need a lot of help Council colleagues any questions you're good okay thank you Cy holid thank you before the director come I wanted to ask one question with the um Community Development Corporation how is the Staffing there now director will you join us for a second sorry the hot seed doesn't stay too hot for you director do we do if you go to the um work chart uh a packet there is one for Community Development that might help you want to talk about um good afternoon everyone DJ Anderson director of The Division of Community Development um how does our staffing stand um as a right now we're fully staffed at about 24 slots um we have three vacancies we have one vacancy for our senior auditor position which has experienced a significant amount of turnover um we do currently have an RFP out for auditing Services which I think would be a better way for us to work with the organizations that we're in charge of monitoring and to assist us in evaluating their applications for grant funding um I do currently have a vacancy for our compliance officer role um which assists Us in reviewing all of our contractual documentation whether that's deed restrictions and mortgages and our grant agreements I also currently have a vacancy for our program uh director which is the team supervisor for our affordable housing construction team which manages uh our home grant our community development public facilities Grant and also supervises the affordable housing trust fund because I knew it was it it was a challenge before last year was a challenge I know with the with the Staffing over there because of that I know grants was pushed back and delayed and things like that but I wanted to see how we was coming with this division um because this division is so crucial and you said you're having a problem with the senior portion of the hiring explain that to me um that was for the your auditor role so over the course of 2025 2024 I've had about two separate individuals that were hired and brought into that role and then immediately resigned from those positions so it's like the scope of the work that's being asked for in combination with the salary that can be offered for the role doesn't really meet what is available in the private sector got it is a salary thing again I just want to get clarity that's all because I know because we silver service and I know we was having a conversation um how sometime that ties our hand with increasing um pay for people to get really qualified people and so I just hope HR is watching so they can um make sure that they have a plan I mean this is a different day in time I think we have to approach or or at least meet with the state to tell the state the needs have changed and how can we update or change you know um the requirements um when it comes to hiring staff because I think Civil Service  Us in so many ways uh want to also add that the three vacancies that we do have in Community Development right now um which which is not uncommon for HDC they're very technical right not just anyone can go into these roles they're very specific they need to have very specific background and skills and it can be really hard to fill spots like that you know as we've spoken about whether it's inspectors or people um from some other divisions that need very specific education background experience these three roles are not you know the rules we have available uh right now are not our roles that we can train into or that we can hire someone that maybe just you know is really smart but doesn't have the background these are rules where they have to have a certain level of background the one is really someone who's an attorney um the other one is really someone who's an accounting background and the other one has to have a really strong knowledge of real estate and understand the grant programs of that are offered to create affordable housing um at the federal level so it that narrows our pool so much um so then that combined with you know the with you know the competitiveness of of the private sector lack of flexibility here at the city it just makes it hard it doesn't mean we can't find them it just no I I agree to that but I just want us to be competitive see I think sometime with certain very hard to be competive in the public sector anymore I think you know as we all know a lot of changes happened over the last few decades like you know the benefits aren't the same you know the the longevity is not the same like all the things that people went to public sector for they were willing to um accept lower salaries because there were all these other perks right those perks as they've been tightened by some you know different administrations in the past not locally at the level I think that that does impact it you see it years and years later that if you're if you're going to not offer those perks then your salaries wind up having to start competing with private sector which did the opposite of what they were trying to do right they were trying to reign in spending but it's like kind of does it doesn't with positions like this can some positions like this be remote the ones that's V I just want to I just want to know for my understanding I mean the auditor probably could be our wouldn't say our real estate person really should be remote but I think the auditor probably I mean we had a remote conversation early I just wanted to know mean I would ad it's It's tricky because you know I know the discussion about remote there are definitely certain jobs within HC that could be done remotely but if you had to say everyone has to have I didn't say every no one that's where it gets tricky but there are individual types of positions that could be no I I didn't say everyone I just wanted to know the ones that was vacant yeah if if I could speak specifically to the Division of Community Development because we're working on federal grants um and also some pass through grants through the state um that come from the Department of Health and Human Services our peers that we're working with and our monitors at the state and federal level all have remote work options so it makes it difficult for me to retain the talent once they get here they use DCd as a stepping stone to get into this grant world and get the experience and get knowledgeable um because typically how salaries work in the grant World admin becomes a portion of what the allowable Grant is so if I'm not offering competitive salaries and the option to work remotely I'm constantly going to be dealing with turnover issues in Division of Community Development and we do spend a significant amount of hours training staff so you know we just want to be as effec effective and efficient as possible thank thank you that's all I just wanted to thanks a lot thank you questions from the colleagues and I do want to say we're at 2 o' so um we're not going to end it but we're going to keep going for 10 more minutes Al we we started 11 minutes late yeah we did but um that doesn't why I tried to skip a few divisions just to speed things up but we have director Richardson now to talk about housing preservation good afternoon Council Shon Richardson director of housing preservation and because of time um I'm not going to be lat little belat uh trying to go through every statistic for you we'll just highlight a few things and then answer whatever questions you may have um as you look at the budget uh the line share of our budget comes from the hotel occupany tax which is the 6% tax that hotels are charge as well as short-term rentals um in terms of initiatives we've had quite a few initiatives this year uh one of them has been we partnered now or we uh Co we've come together with Airbnb um of course as you guys know that's become a serious issue of short-term rentals in the city so Airbnb actually reached out to us because now what they're doing is that they're going to force anybody who use their platform to be compliant to have a permit or they will no longer be allowed to be on their platform uh we we did a soft um a soft notification in September but as of March we gave them 6 months to comply and we're already getting a lot of people calling in because they know that that permit needs to be done so as of March they will be kicked off their platform if they don't have a permit so I think that's a very great positive the city as well as the fact that we have a new vendor with Avenue who's going help to enforce uh the short-term rental so we we anticipate that uh compliance is going to be uh bulked up a whole lot this coming year so we can catch some of the Bad actors when it comes to those who are doing short-term rentals um another initiative that you guys are well aware of is the uh lead inspections um due to the fact that it took us quite a little bit more time than I would have liked to get fully staffed uh we are there now and so as you can see the numbers of the inspections that we brought in the revenue that we brought in this year uh $83,900 um what we are doing beginning uh January to March is that's when the registrations are due uh we didn't require it because we were just getting things up and running but starting next year anybody who's registering their property they must also have uh proof that they are the exempt from the lead or they have a lead inspection which is going to increase the numbers dramatically because when we did the initial numbers we saw that there was approximately maybe 28,000 units that could have uh Fallen under this if they were not exempt um so that number even if it's not true it's still a higher number so we're anticipating at least 3 to 4,000 inspections per year starting next year because now we're going to be issuing summons and violation for those who have not complied uh another initiative that we started uh last year was the Oprah request and so we added a feature on C click fix where people can now request whether their property is rent controlled or not um that pushed our number through the roof uh where people can now at least find out whether their property is R controlled or not um one ma'am and out they can find so they can request it and we can we can help them find it out now the issue with that is always Staffing because uh the process of finding that out you're going back and forth with L landlords I'm sorry to get the proper documents to find out what you need um and then you have the petitions so the petitions is where they if they if they feel like their rent is being overcharged or that they're not getting the services required they can file the petition with our office either uh legal rent or failure to maintain petition this year thank you uh Council we did get a part-time person to help with the petitions but also because our office was backlogged and I put that in my report for several months when it came to the the Portside issue it slowed down the petitions which for me we're trying to speed that up because I do feel like all the constituents deserve to be serviced as quickly as possible when you log up an office you hurt other constituents so we're trying to get that up and moving a lot quicker my goal is when somebody files a petition within 2 weeks to have a determination so they're they're not sitting around being abused by landlords who are Bad actors we know all landlords are not bad actors but we definitely want to do catch those we also have talked and we we're back in talks about the rent Control Ordinance uh we had started that uh when I first came uh to the position in 2023 it got held up but we actually already started conversations with some of the council people the Law Department to see if there's anything we can do to beef up the rent Control Ordinance so that again we're trying to catch Bad actors so we're in the process of doing that even as we speak um the last thing is that we do have this new initiative which is the lead remediation and abatement what this is is that the state has given a for it's a $180 million across the state Jersey City got $2 million and what that is is for the owners of one to four family homes if they find out that they they are in need of remediation or abatement they have funds now that they can apply for up to $113,000 per unit which they can get from the state via the city to help them Abate those issues and so we're in the process now of getting that up and running the good news is that because that brings in more staffing issues we are repurposing some staffing members to try to make sure that we are efficient as possible so it created an opportunity to move around a few staff members even try to promote if you will because they're taking on more initiative themselves but I think that's a positive any time we can award a staff member who's doing a great job even with a new initiative I think it says something very positive about the city and so uh if you want me to continue I know we pressed for time if you have any questions I take those director I have a question absolutely we passed the law about two years ago or more about Airbnb yes sir it's not being enforced why it is well again I think you and I have the same situation you have with when it comes to the there's not but so much we can do we can issue violation we can issue summonses once those things are issued from our office that is the last thing that we have the ability to do so once we issue a summon once the issue of violation it is no longer in our hands in terms of the enforcement process because I see it going on in the neighborhood uh just continues continues on and on you just said Airbnb is starting to force right so that's new so what that again what it does for them is that if you're if you become a bad actor they're not going to let you use that platform uh to to promote your property if we find out that you're still promoting your property it still goes down to what can our office do summons violation that's pretty much this the extent of what we can do to to force compliance though they are summons though they are issues or those things and we talked last time because when they go before the court if you issue a summons and that sum is let's say you got $115,000 in fines if they only charge or they're only forced to pay $1,500 but to an average person that's just the cost of business so that's not really an an incentive to make them stop if the fees that they're being charged are not hurting their pockets at the end but again on our end all we can do is issue the fines and the violations but after that happens there's really not much more that we can do councilman um you said the goal was to get um illegal rent applications returned in two weeks that is the goal what additional Staffing would you need to meet that goal so if you really want that done um I would say let's start here give me two more staff members that are just focused on that alone okay yeah and um for broader enforcement of um you know uh chapter 260 what additional staff uh would you need Citywide well again once we talk in these talks with with the council it depends on what you're asking our staff to do so the of course the more you ask the more we have to look and say can we do this with the current staff and if you really want it then we'll come back and say well this is the staff we would need to to get that done okay thank you is there a way that we could mandate that people that are that have rent controlled buildings that they go through the Tyler system when I know and I know we're working on chapter 260 right now and we got the most updated version a week ago uh from it so we're going to work on it hopefully introduce it first quarter 2025 um but do you why can't we mandate the people that have rent controlled buildings uh mandate them to use Tyler to do their um Renovations because usually they'll like reverse engineer it they'll say they renovated their property and then you know they'll try and increase their well I mean you talking about Capital Improvements or vacancy Capital Improvements yes so we have a process in place for that already so that if they're trying to do that they they're not legally allowed to do that without eventually get an approval from the city the thing with vacancy Capital Improvements is that the way it's written now they can start charging immediately but then eventually we if we find out that once the inspector goes out there and let's say they overcharge we do have it with in our system to make them have to return what they overcharge so we already have that system in place when it comes to vacancy capital improvements or Capital Improvements Capital Improvement uh what is it per square feet how is it it was $1.35 $1.35 and then up to $5,000 and then above that is it's 155 was 155 I'm sorry up to 5,000 and then 135 after based on what I hear from some landlords part of the challenge is that that has never been adjusted over time right so part of the problem is when they trying to improve their property because their return is so low it's become challenging them for them to do you also have hardship her and everything go up right but you also in situations where they can prove that they're not meeting their budget they can also apply for hardship which gives them an opportunity to get a much higher increase versus just the capital Improvement or the vacancy Capital Improvement okay hardship they can go to hardship yes ma'am just want to be cognizant of time we're at 210 um are there any other presenters uh director the only thing I also I wanted to mention is that um uh as per the action of the council you created a new division in the department um of HDC um and that is in both your the budget requests the order charts and in the uh slideshow um there will be a new uh tenants rights to count right uh to council division um in the request the way that I did it was um just just to get it started just like similar to when we started the um affordable housing office I started it by just putting in a director and an admin staff um we tried to anticipate uh you know th those costs um and then what we did was we we there's a grant that we have applied for we're working with councilman Solomon's office um through the DCA that's for $400,000 so we subtracted that amount and then we added in our anticipated uh we can we're using the admin fees or the 20% of the development fees we added in the residential portion of that into the budget and that's where we came up with three a $328,000 line item for outside Consulting meaning that we would use that to fund lawyers for the right to counsel program now that's not all been decided we have to talk about that um but that's the way I put it in for this first year as a way to put something in for you all um it can be used that money could be used instead to hire staff attorneys I do think it's a little bit trickier from a budgetary perspective to control that um to year I my thought was if we could do an annual report each year to tell you I can report back what we collected from development fees and we could allocate that money to hire attorneys to staff and and provide the services um but I'm open to discussions on how we move forward with that that was my thought to get this thing going the um we're working on a job description right now for that director role uh I'm working with the law department on that we'll be posting that uh that has to be an attorney as per the ordinance that you all passed that should be going up very shortly can we just contract us out the whole thing attorney well that the ordinance say we have to hire an attorney that's a director if you guys would like to revisit the ordinance you know that's that's fine with you all I I can only enforce the ordinance is you guys write that's how you've written it now I don't need to put an admin person that's not in the ordinance but I didn't want to leave an attorney director with absolutely no support at all um so I did put one other person in but I am assuming you're Contracting out the attorneys actually in the courtroom helping the uh tenants that is the way I wrote it but that's really to to be decided uh by you all in the administration I just made an assumption we were doing it that way because it's the only way for me to have some ballpark of how much the spending you know is um but you know we can discuss if you want to do it differently best interest because I could see yeah I don't know if C Solon had a specific you know vision in mind related to that but right well I think I mean I think the way the director for the first year is approaching it is you just have one attorney who's running the program and then one administrative and then everything else is external which I think for year one makes sense because you got to get it you have to do it to someone who's setting it up um WR an RFP yeah ex right the monitor make sure they're getting the exactly the thing in but we're not actually hiring any in-house attorneys to take cases in year one yeah I think the idea would be that in the beginning you probably want to have a real tight control over the spending and how much you have and how it's going and then as it goes on and we have more money to work with right as the development fee program is successful um you can you can then make decisions if you want to have a few on staff and have a contract out the rest or whatever is decided is fine but I made the Assumption right now we'd be contracting it out it's a modest amount though in year one it's only 328,000 but it's something to get started any final thoughts okay happy holidays thank all for coming and uh presenting your budget with that I motion to adjourn we're not taking any break by the way so motion to adjourn so I have a motion to adjourn at 214 PM by council person Cay may I have a second second by council president wman on the motion to adjourn at 2:14 p.m. all council members present by acclamation please say I I we are out of here at 2:14 p.m. okay moving right along good afternoon everyone we are on the record today is Thursday the 19th day of December in the year 2024 this is a budget hearing for the Department of administration and Human Resources with the Jersey City municipal Council we had a scheduled 2 pm start and we're falling behind the clock on my cell phone is showing 2:19 p.m. I'm going to call out the council members and you can just say presid council person bajano yeah council person C here council person Solomon stepped out yes okay council person um excuse me council president wman righty we have three council members in attendance at 2:19 p.m. in addition and its time of its preparation notice of this meeting was similarly disseminated on Monday December 9th 2024 at 5:31 p.m. to the mayor Municipal Council business administrative Corporation Council local newspapers so I can certify as total compliance with the Sunshine Law I am now going to turn it over to chairperson SLE thank you so much Sean Gallagher uh we're going to do the department of administration and division of Human Resources I'm going to turn it over uh to business business administrator Metro and if everyone can introduce themselves for the record yep so um business administrator before you start so if you bring up any of your division directors or assistant business administrators I would just appreciate because people at home who are watching on the live stream may not recognize the face with the names as we all know here in our in the chambers so I greatly appreciate that we can go around the room if you want to do it really quick so then you don't have to do it as we're proceeding we'll do it as they take the microphone Sean okay that very good go ahead ba all right thank you Council thank you for your time thank you Sean um before I start with the bleed over from the HDC I do just want to acknowledge uh director Meyer and his service to the city um over my 10 years in the city he's taught me basically everything I know about uh permits laws and construction so I do thank him for his service and uh we'll get onto business administration from there um so Council for the for time purposes and uh management I did separate the um presentation into two pieces one is business administrator's office and uh related offices and divisions and the second part is a um HR um program that uh will go through I mean obviously they're with us but as we they were a department at one time so um it was best to have their own presentation as well so um I'll take it from the top um City Administration uh we have seven uh divisions and in those divisions we also have several offices um those divisions are infrastructure um excuse me um Information Technology Communications internal audit uh dni diversity and inclusion Human Resources as I just mentioned uh tax abatement and compliance and our Municipal Court so we'll start with my office first uh the next slide would be my office um there we have six project managers to support staff and the way that we structure our office is the uh six support staff kind of help oversee some of the uh Department functions and they're also included in any of the um I Compass stuff that we deal with weekly as far as updating uh information that has to be presented to the council um any code modifications working with the law Department to make sure sure that that's satisfied and working with Finance to make sure anything is fiscally uh sound and responsible so so there we have a combination you'll see of assistant business administrators and um other relevant titles um the fulcer Act only allows so many assistant Bas in the city uh so we have those fulfilled and um the other individuals work in capacities related to their titles uh we have that Kyle McGee there is an analyst who helps us with most of our um spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations andc mentation and uh John Oar helps us with some of our Union negotiations which we'll talk about more with um hr's presentation our uh budget uh for my office and trying to be fiscally prudent is down 1% uh former Finance director I think it would be expected of me um but basically that's where our um Department our office lies and basically helping coordinate the uh mayor's objectives and working with the council and legislative body to uh coordinate um such activities moving on to Communications um we have some highlights here from Communications It Is overseen by uh Greg curado and we do have a division director Stan East who's been here for over two decades and has a multitude of experience in digital media and uh reporting actually former reporter um just some highlights here um the last year they successfully completed 255 original Creations that includes all of our public Public Notices and uh public meetings uh caucuses cannabis uh meetings planning zoning housing preservations and uh these budget hearings that are pres presiding right now um in addition to that one of the initiatives here for the business administrator's office is to streamline the graphics that go out uh for the city so uh we have 500 creations of booklets flyers and pamphlets um we do know HHS has some of their own uh content that we have now coordinated and worked together on to make sure there's no duplication and that all of the messaging is is uh is proper and um what they've done is successfully grown their social media platform um as you can see here uh in increase in uh Instagram uh followers and visits is a up 153% Facebook is up 49% and Twitter's up or X excuse me formally known as Twitter is up 73% so um uh their office if you take a look at the or chart as I mentioned uh we have an ABA that oversees it with Stan running the day-to-day operations of that and um Jen is our photographer we're very common with her um presiding over mult uh most of our public events and then we have a graphics team a video team and a social media team any questions there if you look at the uh do great work by the way yeah great work um if you look at the difference here again minimal in their budget um some some of those dollars are to offset the cola increase that we had last year as well as uh Union negotiations and uh 407 there we did increase um some photograph equipment uh just to make sure Jen has the ability to shoot all of ours uh all of our public events moving on to utility management this is uh I thought this one might have Outlast uh might I thought I might have outlasted this one but I didn't seem to happen uh utility management does still exist um C Council just for uh recollection this uh was formerly the water department of the city and um in order to not hurt those existing employees um they're still part of our pension system and um theia formerly Suez formerly United Water has been reimbursing us for years and uh we do have one employee left so once that employee leaves uh Shan will be happy to strike that out of the ordinance and uh we can continue on so that's 100% reimbursable uh to the city for that one salary our next item is uh internal audit um this is one that we're very proud of ran by Jeff Enright um he has a team of five uh members some do have auditing experience some are more investig investigation uh background um they've been very successful in helping the city um go through with a uh multiple layers of of uh approaches rather to go through the payroll tax and successfully have uh increased the payroll tax um including in that they've been looking at some of our pilot agreements to make sure entities like the port authority and um other developers are paying their fair share uh that's required um they've been taking a look at Revenue projections and giv us a heads up on um what's been declining not necessarily due to operations but um tourism didn't successfully come back as did in Prior years and you know they they do a good job taking a look at those and better predicting uh what Finance could use for Revenue sources and uh they helped us uh put together some of the affordable housing documentation that was required for the lawsuits and uh multitude of other things um I think it's just very important to understand that sometimes they're successful and reviewing something that doesn't monetarily benefit the city but from a productive standpoint it does um you know they've looked at efficiencies where in areas that we've been cross over people were doing duplicated services and they were able to formalize that uh with working with the business administrator's office and um they're going to help us on a few other uh projects uh one of one being um as I've been working with the council president on some of the Sid um budgets we're going to go through there and um take a look at what the city's responsible for what the city is responsible for and what we could help offset with cdbg money and um and EDC money so that's something that audit's going to be heavily involved in as well andf does a great job there and again uh just an impact on the budget of $122,000 and that was for um Cola increases our next uh division as we get bring it up is um it I'm going to ask Noble um if you could come up um and speak if there's any particular questions with it but um just for background uh Noble came in roughly about a year ago with the city and has done really a phenomenal job uh helped organize the team in a more structured way and uh really has helped troubleshoot some of our network issues um so cyber security um he implemented uh many measures he's updated all of our software he's looking at being proactive for the future um one of the things that we'll mention when when the courts come up is that uh we've been successful in reviewing calls to the public entities and determining how long people are online how long they're waiting for how how many drop calls we have how many people had to call back all that type of stuff uh Noble was able to do in-house at no cost and that's just pure experience and and professionalism so um I'll bring Noble up if if he just wants to touch base on some of the uh key points he's worked on and if there's any questions could he help could he help with um our autonomous agencies and see how many drop calls they getting I I I received a lot of calls concerning the MUA U bill that went out that's why I'm just asking because you said he can he has helped the city in that way this way we know how many people really picking up the phone not picking up the phone how many calls we missed how many calls was dropped voicemails voicemails we we because I think that's something that not just the city needs to have but I think everybody that's connected to us need to have it this way here um when they call the council and say no one's been picking up the phone and then when we call them they said someone is picking the phone we could stop going back and forth here this is this gets ridiculous to me after a while so council president Noble will address that a little bit further but just um for our purposes our shared service agreement with autonomous agencies would cover any costs that would be prohibitive to them or us that if we have a shared service agreement in place so being as a cost is at no cost to us we could provide it to them at no cost and that data would be readily available I'll let Noble speak a little bit more on the details thank you council president council members thank you I'm happy to to come before you and honor to be able to lead the IT department um been here about a year um my first role goal was to assess um and provide um Mr Metro with a plan um and we've been kind of building from there um to a to answer your question directly um I can work with other agencies um as long as they're willing to share how their systems are set up um because we don't control it right now and we are able to set up any kind of call monitoring or call cues um and develop key performance indicators for the uh divisions say our little brother Hoboken uh recently suffered a debilitating uh Cyber attack what are the key takeaways from that and are we prepared uh for any Cyber attack here in the city of Jersey City are we adhering to the gold standard when it comes to cyber security so cyber security starts with every single employee user um and there's a lot of work that needs to be done because it's ever changing um the key takeaways are and user education that's something that we're going to be focused on um for next year um that's key um because you're only as strong as your weakest link in any security um development um part of the capital project request that I put together addressed a lot of the weaknesses um because we need to modernize our infrastructure um the found of our Network and where we store data how we handle data all needs to be updated so like that's the beginning process of it um we work with the state of New Jersey to implement some security measures not going to get into details on it but there are measures in place that have been in place before I got here they're very very strong thank you councilman I'd just like to add to that um we are self-insured so some of our insurance requirements uh uh mandate that we do have accelerated uh areas in that I don't want to get into detail but um in working with Noble we're making sure that we have the maximum uh ability to to protect ourselves and uh we do have a relationship with Hoboken and I do plan on having a conversation with them on on what went wrong and what their best practices uh provide them as well awesome thank you uh let's see here so moving from it to Municipal Court uh some may say missal Court may be a department of itself if the fauler ACT didn't require uh nine Department maximum but um as you'll see here uh led by Wendy rosoli um the municipal court has uh over 85 employees um where Sean started I believe and Kevin Lions uh before I was born so um so if you take a look at still not necessary there there's uh multiple functions uh I'm I have Wendy come up and discuss it but some of our highlights uh with the municipal court and as we continue to try to um to um Implement change there that so some of the highlights that we have as I mentioned the call center uh expressing the data on that another thing we did is um we understand people don't have the ability to be on the phone constantly trying to schedule we do have an email service now where um you can email a generic email address and they can schedule their court dates uh based on that um we have uh flexed our uh coverage for 24-hour service um for probable cause which is important because um if it's not determined then the person can uh be freed it's important that we get it done as soon as possible and if not we want to make sure that um we we have all the evidence that's sufficient uh at in a timely manner um we've increased the bench uh by two uh we have two new judges this year uh that the council obviously has uh confirmed um and one other thing that we did um we we did have a backlog when it came to fire code uh violations uh related to covid so um in working with the former assignment judge uh we determined that we could have special sessions for that then we caught up and um you know at year end you'll see there's a revenue aspect to that we don't look at the revenue perspective it's nice to have but it's not why we do it it's more so to make sure that those buildings are in compliance for fire code violations and that those humans are not in danger of any fire code violations there and uh some of those repeat offenders we made sure that they paid the price so um but for particular operations if there's any questions um I'll refer to Wendy and and we can go from there good evening council president members of the city council CL do you have any questions uh how much do we um I would just like to say with the addition to the bench we went from 10 judges to now 12 Municipal Court judges to handle traffic and criminal matters which is equivalent to the largest Municipal Court in the state of New Jersey um we now hold 80 sessions per week with the add-on of sessions we will need to increase Personnel in the evening court calendar we need to add two violations clerks to accommodate the two new judges with the increase in call center operations working with the administration and it we will also need to increase Staffing in the call center by two as well as the court interpreters um with the flex hours we're pretty sufficient as as director Metro had said we have a 24-hour operation now with the staggered hours we have employees starting um as early as midnight and coming in as late as 3:30 we have four full shifts operating in the Municipal Court we also offer uh payment options uh we set up in the violations public waiting area computers so that because we don't accept credit cards yet we set up a terminal so that if people have a credit card they can go right on njmcdirect.com and make payment right there using one of the terminals set up um you want me to is this General in you have a very detailed report here um just want to know is this just general information in terms of like uh it says violations yes these people calling are they just calling for general information or yes the the bulk of the calls are for general information they call uh they want to know how much they owe they want to know um how to get into their Zoom ID what their schedule Court data is if they have any other matters on then the matters that they may have received the notice for so at present we have seven operators call operators attending to those calls they're live like live operators and it's um 31,000 calls on a Monday that's for the quarter and that's on a Monday for this quart for the quarter okay and you say you have staff and 24hour staff in St yes yes so we have employees that start as early as 7:30 in the morning to prep the Court calendars we have a court that starts at 9:00 then we have another session the afternoon session that starts at 1: p.m. the evening session that starts at 400 p.m. and then the deputy Court administrators that come in at midnight to determine probal cause you know estimated how many matters the court resolves annually like between all the violations and summonses and people getting arrested I I can get back to you on the exact amount just curious thank you you're welcome yeah um councilman we schedule between 40 and 50 a session so we we'll just multiple multiply that by um the amount of session have per year and get a baseline but we'll get the exact number got it and and you can let us know when um also traffic violations like you know um U-turn um people because I get a lot of complaints about people are just horrible drivers and and people are complaining constantly and they are saying that people are not being ticketed it's like people bad behavior is just getting worse far as traffic go far as driving so I don't know if that goes in your traffic court and then sometime when I speak to um different officers sometime they get discouraged because then they say the fines are dropped um so I don't want us to be rewarding bad behavior because then it doesn't improve because you know um traffic violations are out of control in this city I mean you could just drive right now and I guarantee you could see somebody passing the speed limit nobody stopping them doing an illegal urn things like that and like we just getting out of control and then you got people on the bikes you know that's really not in control neither some of them and so how how we are how we trying to help people behavior when it comes to keeping everyone safe in a sense and I think part of that is like when people are fine that they have to pay the fine if people get away with paying money they will constantly do it it's like we're not helping their behavior I agree council president I Know Rich is looking for me to debate but I'm not looking to debate um so just just from the Municipal Court perspective I'm not bailing out here just kind of from AAL matter um we accept the fines and we present them it's really the prosecutor's office who would negotiate those down so um I believe public do we have Public Safety yet yeah so when the public well we'll have a public safety on that with uh uh tomorrow um as Public Safety comes up uh with the prosecutor's office right because I I think we have way to control even the delivery bikes like I said we all you know cars have bad behavior bikes have bad behavior and it seemed like it's just getting worse if we don't start you know trying to um pretty much make people accountable for their behavior that that's all I'm saying because I'm getting complaints and they're not all wrong I agree council president I think that if uh Law Department uh law enforcement continues to provide the the fines the prosecutor's office upholds them um yeah definely curve behavior and uh maybe even bring back the motorcycles yeah can we do that can we do that can we bring them back r i see Police Department 2025 goals it says to continue to dispose of eligible court records to create additional office space um in addition to using off-site storage so what's the criteria for like disposal we're approved um by the state to use outside storage now so we're going to um also follow up with Public Safety and our goal is to move it the community Solutions program into that building with the expanding staf we're growing so we need that um space okay councilman just for a backstory here um when Wendy had taken over several years ago we were hoing documents essentially I mean stuff that was just being honest um so what we did is we worked with uh metr Shred no affiliation myself but a local entity here that was able to at least bring us into compliance with everything that was stated and then uh it's basically just a retention schedule that we have to continue to buide by thank you to be a why while this is on my mind because I know everybody has to come back to you one way or another the Departments um I hear everyone tell come here and tell us you know we working on it we doing it could I get some timeline dates sure because some of this stuff we done talked about last year absolutely and U I think if we don't put a timeline like you know a date like in January the 25th this should be done or February the 1st this should be done if we don't shoot for a date it seemed like we just keep it out here in you know Cyrus space yeah I agree council president and um most of these decisions have to come before the council for resolutions so it's it's best that we put a timeline on what correct what meeting that will be presented on so that's I think that's the best way I think we need to and I think the department directors need to um start having the flexibility and the freedom to say okay by this date here I believe we can accomplish this yeah I I just think we need to we need to start moving I agree and I'm happy to facilitate uh maybe monthly at least providing the council what to expect on the agendas correct that'd be helpful okay thank you thank you and Happy Holidays happy holidays W happy holidays we also do have our public defenders uh budget here attached uh we have Mr Andrew Abrams here who uh represents it uh we are pressed for one hour uh Mr andam yeah but uh um just a brief overview uh um most of it's contractual and um he'll give you a little snapshot John thank got the best laugh of the day thank you John um as a council oh madame council president and steeve members of the council it's a pleasure to appear before you again I will try to be brief though it is my reputation not to do so um we're a little Department compared to everybody else I I we keep a sign in my daughter's youngest room uh Shakespeare that says though we be but little we are Fierce and that's sort of the motto of our office here in Jersey City I have four strike that three staff members and I have 11 per DM attorneys who work for us we are currently handling uh 3,000 Court sessions per year by my count that's if you take each court session because we are responsible to make sure that the general public is represented in each of the daily Court sessions plus we've now added with additional nighttime judges uh another 300 sessions um I'll spare you the math and since I'm a lawyer I'm not very good at the math anyway we're in the business of people and customer service what I'm most proud of is that we have worked very hard to continually restore uh self-worth we're dealing with individuals from every different constituency here who are downtrodden uh there is economic hardship uh there are increasing mental health issues um and we do so uh by treating every one of our clients no differently than if they were hiring private attorneys they get the same representation and I'm proud of all of the attorneys that put their time in they could certainly be working privately and making a lot more money um but they are committed to making sure that Jersey City and it's constituents are well served uh over the past year uh we've gotten a boost uh by having computers put into uh all of the courtrooms for quite a long time the prosecutors had a computer on their table and we were at a great disadvantage uh so we had to work with paper files and what we had in our brains um I thank our business administrator and Kevin Lions and the gentleman from it we now have I believe uh the single best resources in terms of a database and ability to access that database at any moment from anywhere we are still in a hybrid role so there's a lot of courts that are working uh remotely but more and more we're going back into court and that's where you really can help people right now sessions as they occur if it's two sessions morning and afternoon for five running courts every day our calendars which used to be about five Public Defender cases per courtroom have increased where just yesterday I handled uh 22 cases in one morning and another 20 in the afternoon so it gives me some concern that if we have 44 people who are deemed eligible for the public defender uh that means there are 44 people who are um Indigent and we've got lots of problems our our judges are very fair in trying to screen people and say they're not just inent but they're people who need legal assistance and we can provide them with excellent legal res uh um assistance so uh we try not to turn away anyone again with the with the rising Mental Health crisis we don't turn anyway uh anyone away uh with the domestic violence programs that we are doing and John I'll try to wrap it up I'm sorry I'm proud to say this I went to a court yesterday where defendants come in they want to drop their domestic violence cases and the judges just say you don't want to go forward cases dropped in Jersey City we have domestic violence programs where we hold accountability and people are part of the programs they are learning how to break a chain of violence or how to respect themselves and respect their family members and their relationships and they are graduating these programs in a way that no other Municipal Court I see does that it takes a lot of Manpower a lot of hours but it is uh a a a um credit to council working with the courts and the business administrator to see us in a progressive way that most other courts do not function and because we have those specialty courts we can help people in ways that other courts don't I'll I'll lastly tell you and then answer any questions and I've I've mentioned this before we are still the only Municipal Court in the state of New Jersey that does not charge fees for Public Defender cases the council in its wisdom and generosity back in 2019 originally at my urging we were realized we were collecting very small amount about $10,000 a year from people uh we realized we we were not a money-making entity the reason I bring this up is um at this point by amount of court cases covered we're providing about by my estimates somewhere between $830 and $900,000 worth of attorney hours to people we are budgeting for those attorneys in the $460,000 range we have people covering multiple calendars we have people assisting other public defenders to make sure every single client is helped but we are saving the money by how we are structured um that goes 40 times what we're losing by not charging people and I'm proud to report this year I was called by a National Association to speak because they recognized that Jersey city was the only Municipal Court in the state that does not charge public defender fees the governor I believe last summer signed a bill into law that provided that at the county level they do the same but we were ahead of the curve and I think we established something because as I've said before councilman I'm sorry Constitution says you're entitled to representation of you're indigen not you're entitled plus $200 and so I I really I thank uh city council for considering that resolution in 2019 and and setting us apart I ask you um you know we have a very turbulent times that we've been through and probably will see in the future um when it comes to um people of undocumented status uh how does your office work with them or do you does the city of Jersey City um do anything in that regard to protect them um so it's a great question because it's a concern for everybody and um nobody knows what's coming Post January uh we have a lot of undocumented we have a lot of individuals who are either here illegally or on Asylum status or legal residents none of us are immigration attorneys so we don't give immigration advice we counsel people if it's a consequence of magnitude and if they are here and looking to become a US citizen get immigration uh assistance or counsel before we resolve a case even though it's faster to just do it move a calendar you know the old we will sell no wine before it's time we will settle or resolve no case until we know that the person's rights are protected today and going forward and we do see unfortunately more and more cases where there are people hear her illegally they've gotten a driver's license they you know and and they're not paying attention um council president to the laws I'm not stereotyping but when you don't have any repercussions for what you do you're going to do it again and so we counsel people to explain that even if you're getting good legal representation and even if you're getting a better deal if you don't understand accountability we're just going to see again and and my best clients our best clients are the ones we never see again so we're trying very hard to counsel everybody through very difficult tur turbulent times do we Shield those records like the non-violent offenses from the federal government or like do they have the ability to get them from the municipality or which records are you talking about I'm sorry like the court records like compelling the city of Jersey City to give those up or the Federal Government Federal Government could he come in and say we want your records it would be beyond my pay grade I don't know who handles that I mean we we get we get uh CC criminal case Histories on every criminal case so we have available to us we don't we know everyone we're dealing with and the seriousness of offenders repeat offenders as far as other entities who want that information they would either go through Oprah or one of these folks who are smarter and who speak less than me okay I'll I appreciate your time thank you thank you any other questions or thank you J very much appreciated thank you Council happy holidays thank you Andy and uh just reiterating back to the uh zero fee for the services that are provided at that time I was in finance and it was the first time in my career I was okay losing a revenue item so $10,000 and a and a $600 million budget doesn't compare to Legal Services for people that need it so um so going on to uh the remainder before we flip over to HR um we have two more offices left the first one being uh diversity inclusion we have director uh Floyd Jeter here to go over um some of his initiatives but Flo's been doing a really great job uh he's been working with my office weekly at this point uh going over um two segments that we're really looking at the first one being um any um diverse vendors that are supplying services to the city make sure that we retain them because that's important because a one-year contract doesn't help any uh any um industry um for their long-term growth and and the second thing is to uh create more um opportunities for them and one thing that Floyd had brought to us and and we've been working on is we've learned that some of the diverse vendors can not necessarily Supply um what we were asking to bid for and I'll give you an example of that if uh a DPW needs to buy 10,000 tires they may not have the insurance or the capital to do that UPF front so if we know we need 2,000 tires per quarter we could split it up then into four or five different um contracts and then they were able to bid on that so um that's one of the segments that we're working on and um attached here you'll see the community engagement programming that uh director Jeter is looking to do over the next uh year and it's very comprehensive everything from um engagement goals to small businesses um upcoming events each month uh several each month um and they go both with the cultural um initiatives and business initiatives um to make sure that people are um knowledgeable of the opportunities that are pro are being provided and um information sessions on how to get involved how to obtain Insurance uh all that type of stuff so Floyd if you want to come up um just kind of touch based on what I've acknowledged and if you have anything else to add good afternoon good afternoon any questions for me and it's kind of self-expanded um Metro provided you with everything the one thing that I wanted to highlight as well under Metro and Kevin is that we have more Community involvement with colleges and Inc institutions where it provides small businesses a better chance to getting access to Capital financial literacy or marketing which is haven't been done but the city of Jersey City has initiated that along with um making sure that where work the workshops are provided in the car outs and Metro mentioned it it's called car outs where like the Lowe's project small businesses or minority contractors are able to bid on these with other subcontractors or become subcontractors so almost like a partnership ship entrepreneurship or mentorship for small businesses to grow and get better so to provide them with opportunities that they didn't have in the past how many um what's the number of um minority businesses that the city contract with um for the year thus far well we have over a 100 contracts for minority it breaks down to what what section and right now on our registration we have over 1,200 80 registered minority vendors out of that um and roughly I don't have we have the numbers I sent them to Metro we have the numbers where we're doing I think 177% better than previous years with minority contractors and what that means is that normally if we're buying black plastic bags now we're buying them for minority vendors and to the metro and the Ba's um initiative we're trying to make sure that we ensure that keep them and ret them so we're trying to make sure that instead of the bulk amount split it up into maybe two minority contractors as opposed to one and what it is it's going to take a it's going to take time to keep maneuvering it however we're putting um foundational um um programs in place so that it can kind of continue to grow but it's it's steps by step I want to know how many minority businesses did this city contract with this year that's all I want to purchasing how many you can give it to me later yes I want to know how many and I want to know how much because part of us dealing with um the um the the committee with diversity and inclusion that we created with the croen study when we changed that whole thing all right part of it was making sure that Minority vendors were getting contracts from the city and I know we even did a set aside that I know this Council passed to make sure that this was done all I want to know is how many we have achieved this year that's it how many businesses and how much did the city partner with with the vendors for them to receive money I know I got the retention thing I get that I want to know what we've done though because it's important because if we got to adjust this then let's adjust this because I believe part of it has to do also with how we handle the rfps how the directors when they go out for a bid how do they go out for a bid because we creatures of habit if we used to dealing with um dunking Hardware we just going to keep going to dunking Hardware we're creatures of habit that's what we do but if we're trying to implement something new then we have to do something extra so now um the directors and everybody have to think if I need this for my division my department okay let me see the um let me see the diversity inclusion list maybe someone on that list okay we can use now that's why I want to know cuz we creatures of habit I know that we we we we are servicing the same we having the same vendors and part of what we created was to help others I'm out in the community I'm still getting complaints from Minority um uh owners that they are having a hard time you know trying to get contracts with the city because we're creatures of habit I'm not I'm not just saying your division see when you're trying to change your behavior everybody has to be involved it just can't be your department okay I don't know what each department needs but their directors do so they should make a little effort to look on the vending list to see if there's someone on the vending list that they can you know reach out for the service for then they put in the RFP then we go through this whole bidding process or or whatever because not everything needs to be bid though we could just purchase certain things everybody has to be involved and I don't think everybody's involved yet cuz every time we vote I'm still voting for the same people I'm still saying they still saying I'm saying it so that's why I want to know because I think we're not doing as well as we could because everyone is not involved and everyone must be involved if we really want to service the veterans if we really want to service the lgbtq plus if we really want to service women in minority everybody must be involved we're changing a behavior here that's why I I know 177% numbers sound good and pie charts are wasteless because pie charts are just there to look good but they're really not telling me nothing I want to know sure counc we'll get you that number and we'll also get you the um the amount because that's important as well if someone's buying pen off for minority vendor but then giving away $100 million contract obviously it doesn't put a dent into what uh we're trying to accomplish here no it doesn't so um the way that the system does print it out out is uh by department and uh it does identify if somebody's in those classes so we'll get a report uh detailed report this week please Within by by Christmas how about that um identifying uh each department and how much their spend was on diverse uh suppliers right because I know in our department we make sure the administrator look on the list to make sure they find a minority vend but that's our responsibility to look for it if not everybody in their departments are responsible to look for something with creatures of habit we gone back up to the same vendor that we know that's all yeah I agree council president as you mentioned timings matter so uh we'll have it this week before okay thank um and and just uh with our last piece of time we have about 15 minutes um we're going to bring up HR to go over their presentation and uh if there's any questions so good afternoon council president and member of the council good afternoon so some of the graph that we present that we provided or some of the metric is to let you know that we have hired 174 people and is successfully backfilling vacancies throughout different departments if you compare with the separations that it took place during this year is 159 so it's comparable with the 174 plus additional positions that were of fulfill we have an active membership in our benefits Dental we have 2,423 prescription we have 2,350 and medical we have 2,343 those are active membership throughout the whole Workforce however for new enrollments in this year we have 105 on medical 107 in prescription and 113 in Dental if you proceed for the next graph we have uh 125 disciplinary actions and a worman's compensations accident town for this year we have 57 civilians five seasonals and 100 m56 uniform what's a disciplinary action in terms of like it getting counted is it like a verbal write verbal reprimand or a write up or do they get like a suspension or is it something that gets put in a file like what is classified as a over role is the whole process for Progressive discipline starting with verbal warning written represent minor disciplinary action that it can be on the record or actually suspension and also major disciplines okay so it's all of that yes just check and councilman just to add to that we do receive several other complaints that we don't see as Justified it's just back and forth maybe personalities um so that this is formally documented issue isues with with Bo the workers compensation uh accident count has gone up significantly um can you tell me where it's coming from so right now there's some cases that have been incremented so now we accounting for like we have uh 525 plus claims just for covid-19 is that the DPW is that is it any one no this is Public Safety mainly oh 500 claims 520 claims in public safety them are the majority is Public Safety okay for covid-19 they got covid-19 or they're out because of covid-19 or what what's the uh workers they have a they had a can you explain it I'm sorry I'm Tri over my words here no problem so throughout the years the there were those um inquiries regarding if they're going to be applicable to workman's com consider workman's scum or not so the accumulative number throughout the year that's what is going up to 529 plus essentially councilman uh we were being challenged on whether people were taking personal time or would have been excused based on the circumstances of the pandemic okay thank you just like such an outlier you know on the graph it's like so understood so we are actually taking some proactive actions so we coordinated with different departments and divisions to have those safety training programs like currently we're coordinating with buildings and streets for us to have like a Osa 10hour Construction training and these are some initiative that we want to implement on next year having like a quarter quarterly safety training throughout all the Departments to reduce our claims that we are U receiving currently and just to add to that to stay out of Our Own Way um this would be a professional company it would come in and teach ocean regulations it wouldn't be anything in house it would be um a company that does this for work site uh safety some of the goals that we have accomplished this year we implemented and launch additional voluntary supplemental benefit for employees as some of you have seen throughing the Open Enrollment in October we uh added Legal Services out of home and Home Insurance identity te protection and pet healthc care as addition as voluntary elal benefits to our Workforce we also launch a pilot program for virtual training so we are preparing some learning plans catered to perspect uh certain roles and positions and we started the pilot program with our division and we provided some management supervisor training and we're going to um we're going to uh provide it throughout the the whole Workforce but we wanted to start it first with our division to see how we perceive and how we can measure it these trainings are they we provide deadlines they have certain amount for them to complete it and we can keep track of the employees that have successfully completed those trainings or they still pending training such as what so we have customer service we have like like introduction to excel we have uh dealing with conflict resolutions and it's a variety of ser uh trainings which one of the ones that it was launched throughout the whole city was the eeo training that everybody was able to take it virtually and they give it a a period of time for people to complete it and get regular notifications when they were on a when they were delayed we can't partner with the state with some of this training we do but this is a software where that we already have an additional platform with our on um onboarding program so it's an additional service that we are gathering from the onboarding platform that we already have you said customer service right yes okay so now when we hire an employee they're not required to take customer service training it can be require so since we are preparing and developing these learning plans the library is approximately 1500 training and I'm reviewing them and preparing this learning plan so it can be require and loue as they are developed but we don't really know we can mandate it moving forward council president um basically we we hire people in uh in those uh particular areas that have EXP experience in it um that's usually what what set forth but just to make sure that we're internal internally responsible we'll make sure that they go through the platform prior to their start date right because everybody need we we work for the public I agree counc customer service is important go ahead well and to finalize we are still working conducting solbo negotiation that we expect to be concluded next year so piggy back on that uh council president uh uh Mr Carol and uh Mr o'hern from my office have been meeting with each uh uh negotiation Union uh to to try to settle all the contracts prior to to this year's uh we have gained uh success in some and some have been stalled um but really what we're focusing on on some of the uh Union contracts is the language around uh emergencies and how you define them in a time period um that's where some of the uh settlement uh discussions have been coming coming forth in regards to um was Co an entire emergency for years or can we cap it at a certain particular amount of time so that's kind of the back and forth we've been going on but um we work with Finance to make sure that there's dollars available to settle those contracts once we get the language done and that that includes civilians and police and fire thank you can we also get like substantial vision insurance for uh city employees just cuz you know a lot of us wear glasses and um I I have received that request from employees across the city actually we're happy to take a look at the premiums and uh and bring it forward to the council with the budget okay um I want to ask the director um we we're we're not a city that deals with remote um work correct cor right have you ever did a study or you are you looking to to see if there's any information out there if there are certain positions cuz you have the list of all the positions that the city have uh if some of them uh can do remote learn I mean remote work the reason why I'm asking is because I'm listening to the different departments that's coming and part of our challenges with fulfilling some of these position is certain places the competition allows at least remote uh work I want to know as HR what is our next level as a HR Director how are we looking into the future are you searching out for data to see can you defend this why this is so important for us to have and not only that when it comes to our titles I know there's always an issue um when we um try to do title changes or give people raises that type of thing and then some people have the same title one person making this salary and the description in that title is a little different than the other what are we doing as a city to improve all of this we deal with this every year I mean times has changed I mean have you met with civil service to let Civil Service know maybe you have a new idea or you know to present something different I I I I just I'm saying because every year we doing these budget hearings and we going through the same motions here but at this at this point I mean I guess we we getting tired of hearing the same thing over and over and over I mean as a HR Director what are you doing to improve us as HR to go to the next level remote is an issue people are doing this are there's data are you looking have you thought about coming to the council and say based on the data that I found is important I see that people still are being productive if they work remote one day a week or two day a week I have the data I looked at it myself we just keep saying no but we losing people we not getting the right people into you know the city to work and we need it and these titles with silver service what are we doing there's plenty of people that got the same clerk one title and they doing different functions when are we going to see this is not helping us times has changed the main issue with civil service is Al we need to understand that they catering Statewide so it's hard for us to have one title like clerk one and they have different functionalities uh later to each department so because we abide by the Civil Service regulation maybe clerk one in our office is only functioning as a reception and doing data entry but maybe uh clerk one in the Municipal Court are also reviewing I'm saying do we have any plans on how we can go to them what is the next level here I know what it is okay but I'm saying as a director you should be looking to see what the next level you want to take your department that's all I'm saying yes we know it's the state yes we know it's civil service but it's act like when it come to the state we just shut down like we can't go to them we can't talk to them we can't say this is a new idea this is what's happening this is the data I went to California I saw the data it works we try it let us do a pilot it's just I I keep hearing it's the state it's the state but it seemed like we're not willing to go to the state to say you know what based on the data or information that I received you know can we try this can we do a p can jury City do a pilot you know they do anything else to St they wanna so I okay I do attend to local advisory meetings with civil service and they have bringing so initiative I have brought to the them also some of the issues that we have encountered with some of the job description which they're working with some other units and and looking for subject matter expert for able to enhance the job description that they provided to us however I have not looking to remote work but it's something that I can include for us to be looking as a goal for 2025 how can we incorporate initiative yeah council president just to add to that uh and kind of echoing what you were saying um if you look at the Civil Service titles and qualifications at the state level their salary guide is actually dated back to 1988 and a way to get around that was we did a pay Equity study and we were able to promote people remember that um over those thresholds because we had our own data to provide that it was um and you know the state didn't go back at us they basically said if you could afford it you could do it um so that we set our own barriers as far as Finance with those uh titles so we have to just think in that method uh and move forward I agree that's it just think different any further questions from the council okay thank you for your time Andy thank you director any uh closing thoughts uh ba Metro uh I do agree with the council president that timelines matter um I get frustrated as well so I can only imagine as elected officials um you feel the same way so um we will discuss that and we'll bring it to our next director's meeting um but we will have the diversity inclusion data by Christmas um for us to review and see what our how we can pivot for 2025 and uh I look forward to my last year as the business administrator with working with the uh electeds to uh maximize what we can get done thank you thank you thank you a motion to adjourn okay hold on before we do the motion for to adjourn I just wanted to acknowledge council person Solomon present at 257 p.m. and council person Ridley at 3:6 p.m. so we have a motion to adjourn at 319 PM by council person Cay and I believe I heard a second from council person Ridley yes on the motion to adjourn at 3:19 p.m. all council members present by acclamation please say I all right we we are out of here at 3:19 p.m. we are not taking any kind of break because we're going to transition right into our next budget hearing so last one which which is and the last budget hearing which is Department of infrastructure so as we're transitioning just please be careful of the words because the the mics are still hot and we'll be going right into our department of infrastructure shortly be right back good afternoon everyone we are on the record today is Thursday the 19th day of December in the year 2024 this is a budget hearing for the Department of infrastructure with Jersey City Council we had a scheduled 300 p.m. start and we're falling way behind now at 321 p.m. on my cell phone may have a roll call for the commencement of this hearing council person Ridley here council person bajano yeah council person SLE council person Solomon Council person the council president Waterman all right we have five council members in attendance at 3:21 p.m. in addition and the time of its preparation the notice of this meeting was similarly disseminated on Monday December 9th 2024 at 5:30 p.m. to the mayor Municipal Council business administrative Corporation Council local newspapers so I can certify as to our total compliance with the Sunshine Law uh I believe chairperson SLE is still the chair for today and before I turn it over to Chairman CLE I just wanted to remind our director just to identify yourself before you start because we know you but people who are watching the live stream may not put the name to the face and the face to the name and we'll do that also with our Department of Finance so if you can just start us off director I greatly appreciate it just give me one second to adjust the camera because I had a lot of camera there we go we're ready I don't think it's on you got to turn it on take it take it off of the um as a switch yep hello yes good afternoon council members my name is Bara Patel I am the director of the Department of infrastructure excellent and then our finance people Kyle grees Finance director's office onum fiscal officer for infrastructure Danny B nut Department of Finance excellent and I'm going to turn it over to chairperson SLE thank you Sean thank you director Patel for coming here um can you please go over your presentation for the budget for 2025 for the Department of infrastructure if you want to go over everything highlights low lights challenges successes everything floor is yours of course uh would you like me to present in any specific order no totally up to you so again I lead the department of infrastructure for the city which as you all know is a new Department um it includes the division of architecture the division of engineering division vision of traffic engineering Transportation Planning sustainability and the office of innovation some of the key initiatives that are carried out by the department uh include which is on your first page in the presentation maintaining all public spaces and a a state of good repair through ongoing improvements to City roadways Parks buildings and any other public facilities that are not subsurface utilities it also includes improving existing parts and establishing new parks in open space throughout the city especially in neighborhoods that have little to no open space currently it also includes advancing Vision zero initiatives to make our public rights of way as safe as possible for people who are the most vulnerable on our streets which are people on foot on bike and those who use transit to move around increasing the TR the city's tree canopy and upgrading requirements for sustainable practices across all of our projects so that includes things like tree planting uh green infrastructure also caring for the existing canopy that we have in the city additionally it in involves implementing more public space projects that reflect the cultural identity of our city and its neighborhoods throughout the built environment advancing climate action initiatives and upgrading City facilities through the Energy savings Improvement plan and then lastly improving engage engagement across various groups and populations who reside within Jersey City um and specifically focusing on those who are not typically represented in public processes so over the next few slides you'll see some photos highlighting some of the major Capital Improvements that this department has been responsible for starting with public spaces we've been able to advance a record number of new parks and public spaces that people have been waiting for for many many years across the city's boards um they include things like Bergen Square the reservoir um new parks and and athletic fields across the city most recently it was improvements to Leonard Gordon Park we've also Advanced many Safe Streets initiatives throughout the city um implementing hundreds of speed humps curb extensions repaving of new streets but also implementing daylight Lighting in both semi-permanent and permanent Fashions at some of the city's most dangerous intersections um and then engaging uh women girls kids the elderly in those Safe Streets projects we've built new facilities through the department which is really a new uh type of project for us that we've taken on this includes the construction of the new uh Communipaw branch of the public library the new Senior Center Center on Central Avenue the new public uh safety training facility improvements going on here at City Hall for flood proofing in the foundation of the building and many other Capital Improvements across various City facilities throughout um our neighborhoods we've also expanded microtransit options in the city this year we celebrated over 2 million rides completed through our via system we expanded the uh Port liberte fer service and are seeing 400 times the ridership since the city got involved compared to how it was functioning when it was only run by the private entity we've installed secure bike parking facilities um and are releasing a plan very soon to um to implement many more City bike stations specifically in the southern part of the city and then last ly we've been uh advancing sustainability through tree planting efforts green infrastructure um advancing our plans to transition to more sustainable energy sources like solar wherever we can on City buildings all of that work is ongoing um any questions before I jump more into the chart and the numbers I ask um Port liberte the the ferry over there are we still subsidizing it with via and when would that end or if it is going to end I don't know if it is but we are we will be using the state grant that we received um to help subsidize both the fery service and then connecting people with via to the fery terminal at no charge is that why it went from $285,000 to almost $9 million no the I think councilman CLE is um talking specifically just about people who use via to get to the Port liberte Ferry which is all covered by grant funding but you're right the subsidy that we have for Via across the city is um around an $8 million expenditure as a taxpayer I think uh what do they charge a person to use via it ranges so usually a ride is around $2 to go anywhere in the city longer trips um get closer to $3 depending on where people are going to and from and the taxpayers are paying almost 9 million almost eight no eight8 million this say 695,000 here so all right but two million people have used it is yeah well uh listen uh they ride a Subway they pay whatever it is they ride a bus they pay uh maybe they should raise the fees a little and give the tax payers a break you're concerned councilman I think it's unfair that the city needs to provide for Transit needs that really the state and other agencies need to provide but that is the reason why we're doing it because bus lines have been cut um path service is not sufficient and residents really don't have any other option which is why we started the subsidize program look at city bike stations do we have any plan for 2025 yes the plan is to add 23 additional stations all in the southern part of the city where currently there are not okay there's no plans for Heights at all we're no we're prioritizing the neighborhoods that have zero stations right now okay fair director with with the um money that's coming from the federal government the infrastructure money I here all about we cannot get any of that for transportation in no way we can the the challenge with the Federal funding is there is a lot of funding available for Capital Improvements but anytime we try to use it for operational needs which would be like a right a transit system um there is not as much of that type of funding available to get to benefit from that type of funding really the Transit Agency like New Jersey Transit support Authority would have to be the ones who apply for it and then partner with the state and use that money towards operational needs they typically Ally are not awarding a specific municipality an operational expense because they have you know a several year long deadline and services usually span longer than that import if we were to say we want to build a station right and this is a capital Improvement that's going to cost x amount of money there is quite a bit of funding for that type of work but if we say we want to use this money to fund a service that's going to provide this many rides and there are going to be drivers and there's going to be these um hours of operation we typically don't see as much of that available and so when it comes to the light rail I know one time there was conversation to extend it is there still conversation about that or it just died still only conversations and not much more than that and that has to really come from County and state yeah yeah so what we've done with the light rail both the 18 Street expansion on that side and also the Bayfront expansion is that we have warri New Jersey Transit um for the applications to the federal government that would be with the FTA which is the Federal Transit Authority at the at the federal government level um and they typically require some level of commitment from the Transit Agency and municipality and what we've shown as our commitment is that we have set aside easements on property that we own to make sure nothing else happens with that land in preparation for the future station that is about all we can do as a municipality um which is more than a lot of other towns to demonstrate our commitment so that when they release the funds um that is where the station can go but we haven't seen any more progress on that conversation since I think we were doing The Advisory Board one or two years ago with you and councilwoman Ridley that's a s that's sad because it's I mean it's growing the state of New Jersey is growing um with people just coming in not Jersey City got a share but as you go around the state you see how the state is just increasing the population but it seemed like to me that they would be concerned about Transportation some places in the municipalities if you go South Jersey they don't even have transportation so I'm I'm thinking that why we ain't having this conversation about Transportation people going to need to get around throughout the whole state of New Jersey and I don't know I guess we have to just keep reaching out to our state senators and assembly to see if they can get this moving because this is going to be a crisis you can see it it's it's crisis now especially for us but I can't believe with all this money coming nobody doesn't care about it and we don't have the power I will say the the slight progress that I've seen and I'll give kudos to my Transportation team and my department who secured this is that for the first time we're now starting to see New Jersey train Transit helping to subsidize via the amounts are very small so when you compare that their grants that they are giving us are around $250,000 in the large bucket of $8 million it's a small amount right however they're starting to do it now they did not do that in the past when we first launched via so that's a sign of hope that that number will increase every year we've gotten it for the last two years so I think as we demonstrate that we um embracing technology and different ways of moving people around the state Transit Agency is starting to see there is a lot of value in this and that we can invest in it and they're starting to do it in their own small ways and we're hopeful that it will increase So currently um New Jersey transits grant that they got and awarded to us is helping us offset to subsidy for Via by that amount I don't see why I don't see why the Jitney cuz I know that was a big issue one time too I don't see why um they can't partner especially with the counties with the jitneys and other municipalities to see if it can help with the transportation because we you know it's like a catch 22 like one one breath we want to say we want cars off the streets okay we need to have more bikes but then there's nothing in place to try to help people take public transportation so you know you're forcing people to really be in cars more than you realize knowing that is not healthy knowing that is messing up our breathing respir respiratory um sicknesses are increasing the air quality is not good and it seemed like that somebody would start trying to have these conversations because there is a Jitney line too I know that's why and they can't come through our our local streets they only can come down the main drive you know the county road that's it why is that mind me asking we don't know okay whole issue I just want to say like looking through the uh presentation oh sorry my bad okay I was going to say look through the presentation there's just like so many pictures and it's like going down memory lane of like all the greatest hits from this year it's like pound-for-pound you guys punch above your weight class and I just want to say kudos to you and your team for everything you guys have done um yeah it's incredible just like so many projects across the city but I'll let you continue okay um so along those lines we can jump right into the table of organization I mentioned already um the divisions that are included within this department I'll repeat that they include architecture engineering traffic engineering transportation and the division of sustainability we are working on consolidating the division of sustainability with the office of innovation um as the work that is happening through Innovation currently uh is very very tied to the sustainability work and it just makes sense for that to be combined which is why I'm showing those five divisions now on the or chart um and then jumping right into the budget and staff comparison you'll see on the left the budget that's been adopted for the Department over the past few years um um and then this year you'll see a significant jump to that $15 million the primary reason for that is that we are accounting for things like via for things like um Citywide Paving of streets for concrete work sidewalks things that we do every year however I think the plan and the finance team can correct me if I'm wrong is to transition some of those um some of those items into a capital expenditure as opposed to operating um so that should explain why there's such a big jump which may actually not be so significant once it's adopted do you guys have any Clarity on that or that's absolutely the explanation um this just gives you a snapshot of what their annual operating costs are going to be but we did uh approve a capital uh funding ordinance this year which should cover a majority of these costs uh through next year and we're also going to bring back uh at some point early 2025 um some repurposing of old projects that have been completed or aren't going to be completed in the future and um you know make sure we're in a good place that in 26 we don't have a budget jump like this uh in other areas councilman Solomon is the intention to to have a new capital Bond ordinance in 2025 just the repurposing of um existing funding yeah okay I mean just uh council president make sure we're maybe do a committee yes we better to work with you guys on that so it just doesn't come to us and we're working with you on it yeah absolutely um just it's something we just started recently um kind of getting an inventory of where we're at at year end and the projects uh and what's left so it's going to the uh business administrator's office first for their review and before we bring it to counil we'll make sure that we have a some form of session up to to go over it and questions from the colleagues we're not finished are we oh oh no don't get excited I got questions I'll go as quickly as I can um and then the staff comparison you'll see that we're down to um 35 Staff members in the department across all of those divisions it's a significant reduction from what we've had in the past I know you lost your engineer Paul sorry you lost Paul which was was an engineer we've lost several engineers and we haven't backfilled any of them including Paul yes the issue how can we help like how can we get you more resources like what is what is the issue cuz you guys have do a mountain of work and um we know your short staffed I mean the graph shows it clearly you know we have so many concerns safety you know Street safety in the Heights and you know other areas and um what what can we do to help you can we get more resources for the Department of infrastructure or identify the problems for us okay problem would be to authorize additional funding for Staffing for not only the positions we're showing here in this request but addition positions um so that if there is turnover specifically for professional staff there is there are other members on staff who can fill into those positions the biggest problem right now is that not only have we lost the chief engineer we have in the year or two prior to that lost every other license engineer that we had on staff we at one point had anywhere from four to six licens engineers and so there's no one who can fill that position there are things that we are St statutorily required to do that only a licensed engineer can do um which we are now looking to contract out as a short-term solution so the most effective way to help or to solve the problem would be to authorize additional funding for more staff would you be able to send us a list of the positions you're looking to have additionally staffed in addition to the ones in this budget um because that would be helpful for the council to know and um if you could just send it to all of us yeah I can quickly summarize now that everything I am looking for for the Department to make sure it's strong and able to handle any priorities or challenges that come our way that we're responsible for are all professional staff we were we're very lean we really don't have any staff in the department where there's a redundancy or is you know unnecessary we don't have any admin staff whatsoever anyone we have who does admin work is also doing other work um and really the need right now is for professional licensed Engineers uh for licensed Traffic Engineers we've done a pretty good job in architecture um we have just hired a licensed architect who is doing really well we do still need a licensed landscape architect who would work on Parks projects whereas the architect that we just hired works on buildings and structural issues um um and then Transportation Planning staff so that's just a quick summary say that everything we would be asking for are these professionals not really additional um you know type of Staffing that that be redundant can can this be sent to the ba and the finance director as well just because I don't know if it's a concern for the rest of you but finan you probably already have uh I guess the engineers especially that left the two that left so that is in the budget yeah correct anyone that has left during since the budget has been adopted is still funded right and I know through the organizational chart reviews that we have with directors uh and the business administrator's office that most of director Patel's requests um are reflected in the organizational chart that we have it's just a matter of when we bring back the budget in 25 to include the funding for those new positions but the back fills and everything there's there's no plans right now for any cuts to those existing positions in this in this department at least okay now how long your engineer left how long Paul been gone just curious it's been about months okay I'm just trying to figure out was the position posted the othery has been posted we've been interviewing I found candidates um who were really good um it came down to them wanting either a higher salary or different types of work flexibility like you mentioned earlier um and so it didn't end up working out but we've been actively interviewing is that flexibility that a lot of people want yeah sometimes it's been the fle I I would I will say that for that position I would not recommend much work flexibility okay I mean if the city were to do something like that of course it would be available toone but for that position you really do need someone who's always always there here on site you know available um but um yeah like like you mentioned the industry is changing and people have competitive offers where they're able to take for example work from home days the same as they are able to take a sick day or a vacation day and so that's one option that people have seen in other work environments that we don't have here um in the candidates that we found it really was was about um just wanting if we found someone with the type of work experience that we needed or a certain number of years of experience um they required a higher salary and if you wanted to hire someone who was willing to take the salary range that we've advertised we would be bringing someone on board who really didn't have that much experience leading a team and making types of decisions at that level and so it would require quite a bit of training they wouldn't be able to jump right into projects is what I'm trying to say so we're trying to balance those two things is the salary range that that far that they're asking what is the range you're asking I mean because basically what you're saying to a lot of them didn't take it based on the salary yeah I'm just trying to fure out is our salary range low um based on the expertise it's I think it's on the lower end but it's still competitive okay all right yeah okay but yeah there have been quite a few factors and I think the other thing that works against us is people don't want to come into a team where they see that there are so many vacancies and they're not going to have support staff to help them be able to do their job so we're fighting the battle on multiple different fronts thank you any further questions regarding the full-time part-time seasonal staff okay moving into the numbers so you will see a summary of the budget change on the next sheet um and again the most staggering numbers that you'll see in the percentage change column all the way over on the right um are down to traffic engineering which you see a 400 plus percent change Transportation um and again those are because of those expenses I mentioned like signals um Paving concrete via which are in the multi-million dollars which um again as Finance is saying the plan is to transition those into Capital but I'm just reflecting it here so you're aware that we're requesting that and then for sustainability you'll see a change because we um are requesting up to $500,000 specifically for tree planting just so that there's a consistent source of funding for this work that we're wanting to do throughout the city um and then in Innovation you'll see that reduction again because I mentioned that we are going to be consolidating that into sustainability um and then the next uh few pages are just the breakdowns of each of the divisions um councilman me know if you want me to uh any major changes for any of these offices other than the one you just highlighted about the div Innovation and sustainability merging the the major changes you'll see across all of these is that any division that has contractual services like traffic Transportation those have a significant increase for the same reason I mentioned and then some of these have an office supply increase that may seem strange to you the reason for that is that um some of our divisions like engineering and architecture um both review site plans but also uh draft and create a lot of designs and plans in the office and so they require equipment like heavy uh Duty plotters and things like that that are not typical office equipment which have to be replaced every few years and so that's just accounted in a couple of those divisions so that's why there's um maybe an office supply change that may not be request um expecting okay does anyone have any questions about the division budgets I have director um or chart um this we got this one from HC and it listed what positions were vacant do you have something similar I do I didn't know that was required here but I can present that that'd be great because it just giv a sense of what's vacant and what's not in a visual format you can just the email that to me bker and I will um distribute it to all the council members you want to go the goals uh the last page um so reviewing the goals we had from last year uh as you can see a majority of them were accomplished despite the issues that we're having with Staffing and budget we've been able to partner with other City agencies and also um rely on a lot of our consultant support that we have to accomplish a lot of these so I'll skip I'll come back to the first one but we've been doing a lot uh better on engagement and specifically um working with groups who are not usually represented in City projects and engaging them to build and design much better uh projects across our entire department we've continued a lot of our vision zero work we just reported out um numbers which will be made public soon on Vision zero um did have two fatalities on city streets this year and several more on County and state roadways um which were preventable but I will say that that number is uh a reduction from what we had last year and we are trending downwards which is great um we're also not seeing incidents on the streets that have gone through a major redesign which tells us that the improvements we're putting into place are working and we need to continue doing those on our most dangerous streets we have completed a lot of the projects that we set out to complete last year um which include streetscape work Parks like the reservoir uh Leonard Gordon Riverview um the library the senior center and they've really spanned across multiple neighborhoods which is something that we're really prioritizing we've been doing a better job with sustainability every streets uh streetscape project that we Implement includes some element of green infrastructure in it um an example really really close by to here is the intersection of York and Jersey where we implemented rain Gardens we're trying to do that everywhere and then we've created internally a five-year strategic plan to help prioritize our projects the one thing that we didn't accomplish Year we're still working on um is again building up the team making sure we have professionals on staff so that we don't rely as much on Consultants who we pay a lot uh to do the work that staff like licensed um professional staff could be doing and then for next year the goals are just to continue a lot of the great work um we have been working on and will continue Pavonia Maran Park Thomas McGovern Park 16 Street Park the Cole Street streetcape project um improvements to Arlington and Skinner Park uh Courthouse Park a lot of the vision zero initiatives advancing designs for new community centers and rec centers um in different neighborhoods and then advancing all the city-wide goals that I've already mentioned and I'm sure a few other things will come up over the next year that I'm not aware of um thank you director do my Council colleagues have any yeah I do bker do me a favor please okay get that left turn signal at Summit and ponia and get those cars illegally parked there get the signs up there because our police department does doesn't enforce nothing get the signs up there and get the cars out of there because the people are driving me crazy the traffic's backed up from Summit Avenue all the way down to mammit street because they can't make a left hand turn it backs the traffic up we've been asking for three months and people are just tired of asking please get it done okay thank you I'll do what I can but I don't you have to do something because things are under these developers build these buildings no parking they're disturbing the neighborhood they're disturbing people they're blocking traffic taking up a whole Lane of traffic there parking their cars illegally we've asked for signs we've asked for it to be enforced and nobody's doing anything so please get the signs up and get the left turn signal thank you B I appreciate it welcome councilman I just want to reiterate we will do our part in putting in work orders for the signs my department is not responsible for installing the signs or the enforcement but I will do everything I can to help make it happen all right okay thank you director thank you councilman Ridley anything director you mentioned that you guys have sort of data or study on the impacts of the different changes that we've made in streetcape you share that with the council yes um we're putting that together right now we we typically publish the vision zero annual report early into the following year because we like to take it all the way Deber 31st um so if you'd like to see an early version of that for now I can share if not we can do the full analysis for yeah that'd be great because then if there's something in there that we would not change but like if there we've followup questions it' be great to get it now so we can flag it earlier and then similar to The Five-Year Plan that you mentioned yes do great thank you ask about the tree canopy it's a major concern and um I know you know you're merging Innovation and sustainability are they going to work on a plan to increase the tree canopy or find areas of opportunity to place trees in the city yeah uh so sustainability under my department is already working on that based on the resiliency master plan that um that we adopted several years ago so they're prioritizing area are most in need of an expanded tree canopy based on what exists currently and then um the great news is that through cdbg we have funding now available for the next year up to a million dollars for additional tree planting which will go only in areas of low to moderate income which are the rules of cdbg so that's great news for those neighborhoods who really need um the urban uh forestry efforts we've also secured $4 million of grants for the entire MLK Corridor we've been working with the council president and councilman Gilmore um and I need to reach out to you Council quickly about that uh so we've done a good job with grants that's the plan right now that does leave some of the other neighborhoods of the city which wouldn't be under LMI designation or not along MLK so we'll have to figure out a plan for planting trees in those neighborhoods which is why I'm requesting that funding um through this budget ESG is thank you for your response by the way sure PNG has uh sometimes not been a very compliant um you know partner in our community whether it comes to the permitting or um resurfacing of streets sometimes they don't do that is there a way we could hold their feet to the fire um in terms of having those roads resurfaced or having them follow proper protocol so they're not run around like Cowboys like in our Community I will say some of that is on us and we bear the responsibility this year without having our city Engineers um we didn't do a good job of reporting to pscg all the places where that we needed them to resurface which we typically do every year so that is something that slipped through the cracks on my end um and we're going to be prioritizing that for next year but I can talk about the ways in which we are holding psng accountable every every month we hold a utility coordination meeting that I run along with director cunia with psng but also every other utility that works in Jersey City we've recently updated rules um and are really leaning heavily on fines citations and cancelling permits when we need to for all of the work that they have going on if they're not abiding by rules um we did that for a period of a month and a half and we saw a significant change in behavior and then in terms of protecting trees specifically um there was sort of an Unwritten rule for what utility companies needed to do for tree care but no one really identified exactly the standards that were needed we've done that in the last few months and we've seen increased compliance across the board whenever site work is happening so we now have things in place where we can hold their feet to the fire and they have been really good partners on those points so if you're seeing that still happening the best way to address it is to send it directly to me um and I can bring it up to them immediately and also through the utility coordination process okay thank you for your response any closing thoughts from your end uh director no I want to thank you all uh for the questions for hearing me out and um I look forward to next year thank you so much for all your hard work and your team my hats off to you you're phenomenal your team is phenomenal and with that I motion to adjourn at 4:00 okay we have a motion to adjourn exactly at 400 p.m. by council person Cay may I have a second second by council person Ridley all in favor of the motion to adjourn at 4M all council members present by acclamation please say I I I we are out of here at 4 pm thank you so much everyone present and everyone watching that home remember as always teamwork always makes the dream work have a great night stay safe everyone happy holidays that was the event this morning