Official release:
JERSEY CITY, NJ – A last-minute addition to the “lame duck” legislative session – introduced on Wednesday – will ban condominium conversion in Hudson County, shattering the values of 2 and 3 family homes. The bill (S-2957), which poses as a means of preserving affordable housing, will never achieve its objective according to Joseph Hottendorf, Executive Vice President of the Liberty Board of Realtors (see filmed interview at www.njresidentsfirst.com). The Liberty Board of Realtors studied recent conversion activity in the Jersey City Heights, finding that 135-160 two- and three-family properties were converted over the last three years when values increased more than 40% and generated an additional $2 million each year when properties became owned by residents and were reassessed. The Jersey City Property Owners Association reviewed the data and included it in a recent ad campaign to alert legislators and residents that the law will not accomplish its intentions and have devastating impacts, especially to seniors who planning on using the value of their homes to fund their retirements. “This bill is a prime example of the stench emanated by Lame Ducks,” says Ron Simoncini, Executive Director of JCPOA. “This is a mess in 5 different ways, including that it deprives every Hudson County municipality of home rule over its property rights. It is unconscionable that we have not heard from one local mayor or council on this bill – they probably don’t even realize they just lost home rule. “The only saving grace is that the bill is probably unconstitutional because in the author’s zeal to quash capitalism, they neglected to recognize that this law violates equal protection statutes.” Other negative impacts include accelerating the decay of housing stock by freezing values, leaving no incentive to upgrade or maintain properties – especially if the properties are rent-controlled. “It is embarrassing that the Legislature itself failed to look hard enough at this to realize that its impacts are contrary to its intentions. And they don’t even see that this is not a Hudson County-centric issue: when people who need affordable housing can’t find it in Hudson, they are going to migrate elsewhere, bringing the social impacts and obligations to services with them. So, if Legislators thought was “we should support this out of courtesy to its Hudson County origins,” they just bought Hudson County’s problems.”
Official release:
Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! A few community meetings have been scheduled that I hope you will attend:- First meeting will be held on January 30th in the basement conference room in City Hall. Purpose of this meeting is to discuss the potential future uses of the PSE&G Marshall Street substation.
How will Mayor Ravi Bhalla deal with his seven million dollar deficit?
It’s not going away and no excise fees for parking will fix it.
So Mayor Ravi Bhalla is going to tell Hoboken…
| Show me your money?! |
The City Council will play with the edges revising a parking fee for residents but it’s too little too late.
More to come… The rest of this story will go out to members by email this week.
Cory Booker, a US Senator, (D-NJ) ended his 2020 campaign efforts to become US president announcing the end to his quest yesterday.
| Cory Booker opts for his scary Spartacus face at a DC hearing but it didn’t quite catch on with Democrat voters. |
A former mayor of Newark, some of his administrative staff later came to Hoboken and put in stints at City Hall under former mayor Dawn Zimmer.
Booker returns to the US Senate where he will be a participant voting in the upcoming impeachment trial which originated with a whistleblower complaint allegedly by CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella, using second hand “evidence” accepted under intel IG Michael Atkinson.
The revived Ravi-Russo Alliance, inert for all of a minute before Councilman Michael Russo set his eyes on bumping off Anthony “Stick” Romano, the current Freeholder for Hoboken and Jersey City Heights.
Mayor Ravi Bhalla is flushed out in the open with a non-denial denial even as State Senator Brian Stack is locked on board to bump off Stick.
Cue the writers at Russo.corruption.com. An addendum may be in order shortly. Maybe they’ll write the crib notes in the Hoboken mayor’s office. “It’s a marriage of Hoboken’s future,” they might deign.
Official release:
NJ GOP State Committeeman Joshua Sotomayor Einstein launched his official campaign fundraising page today (https://politics.raisethemoney.com/jsotomayor-einstein).Sotomayor Einstein kicked off his campaign for Hudson County Republican Chairman to a packed room at Mulligan’s Pub in December. At the campaign launch was local media, the Pulse with Peter B., and a host of supporters, friends, and well-wishers. Sotomayor Einstein’s campaign is a grassroots effort to transform the local county GOP from a paper fiction into a real and active county level Republican Party.
As reported here yesterday, the Jersey Journal filed its story on the Department of Justice appealing Frank “Pupie” Raia’s sentence for voter fraud activities in the 2013 Hoboken election.
The updated story reflects Raia intended to begin serving his three-month term at a Federal prison in West Virginia:
Frank “Pupie” Raia may have to serve more time for his federal election fraud conviction.
A notice of appeal has been filed by the Department of Justice in the US Attorney’s office with the US District Court surrounding the three month sentence issued to Frank Raia last month.
Raia who goes by the nickname “Pupie,” was convicted last summer for undertaking a conspiracy using his social club underlings to buy votes using Vote by Mails across mostly Hoboken Housing Authority buildings in 2013.
Word of the notice of appeal was confirmed earlier this afternoon with the DOJ spokesman in Newark. A motion detailing the appeal of Raia’s three month sentence will follow.