In this year’s State of the County speech, given by County Executive Tom DeGise at the Feb. 10 freeholder meeting, there were hints of massive changes for southern Secaucus’s warehouse district as well as comments on possible extensions of the light rail train line.
Since a huge section of Secaucus near the Allied Junction train transfer station is being slated for redevelopment as a business and residential district, the existing warehouses may find a new home in Kearny. The county is finally coming to terms with a Kearny site that has long been a development problem. The defunct Koppers Coke site has, for many years, been locked in by other properties and not accessible by road.
DeGise said, “We remain committed to making Koppers Coke in Kearny a jobs creator, perhaps as the home to a new generation of warehouse, distribution and light manufacturing opportunities. Known in the industry as ‘third-party logistics centers,’ or ‘3PL’s,’ these warehouse and distribution facilities create good-paying, environmentally friendly, blue-collar jobs. These are the kind of jobs we desperately need.”
DeGise said that one of the keys to helping make this possible was a commitment made by Gov. Jim McGreevey, through the state’s Smart Growth initiative, to funding the construction of a long-needed access road to the Koppers Coke site and providing aid in its development.
“Locally, the path for change at Koppers Coke has finally been cleared,” DeGise said. “This valuable asset languished in legal limbo for four years under previous administrations. But our new team at the HCIA, lead by Norman Guerra and Bill Netchert, brought the litigation to a close in just 11 months.”
Koppers Coke was once slated to be the site of a county incinerator, but the incinerator was never constructed. There is contamination there and there have been aborted contracts to clean up the site or seal it. The Hudson County Improvement Authority had been involved in legal remedies for almost a decade. Under the governor’s program, the county could move ahead with cleanup.
DeGise said, as a result, the environmental remediation at Koppers, paid for by the legally responsible parties, will commence this month.
“Until that work is completed at the end of 2006, we are investigating opportunities to use parts of Koppers Coke to generate revenue,” he said. “For example, it could serve as a temporary staging area for dredging. Used in this way, the site could generate in excess of $1 million annually.”
DeGise backs light rail plan
Adding his voice to an ongoing discussion over the direction light rail should take, DeGise offered support in his speech for a link to Secaucus and from Secaucus to the Meadowlands.
In early February, some freeholders tried to block a lobbying effort that would petition New Jersey Transit to consider extending the link from the currently targeted site in North Bergen through Secaucus and into Meadowlands.
“New growth does not just require financial incentives; it demands modern infrastructure,” DeGise said. “And no other infrastructure project is more critical to the future economic success of Hudson County than the continued growth of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail System.”
By 2006, the light rail is expected to arrive in Weehawken, Union City and North Bergen.
“It must continue to the Meadowlands by the end of the decade,” DeGise said. “In North Hudson, light rail will reduce car traffic along congested arteries like River Road and Boulevard East, as residents leave their cars at home when they travel to Hoboken or Jersey City. It will reduce traffic on Tonnele Avenue as commuters leave their cars in park and rides and take light rail to the Port Imperial Ferry.”
DeGise said light rail will make it easier and less expensive for county residents to seek education and training at the North Campus of Hudson County Community College, which will be built directly above a light rail stop at 49th Street in Union City.
“But Light Rail must arrive in the Meadowlands to deliver the fullest measure of its benefits to Hudson County,” he said. “Thousands of rush-hour cars now choking the air in Secaucus could fill the empty parking lots of the Meadowlands, as drivers trade their cars for light rail. Thousands of our residents could find employment in the new Xanadu retail and entertainment complex scheduled to rise in the Meadowlands in the next decade, if the light rail is there to take them to work each day.”
DeGise said Hudson County has choices. “We can put our heads in the sand and fruitlessly try to close our borders at Tonnele Avenue,” he said, “or we can participate, aggressively marketing our unique restaurants, shops and cultural events to the rest of northern New Jersey. We can go on complaining about the lack of employment for our youth or we can help them compete and win many of the thousands of jobs that will be available in the Meadowlands. We can let North Bergen become the last stop on the light rail, and let it be choked forever with cars lined up at the Tonnele Avenue park and ride or we can see to it that those cars exit on Route 3 in the Meadowlands. In my work as a member of the NJTPA, and in meetings with the governor and other key officials involved in this issue, I will continue to make the case that light rail must come to the Meadowlands.”
SIDEBAR:
CHS not the one in charge of psychiatric operations
A county official who oversees some of the operations at Meadowview Psychiatric Hospital said last week that operations formerly assigned to an independent contractor for psychiatric services are now in the hands of county employees.
David Drumeler, Hudson County personnel director and member of the board of management overseeing the hospital, said a $12 million contract awarded in 2003 to Correctional Health Services (CHS) excluded operations of the psychiatric services, despite claims of previous contractor Dr. Oscar Sandoval and of freeholder Bill O’Dea.
Sandoval said that if CHS had taken over the psychiatric operations, there might have been a conflict on the part of the company’s President, Geoff Perselay.
O’Dea had believed that CHS had been involved with supplying the hospital with psychiatric services starting around late 2001, but Drumeler said that the county had taken over operations prior to the awarding of the $12 million contract to CHS.
The question arose because Dr. Oscar Sandoval, owner of the Hudson County Psychiatric Associates, had disputed a report by CHS critical of Sandoval’s company’s past services to the hospital. Sandoval charged that Geoff Perseslay, president of CHS, had a conflict of interest since Perselay also had represented Janus Solutions, the company that had written the report against him. Then, according to Sandoval, CHS inherited the operations after Sandoval’s company was dismissed.
While CHS apparently had taken over operations for the jail, youth house and other county facilities after Sandoval’s contract expired, the county, according to Drumeler, separated services previously done by Sandoval’s firm, awarding those psychiatric services at the jail and youth house to CHS while taking the psychiatric services at Meadowview back into the county’s purview.
“We took back the psychiatric and medication operation at the psychiatric hospital,” Drumeler said. “Those people there now are county employees, and CHS has no say in those operations.”
Drumeler, along with County Administrator Abe Antun, Hudson County Director of Human Services Carol Ann Wilson and others, is a member of the board that monitors the hospital’s operations. In 1995, the county contracted out many of the services after the facility – run by county operatives – had lost its accreditation.
Tom Blatner, President of Janus Solutions, said in the Janus report that prior to his company coming on board in 1995, the hospital was not certified by the Federal Health Care Finance Administration and was not accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations. Until Janus’ contract was terminated and ceased operations in late 2002, the company had reopened admissions, regained and maintained state funding, and expanded the number of licensed beds. Janus also had coached the hospital staff through HCFA certification and writing policy and procedure manuals for the hospital. Janus Solutions also helped the hospital achieve pre-certification for JCAHO
Earlier this year, freeholders – at O’Dea’s request – held up funding for operations at Meadowview, looking for an update on how close the Meadowview Hospital was to accreditation – for which Janus Solutions had been hired to prepare the staff. The freeholders also wanted to know how much progress the hospital had made in addressing the problems cited by the 2001 Janus Solution report.
Wilson, who has been acting as an acting director at the facility since the prior director resigned last year, said the problems detailed in the Janus Solutions report had predated her, but that the county had already addressed most of them. She also said the county is just finishing up with a search for a new director and is expected to name that person within a few weeks.
Perselay, who has not responded to Sandoval’s charges of conflict, had been involved with both Janus Solutions – according to O’Dea – as well as being president of CHS, which took over some of Sandoval’s jail operations. Drumeler, however, said that while that is true, CHS has no role in current Meadowview Psychiatric hospital operations.
Although Drumeler is a relatively new member of the Management Board at the hospital, Antun, Wilson and others have been part of the board for years. The board was established around 1988 by then-County Executive Robert Janiszewski, with its members drawn from specific county departments. Because Perselay, at one point, served as county administrator prior to 1995 when the hospital had serious problems, he had sat on the board as well.
Sandoval’s company and Janus Solutions were hired in 1995 as part of an effort to bring the facility back to acceptable standards. In 2001, however, Janiszewski resigned as the result of charges that he extorted money from Sandoval to award the contracts for the jail and the hospital.
The Janus Solutions report came as an explanation as to the problems faced in providing the next level of accreditation., and for the most part, focused on Sandoval’s staff as part of the reason. – Al Sullivan