Hudson County was a focal point for many of the state’s biggest stories this year. Even though our Year in Review issue contains rundowns of politics, development, business, and sports, there were several big events that fell into other categories as well. Here are, in no particular order, 10 big stories that hit Hudson County this year.
1. Layoffs and demotions
As municipalities struggled to balance tight budgets while keeping property taxes in check, local governments began looking at public safety personnel for ways to save.
In Hoboken, several police layoffs that had been scheduled to take place in September were narrowly avoided after 13 officers agreed to retire by Dec. 1 and the city’s Housing Authority agreed to hire another five officers who had been slated to be dismissed.
Nine officers in Hoboken were still demoted in December. Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer had initially considered demoting as many as 19.
In neighboring Jersey City, Mayor Jerramiah Healy is considering a proposal to lay off 82 police officers and demote 12 supervisors. Police have already staged several protests.
It wasn’t only cops who faced cuts this year. Jersey City mandated that dozens of city employees take furlough days, and is looking to lay off scores of public works personnel next year.
2. Corruption trials begin
The 2009 political corruption busts that ultimately ensnared 46 New Jersey and New York elected officials and religious leaders continued to reverberate throughout 2010, with several of those who had been arrested either going to jail or going on trial.
At least 18 of the 46 people arrested pleaded guilty, including former Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano and Guy Catrillo, a former planning aide in Jersey City. Cammarano pleaded guilty in April to one count of “conspiracy to obstruct commerce by extortion under the color of right,” a felony, and was sentenced to 24 months behind bars, a term he began serving in October. Catrillo, after pleading guilty in September 2009 to attempted extortion for taking $15,000 in bribes, began serving an 18-month sentence this year.
Former Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini stood trial in early 2010 and was convicted in April on two counts of bribery for accepting $20,000 from a government informant. A federal jury acquitted Beldini of four other counts. She was sentenced to three years behind bars.
However, two New Jersey politicians who stood trial were acquitted of charges, and criticism was raised about the nature of the government sting operation that led to the arrests. Former State Assemblyman Louis Manzo, who stands accused of allegedly accepting $27,500 in cash payments for his failed 2009 Jersey City mayoral campaign, publicly complained at a 2010 press conference that the government’s investigation of those arrested amounted to entrapment. He also noted that it helped Gov. Christie’s campaign for governor, since the investigation had started when Christie was U.S. attorney.
The year ended with the trial of former Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith, who had also been Jersey City Council president. Smith, who had been accused of taking $10,000 in bribes from a government informant, was acquitted on Dec. 16.
A separate jury also acquitted Anthony Suarez, the former mayor of Ridgefield, in October.
3. North Bergen man arrested in alleged terrorist plot
In June federal agents arrested Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, of North Bergen, and another man, Carlos Almonte, at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. The men were arrested en route to Somalia where they allegedly planned to join a terrorist group.
A former student at North Bergen High School, Alessa’s behavior had been reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigations by school administrators when he was a teen. At least twice during his secondary education, Alessa was given special private instruction in the school library with a security officer present.
According to the criminal complaint against Alessa and Almonte, the men allegedly planned to join Al Shabaab, a foreign terrorist group, and wage war against American troops stationed in Somalia.
4. Chris Christie’s cuts
After taking office in January, Gov. Christopher Christie was anointed a fast-rising star in the Republican Party. He pushed initiatives to take on special interest groups including the teachers’ union and civil servants. Ideas included a cap on superintendent salaries, stricter stances when negotiating employee benefits, and a limit on property tax hikes.
But his honeymoon year as governor was not without criticism. Christie forced his education commissioner, former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, to step down after the state lost millions in federal education money, apparently due to Schundler’s error during the application process. And by the end of the year, the state legislature had yet to enact the governor’s “tool kit,” a package of bills Christie said will keep local property taxes in check.
5. Privatization of hospitals
The year kicked off with LibertyHealth System, owner of Jersey City Medical Center and Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center in Secaucus, announcing an agreement to sell the Secaucus facility to a group of private investors.
The $15 million deal to transfer the hospital from LibertyHealth, a nonprofit, to the for-profit MHA, LLC took much of the year to be approved by state agencies. The new owners pledged to keep Meadowlands Hospital an acute care hospital.
The town of Secaucus, where the hospital is based, stands to benefit financially from the sale. Because LibertyHealth was a nonprofit, the town did not collect property taxes from the hospital site. Once under MHA ownership Secaucus stands to generate about $500,000 in property taxes annually from the facility, according to local officials.
In the fall, the city of Hoboken announced that it was seeking proposals from private buyers for Hoboken University Medical Center. The city, which backed a bond for the facility in 2008, hopes to fetch as much as $54 million and wants any new owners to keep it an acute care facility.
The county’s other hospitals are Christ Hospital in Jersey City, Bayonne Medical Center, Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, and Jersey City Medical Center.
6. Gas pipeline controversies
While the big headline for infrastructural development in 2010 was Gov. Christopher Christie’s cancelation of the ARC tunnel project (see The Year in Development), opposition to a planned natural gas pipeline also heated up this year.
The proposed pipeline by Spectra Energy would run through downtown Jersey City and Bayonne, and offshore near Hoboken, if approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Officials and residents expressed opposition to the project during several hearings – partly due to safety reasons, and partly due to the fact that it would provide natural gas to customers in New York, not New Jersey.
Residents used the Sept. 10 natural gas explosion in San Bruno, Calif. – which killed eight people, injured dozens, and leveled an entire community – as an example of the dangers of having pipelines running through residential neighborhoods. Toward the end of the year, Spectra announced plans to change the route of the pipeline, but it remains to be seen if the change will quell opposition.
Meanwhile, North Bergen residents raised similar concerns regarding a proposed 59-unit development by Appleview, LLC, near the Guttenberg border. If approved, the development would sit just 20 feet away from the Williams Gas Pipeline, which transports natural gas from Texas to New York City.
7. Port Authority buys Bayonne Military Ocean Terminal
In a stunning reversal of earlier plans for the site, the city of Bayonne in June approved a deal to sell most of the former Military Ocean Terminal site to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Under the deal, the Port Authority agreed to pay Bayonne $235 million over 24 years. The sale price includes $135 million for the Military Ocean Terminal site, plus another $100 million for a road to the terminal site. The Port Authority is also purchasing the Global Container site in Jersey City.
The city, which had been deeded the Military Ocean Terminal land by the U.S. Dept. of Defense in 2006, had originally planned a waterfront community with 6,700 units of luxury residential housing, commercial properties, and recreational sites. A development company has already built some residential housing on the land, but the Port Authority plans to use the rest of the site as a container port.
Bayonne’s deal with the Port Authority was controversial because the $235 million sale price was significantly less than what the city would have reaped from developers had the waterfront community come to fruition. Given the soft housing market, city officials believed it would take many years to develop the waterfront, and decided it would be better to sell the land now than wait for real estate to rebound.
The Port Authority deal also was controversial because two monuments – one that honors Korean War veterans, and the Tear of Grief memorial for the victims of 9/11 – will have to be relocated to accommodate the expanded container port at the site.
8. ‘9/11 mosque’ imam’s building violations in Union City
Union City tried this year to wrest control of a residential building from Feisal Rauf, an imam and one of the central figures involved in controversial plans to build a mosque near the World Trade Center site.
City inspectors said they found numerous building, fire, and health code violations at 2206 Central Ave., a residential building owned by Rauf, and asked a Hudson County Superior Court judge to appoint a receiver to manage the property.
In September the city filed a lawsuit against Sage Development, LLC, owned by Rauf, for allegedly failing to fix a litany of problems at the building, including more than 200 fire and health violations, a bedbug infestation, a defective alarm, and mold. Complaints from residents date back to 1996.
9. Three high-profile murders
The high-profile murders of engaged Jersey City couple Nia Haqq and Michael Muchioki and North Bergen resident Martin Caballero still resonate months after they first made headlines.
Haqq, 25, and Muchioki, 27, were gunned down in April in what authorities have called a botched carjacking. The couple, who were engaged to get married, were returning to their home on Randolph Avenue in Jersey City following an engagement party on April 3. A man and two women allegedly approached Haqq’s Honda CR-V as the couple got out. Haqq and Muchioki were each shot in the back of the head. The assailants were unable to make off with the vehicle, since it had an anti-theft device, and instead took Haqq’s engagement ring, Muchioki’s wallet, and gifts the pair had received from friends and family at their engagement party. Days after the murders, three people – Shiquan Bellamy, 20, Darmelia Lawrence, 19, and Shiquan’s cousin, Latonia Bellamy, 19 – were arrested and charged.
Caballero was killed in May on a trip to Atlantic City to celebrate his daughter’s 22nd birthday. After dropping his family off at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino, he was never seen again. His body was later found on a desolate farm in Atlantic County with multiple stab wounds to the chest. Ex-cons Craig Arno, 44, of Atlantic City and Jessica Kisby, 24 of Egg Harbor Township, were later charged with kidnapping, carjacking, and murder. They had apparently approached him in the parking garage when he parked his car.
Another high-profile murder case occurred this year in Union City. In April, the dismembered bodies of Union City residents Maria Angel Torres, 48, and Lazaro Calero, 49 were discovered in Linden. The victims’ body parts were found in trash and laundry bags that were dumped on a curb. Hudson County investigators believe the two were asphyxiated and dismembered inside the Fourth Street apartment they shared in Union City, then were later moved to Linden. In May the Hudson County Prosecutor released video surveillance images of a silver or gray Saturn investigators believe was used to transport the bodies to Linden, but no arrests have been made.
10. Animal shelters scrutinized
As the economy has declined, more pet owners have given up their animals, and conditions at animal shelters have received greater scrutiny. Liberty Humane Society in Jersey City became the focal point of controversy and lawsuits this year. The shelter, which accepts stray and abandoned animals from Jersey City and Hoboken, failed state inspections in the spring and summer due to various problems. In November, a group of volunteers filed a lawsuit against the shelter’s board alleging that adoptable animals were being euthanized. One of the shelter’s critics was arrested after apparently taking to Facebook to voice complaints about the facility. Liberty’s Board of Directors accused the shelter’s critics of threats and slander.
Meanwhile, the Secaucus Animal Shelter adopted a “no kill” policy, launched an aggressive marketing campaign to place adoptable animals in homes, and began a trap, neuter, and return program to cut down on its feral cat population in that town.
E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.