Healy looks ahead Newly elected JC Mayor speaks on his agenda for the next four years

Already running the city since he won the special mayoral election held in November to fill the remaining term of the late Glenn D. Cunningham, who passed away last May 25, Healy was elected on May 10 in a landslide with over 75 percent of the vote, although his victory was considered won over weak opposition. But with seven of the nine recently elected City Council members running on Healy’s election ticket, Healy could be considered a politician with enough popular support to operate with a mandate.

Healy sat down with the Jersey City Reporter last week to discuss his agenda as mayor for the next four years.Fighting crime

In the November special mayoral election and in the May primary election, Healy ran on a platform of fighting crime. During his first seven months in office, Healy appointed a new police chief, instituted a task force dedicated to combating gang activity, helped to create a gun buy-back program that resulted in nearly 900 guns being brought in to the police, and the police force has increased in number from 781 officers to over 830.

But also during these months, the city has seen a number of major shootings and homicides, including the quadruple murders of the Armanious family in their Oakland Avenue home in January, the shootings three days apart in June of three residents on Martin Luther King Drive, and two Jersey City police officers and their shooter in the West District police station on Communipaw Avenue.

Healy said he was not frustrated that the Jersey City Police Department hasn’t made more progress in combating crime, and that he is satisfied with the policing initiatives he has introduced in collaboration with the police, and will continue to pursue those initiatives.

One of them is the increasing the number of officers in the police department. Healy remarked that about 10 new officers were being sworn on Thursday. “As you know, we were at an all-time modern day, historic low in police personnel. We’ve hired 75 to 80 police officers in the seven-month period we’ve been in office. That’s the good news, and as I often say, the bad news is we lost 25 to 30 to retirement,” said Healy. “We’re still plus about 50, which is good. And we will keep working on that. We have another class going in but that has to wait until September. That’s going to be a class, I believe, of 52.”

Healy said that in the next year he is shooting for 900 police officers. When asked if at the end of his four years in office he would want to get the number up to 1,200, a number attained by the Department in the 1920’s, he said, “No, we can’t afford that.”

Healy also said that he plans in the next six to seven months to introduce Comstat, a system of electronic computer mapping of weekly crime statistics within police precincts, complimented with frequent meetings where district captains go before the top officers of a police department and explain their performance. This is the policing system introduced in the mid-1990s during the administration of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani that has become popular in other U.S. cities. Developing the city

Over the past 20 years, Jersey City has seen much of its Hudson River waterfront, once an area where companies such as Colgate Toothpaste had their factories transformed into a “Gold Coast” where office buildings and condominiums dot the landscape and property values have skyrocketed, making Hudson County one of the most expensive regions in the New York and New Jersey metro area.

But that prosperity has started making inroads further into the city, with the Bergen-Lafayette area the location of 42 different developments. However, victims of this success are poor and middle-income residents living in apartments and finding themselves squeezed out of the city as their rents skyrocket or the buildings are being sold by their owners to cash in on the real estate boom in the city.

At a June 22 City Council meeting, affordable housing advocates interrupted the proceedings, protesting that most of the new housing being built in Jersey City are condominiums and that developers are receiving tax abatements, where payments are sent directly to the municipality rather than conventional taxes being paid to the city, county and school system.

Healy did not give any specifics on what he plans to do to remedy the lack of affordable housing being built but he said that he wants to find “a balance between affordable housing and developments.”

But Healy wants to see undeveloped, abandoned city land that is not being taxed, become ratables or taxable properties, which he said will bring in revenue to the city’s coffers to help finance many of the initiatives on his mayoral agenda, which he does not want be a burden on the taxpayer. Show me the money

If you’re the mayor of a city that has not seen a tax increase in the past three years, how do you make up for the revenue needed to finance various social services and, especially, the $120,000 in recent raises given to the city’s department directors? In Healy’s case, it’s more than just issuing tax abatements, which brought in about $70 million for the municipal budget in the fiscal year that ended on Friday.

One often-mentioned potential revenue source that Jersey City officials have talked about pursuing is monies from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the governmental body that controls transportation entities in the two states, including the Holland Tunnel and PATH train system, both partially based in Jersey City and having office buildings in the city as well.

Healy said that he has had two face-to-face meetings and one over the phone with Port Authority officials since the beginning of the year on the topic of Jersey City receiving a share of the revenues that the Port Authority receives from the tunnel and the PATH.

“I would like to get something, even if it’s five million a year. That’s money that we do not have,” said Healy. “We have the Holland Tunnel that goes through here, we have the PATH trains, we have ferries and we have Port Authority buildings in Journal Square and in downtown. And I think we are entitled to get some of a payment in lieu of taxes.”

But Healy said that getting the money won’t happen anytime in the near future. “[The Port Authority] has had this situation for 90 years with the tunnel, and PATH trains, at least 80. So they have had it their way for a long time.

This is not something that will happen tomorrow or next week. It’s going to take time to get their cooperation,” said Healy. “I can say this: they have not slammed the door in our faces.” Mayor with a mandate

When asked if receiving 75 percent of the vote gave him a mandate, Healy shot back jokingly, “It’s 75 and a half percent – don’t shortchange me.”

Then he explained how gratified he was to have received such a large percentage, but he was careful about saying if he would govern with a mandate. “Depends on your point of view; if anyone can say that there’s a mandate, well, that’s great. The more trust that people put in you, certainly the more obligated you are to live up to that faith and trust.” Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com Sidebar Taking the oath

The sounds emanating from woodwind instruments filled New Jersey City University’s Margaret Williams Theatre on Friday morning, which almost transformed the inauguration of the mayor of Jersey City and the City Council into a coronation.

The event was the swearing into office of Jerramiah Healy and the nine members of the City Council who will be serving New Jersey’s second largest municipality.

City Clerk Robert Byrne was the master of ceremonies for the morning’s festivities, which began with the familiar introductory moments, including the salute to the flag, the national anthem and a bagpipe rendition of “Amazing Grace.”

But the occasion was anything but routine, as each City Council member was sworn in by the judge or official of their choice. Also, it was an opportunity to see Ward D Councilman William Gaughan sworn in to his fourth term on the City Council, now the longest tenure in City Council history. Steven Fulop was sworn in as, Byrne noted, “the third youngest city council person in council history.”

And then there’s Healy, serving a full four-year term after seven months as mayor filling the remaining term of the late Mayor Glenn D. Cunningham, who passed away on May 25, 2004. Healy punctured the formality of the ceremony when he started his address to the audience by posing the humorous query, “How’s my hair?”

Healy, the 50th mayor in Jersey City history, then talked about his agenda for the next four years, sounding his often-heard goals of safer streets, increasing the numbers on the police force, cleaning up contaminated land, and working toward getting more revenue into the city’s coffers without raising taxes.

Healy also stated his most important goal – how to be the best mayor of Jersey City.

“I have one criterion when making any decision that I have had to make as mayor for the last seven months, and I know the council shares this, and this is a criterion that we should have: Is it good for the people that we work for, the 240,000 people of Jersey City?” Healy asked. “And if it is good for those people, then I am certainly going to do it and this City Council is certainly going to do it. And if it is not good for the people, then I am certainly not going to do it.” – RK