The axe is reportedly falling on municipal employees in Jersey City.<\/p>\n
Exactly who they are, how many, and why they\u2019re getting pink slips, though, remains a mystery.<\/p>\n
Two members of the City Council have reported hearing indirectly \u2013 or from a few of the casualties \u2013 that they\u2019ve been terminated.<\/p>\n
Some of them have been escorted out of City Hall and other places of employment with no advance warning, according to observers.<\/p>\n
These actions are happening as members of the City Council prepare to deliberate on the 2025 municipal budget which has been preliminarily pegged at nearly $755 million.<\/p>\n
Mayor Steven Fulop\u2019s administration is reportedly aiming to finish the year with no municipal tax increase and City Hall observers surmise that employee layoffs are a way to help achieve that goal.<\/p>\n
Ward F Councilmember Frank Gilmore said he\u2019s heard from three of his constituents working in recreation, health and the Hub that they\u2019ve been let go.<\/p>\n
Solomon, meanwhile, said he\u2019s heard the city intends to fire up to 35 employees while still another city worker said he\u2019s heard that a minimum of 50 are targeted for layoffs to achieve $5 million in savings.<\/p>\n
Reportedly, those employees on the chopping block were working, essentially, as \u201cprovisionals,\u201d meaning that they held no permanent Civil Service job titles and therefore have no recourse to job security or union protection.<\/p>\n
With reportedly no advance warnings, even municipal department heads have been caught off guard about cuts in their ranks, one source noted.<\/p>\n
Gilmore said the council intends to ask the city administration \u2013 and specifically, Business Administrator John Metro \u2013 for an explanation, along with a breakdown of who\u2019s on the layoff list, and an explanation of what\u2019s driving these layoffs.<\/p>\n
Questions about the terminations were sent to the mayor\u2019s press secretary Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione were not answered.<\/p>\n
Fulop has taken credit for keeping municipal costs under control, saying that, \u201cEven with rising costs and external challenges, we are maintaining a flat municipal tax rate, enhancing services, and avoiding further burdens on taxpayers by thinking strategically about how we manage city operations.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his 11 years as mayor, Fulop said, the city budget has gone up only two of those years while the municipal portion of the average property tax bill has declined in the last two years, from 48% to 35%. That decline, however, reflects higher school taxes as a result of lower state aid which has pushed municipal taxes down in relative but not absolute terms.<\/p>\n
And fiscal conditions may not be as rosy as the mayor makes them out to be.<\/p>\n
State auditors found a pattern of overspending and misleading fiscal reporting evident in the city\u2019s 2021 and 2022 budgets and has directed the city to pay $27 million over a five-year period to remedy those errors.<\/p>\n
Whoever becomes Fulop\u2019s successor \u2013 which will be determined by the general election in November \u2013 will likely inherit that burden for the bulk of those payments.<\/p>\n
As a result of those fiscal miscues, the city\u2019s bond rating was lowered a notch by Moody\u2019s investor rating service.<\/p>\n
Moreover, constantly growing fiscal obligations by the city to accommodate the Pompidou x museum may also add to the city\u2019s fiscal uncertainties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The axe is reportedly falling on municipal employees in Jersey City. Exactly who they are, how many, and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":77012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,53224,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-77011","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-jersey-city-government","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkcity","14":"tag-ny","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114883449479528445","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}