The Bayonne City Council passed a temporary budget of $52,313,550 at their first meeting of the year yesterday, which only last about 15 minutes.
By Daniel Ulloa/Hudson County View
The Bayonne temporary budget included $17,569,855 for debt service and $34,743,695 for operating expenses. The operating expenses do not exceed 26.25 percent of the previous year’s budget as required by state law, officials said at the meeting.
The biggest expense is the salaries and wages of police officers, which is around $6 million, followed by the fire department, whose wages and salaries come out to about $5.6 million. Additionally, the Employee Group Health plan for the city costs about $4.4 million.
Included in the temporary budget is $712,307 for the parking utility. Salaries and wages make up $240,000 of the budget, while payment of the bond principal comes out to $260,000.
2nd Ward Councilwoman Jackie Weimmer attended remotely and participated by cell phone, which was allowed after a unanimous vote (4-0).
The temporary spending plan then passed unanimously without further discussion (5-0). While billed as a reorganization meeting, the governing body didn’t actually do so, therefore La Pelusa remains the council president for 2024.
He first assumed the role on July 1st, 2022 at a reorg meeting after Mayor Jimmy Davis was sworn in for his third term.
In a brief interview after the meeting, La Pelusa said he is focused on development and bringing jobs to town.
“There’s a lot of different projects going on. I want to complete the projects. We have a number of projects bringing jobs into town,” he explained.
La Pelusa said he is specifically looking to make progress on the UPS site development and ongoing warehouse development projects, along with the ferry, which received a $650,000 grant in May 2018 and a 10-year land lease in February 2020.
However, there has been very little, if any, movement since then.
“We’ve been pushing hard to try to get the ferry going. Unfortunately, there are holdovers. But between COVID and just the way the economy is going, there is nothing you can do but hold over.”
Very interesting that a council person in the city of BAYONNE could be allowed to attend a reorganization council meeting where the temporary budget needed to be approved via cell phone. Yet, the public does not have the right to participate via telephone or any other Avenue other than showing up at the doors of City Hall wouldn’t you call that a double standard the council of the city of BAYONNE works for the people. Therefore the people should have access in any way, shape or form to participate. With no newspaper or no bulletins the people of the city of BAYONNE have to use social media to find out some of what’s going on in BAYONNE. I can’t say all of what’s going on in BAYONNE because that would be false. We don’t know that there was cars stolen over the weekend. And many cars broken into unless you’re on social media, it appears that the administration in someways want to keep the citizens of the city in the dark when it comes to even the good, the bad and the ugly of what’s going on in this town
The concerned citizen is also very concerned regarding Council person La Pelusa, who is more concerned about development and completing projects instead of the crime, Garbage, Road deterioration, flooding since water table is rising from all the concrete foundations and the water is finding its way to places it’s never been before. And the city has no ordinance or assistance regarding groundwater coming into our homes. No trees left in this town anymore. no place for the water to go as our water table rises. But all he’s concerned about is development. It’s very sad that we have so many ordinances on our books and we don’t have enough police officers to handle all the tickets that need to be given out. I wonder when the last time the table of organization was updated? Do we have enough police Per capita to handle all this crime and enforcement of ordinances? A few years back people were afraid to even drive-through BAYONNE because they were going to get a ticket and now we have police officers work 12 hour shifts. We need them healthy and strong and we need to ensure we have enough on shift to handle what’s taking place in this town. Yet, councilman LaPelusa is only concerned about the development and the project pending.