The Jersey City Council reacted to hostile discourse at a south side community meeting last week to discuss potential infrastructure changes after hearing from the director that was in attendance at this morning’s caucus meeting.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
“The mayor recently announced a plan to convert two streets in Greenville into one ways to accomodate safe transit and bike infrastructure. My staff was asked to prepare concepts and to present them to the community for feedback,”said Department of Infrastructure Director Barkha Patel.
“The presentation we delivered showed the conversion of MLK and Bergen Avenue into one-way streets with dedicated bus lanes on both streets. No bike lanes were proposed on either of the streets.”
As she mentioned last week, the plan remains in its infancy and is a long ways from implementation in the event that the city council decides to approve it.
While Patel said she understood the criticisms about the lack of details for the plan, she expressed disappointment about profanity and personal insults being hurled at her and her staff.
” … Even after we asked that people stop with the personal attacks against staff, speakers shouted out things like ‘Go f your mother’ while staff was presenting, there was one speaker who acknowledged that we were just messengers in this process and then made references to messengers getting shot,” she recalled.
“It’s one thing to disagree, vehemently disagree, on the issues, but threats of violence are never acceptable. Personal attacks and verbal abuse directed at staff cannot be normalized and someone has to say that out loud. We prepared a presentation because we were asked to and it is our job, we showed up because we made a commitment to show up. We stayed because we knew how important it was for us to listen.”
She further stated that anyone conducting city business should be ensured a safe, respectful environment, something that should be a bare minimum requirement.
Councilman-at-Large Daniel Rivera called the aforementioned conduct “totally unacceptable” and a higher standard needs to be held for directors and staff.
Ward E Councilman James Solomon, who attended a portion of the community meeting in question, recalled when a speaker at a council meeting mentioned his daughter by name and noted it should become commonplace to acknowledge when someone goes overboard.
” … When an individual goes too far, we should say that individual went too far and then ensure that we’re putting in practices to ensure that doesn’t happen. I would also say that I don’t think that we can have a conversation about what I think has been the extraordinary disrespect to the south side of the city that has been shown through this proposal,” he declared.
“To just give an example, the proposal presented was moving MLK and Bergen to one ways, the entire public conversation was MLK and Ocean. And what has been said is we are voting on this in September. We are voting on this in two weeks! That is an extraordinary level of disrespect that engendered an atmosphere, which I understand why people were upset about that, that does not condone or accept any individual that crossed the line with the words that they used.”
The downtown councilman added that city staff at the community meeting acknowledged that they didn’t have core pieces of information about the proposal, therefore it was not logical to expect the council to take a vote on it in two weeks.
Solomon also said that “it is unacceptable for someone to even hint at violence,” with Rivera asserting shortly thereafter that “has the south side of the city been treated like shit? 100 percent,” but civil discourse must remain.
” … The fact that that tweet was put out and it put everybody at an [uproar], yes, I think the director and her staff should’ve said ‘hey, that’s not coming from us,’ that’s not really gonna happen because at the end of the day, we’re the ones that’s gonna vote on something like that,” Rivera stated.
“And if it’s gonna alter the livelihood of a huge community, we as council people have that common sense that we won’t let something like that happen. But we need to make sure that you cannot threaten somebody’s life.”
Ward A Councilwoman Denise Ridley said that the council is yet to receive any proposal related to infrastructure changes on the south side and asked for clarity if the governing body is expected to vote on something of that nature next month.
Assistant Business Administrator Peter Horton responded that no plan is finalized yet and that the council will be informed as soon as it is.
“So for the public’s sake, there’s nothing that the council has received as of yet concerning the one-way direction? All of this started because the administration did a tweet and this is the danger when you tweet stuff out there before you have any information,” asserted Council President Joyce Watterman.
“It made a community in an uproar that has a right to be upset because there was no conversation and that’s what I don’t think we understand: When we say things, even though there’s no facts to it, there’s domino effects that it has.”
She further stated that she is “tired of all the gossip” and urged the public to give the council a chance to vote if the administration puts such a proposal on a future agenda.
Ward C Councilman Rich Boggiano interjected that he thought Patel was owed an apology “from anyone who was involved with this” before Gilmore gave his thoughts.
” … First of all, I don’t condone any violence in any way, shape, or form. Now I will say this, I will apologize because I host[ed] the meeting and I should’ve had more control of it, but I want to put things into context,” he began.
“I think this is a beautiful opportunity for all of us to have a learning session, right? So what someone said, because everybody was essentially lashing out at Barkha, and I repeated several times that she’s doing her job and this is the proposal that the mayor put forth, she’s tasked with bringing to fruition, right?”
Gilmore also acknowledged that someone referred to Patel as the messenger and sometimes the messenger is the one that gets shot, which he indicated may not have been the best phrase to use in that situation, but it was just a metaphor and not a threat of violence.
” … They were saying that in the sense that ‘alright councilman, you’re saying that we shouldn’t be yelling at them, they’re just the messenger, no, we’re gonna yell at them and they need to bring it back to who gave them thing plan to bring it to fruition,'” he stated.
“People were outraged and pissed off and you can argue what people said was rightfully so or not, but like I said, I will apologize because, in the sense that someone feels that they’re not safe and I’m conducting a meeting, then that falls on me … The mayor put out a tweet without context, let’s not overlook that fact, right? Let’s stop looking at the side effect and look to what the root cause of the disease is.”
The Jersey City Council will convene at City Hall, 280 Grove St., on Wednesday at 6 p.m. and will also stream live on Microsoft Teams.
I was at that meeting and thought it got out of hand verbally and the team didn’t deserve it! To say the messenger is the one who gets shot was nothing less than what this neighbor witness from their surroundings in this area! I live here and would never be that uncivilized speaking violently! A true test of intellect was put out there from voicing our concerns, but unfortunately, most failed that test with violent remarks!