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[music] Hey everybody, welcome to Chat Box.

I'm David Cruz.

We got one of those Chat Box conversations for you today.

Three candidates for Mayor of Jersey City are with us, and before you say it out loud, we know there are actually seven candidates for Mayor, but for our little half-hour show, seven was never going to be an option, so we settled on three.

And how we chose them would be a story too long to tell here, so here we are.

Mussab Ali is a former Board of Education president.

Bill O'Dea is a Hudson County Commissioner.

And James Solomon is a city councilman representing Ward E. Gents, welcome.

Thank you for being here.

A couple of quick notes on Jersey City.

Second largest city in the state, 295,000 residents, budget of $750 million, roughly.

So, all right, we'll start with you, Bill O'Dea.

Are we better off today than we were when Steve Fulop got elected?

And when I say we, I mean Jersey City.

Well, if you don't make a lot of money, the answer is no.

Because with rents going up and taxes going up, middle class individuals as well as working families, as well as those who are not working, we're worse off.

So-- Depends on where you live.

Yeah.

Mussab Ali?

Yeah, I think there's some neighborhoods that are transformed.

I think some neighbors have gotten better.

But I think a lot of neighborhoods have been forced out.

I mean, you look at migration patterns from 2017 to now, 70% of Jersey City households have been forced to move.

And to me, that's mass displacement that's taking place all across the city.

Yeah.

I mean, property taxes up 50% in five years, thousands of luxury only units without affordable housing.

You know, I think it's clear we need real change.

And I think that change starts with making sure Jersey City is more affordable.

It starts with demanding developers build actually affordable homes, rents 1,000 a month, starting to protect tenants more aggressively and keeping people in their city.

And I think that's change that we need from where we've been over the last 12 years.

So I'm guessing about an average B minus C plus.

Yeah?

Correct.

All right.

Let's go with that one.

One word answer here, really.

What is hurting the city the most, Mussab Ali?

Affordability.

Council.

It's affordability.

That's what we all -- I'll say rent.

Right.

So I thought crime would come in there because it's something that gets talked about a lot.

Are we not one of the safest mid-sized cities in America, Commissioner?

We've got a lot of problems in our police department.

Our 911 system's broke.

We stick police cars on corners and don't let them go after criminals.

And we over-respond to minor offenses.

So if we could correct those three, I think we'd be on a much better track.

Councilman?

Yeah, I mean, there has been progress in reducing the murder rate, so we should celebrate that, right?

A summer ago, we had no homicides in the entire summer.

It's the first time in recent memory that's happened, but it's not enough.

Property crimes have increased, and in particular, traffic enforcement is non-existent.

Our roads are dangerous.

I haven't seen a single person or don't know a single person in Jersey City who hasn't had a close call as a pedestrian, a bicyclist, or a driver, and traffic enforcement is non-existent.

So on day one, I'm creating a traffic enforcement division, staffing it with 25 officers, fully funding our infrastructure department, and actually delivering a much safer Jersey City, as well as some of the things the commissioner said, getting rid of the fixed patrols, making sure that people are actually out, officers are out, on the beat, walking around.

All right.

Mussab Ali?

Yeah.

I think the biggest problem we actually have is we don't even know the crime data.

So crime data isn't actually published.

And so we have a commitment to transparency, but also making sure that, you know, to Councilman Salmon's point, that we have a traffic safety division, and that police officers are actually walking around.

And if you talk to cops, they want to walk around in neighborhoods.

But right now they are tasked on sentry posts where they just have to stand on one corner the entire time, their entire shift.

Look, we're 150 police officers lower than we should be.

When I was a counselor, we adopted a minimum policing limits.

It hasn't been enforced at least in eight years, maybe not 12 years.

And that's dangerous because you don't have enough officers working.

You hear a lot of what I ask about how things are.

A lot of people, elected officials, others who want to be elected officials, always say it depends on where you look, right?

So, poor, black and brown neighborhoods where violence is most common.

Why do you think that you can bridge that gap?

White guy from the West Side.

Because I've served on the side of the city for my entire life.

I interact with black and brown communities every day for the last 40 years.

I can walk in any public housing site by myself and people know who I am.

And I don't feel worried, I don't feel concerned.

So my relationship with that community, my ability to help them, remember I created a program called Project Impact, increasing minority participation and access to construction trades.

Over 300 women and minority men are now members of plumbing unions, painter unions, carpenter unions because of programs like that.

So when I was first elected councilman, my majority victory were the votes from the A. Harry Moore housing site, where actually I got 98% of the vote.

I never forgot that, and that's always been a commitment of mine to those communities.

That's why I've been angrier at the city, because they eliminated free summer camps that kids used to have from those black and brown communities.

So my record working with that community speaks for itself.

How about you, downtown yuppie?

You know, I think actions speak louder than words.

And so I believe that I will earn trust in the whole city over time, just as I have as the downtown councilman.

So take downtown to longtime downtown communities, Holland Gardens, Villa Barrington.

I was knocking doors in Holland Gardens the other day.

One of the tenants said, look, you didn't just show up at election time.

You showed up every single time we needed you.

And you have our full support.

And if you look in 2021, my strongest precincts in downtown were Holland Gardens and Villa Barrington, because I actually did the job, showed up, and actually responded to people's issues.

And then I'm proud to have important endorsements, like Councilman Gilmore in Ward F, a true independent leader, says, "Look, James is the right choice for mayor because he can deliver an affordable Jersey City."

And I think I genuinely say my job is to build trust over time.

Those actions do speak louder than words.

But I'm very confident in that ability to bridge that gap as mayor.

How about you, newbie?

Look, I don't think I'd categorize myself as a newbie, particularly not in Jersey City.

I actually went to middle school right next to Snyder High School.

So between the ages of 10 and 13, that was the neighborhood that I grew up in.

And to me, what's so powerful is when I walk in these neighborhoods, people resonate because they see someone that looks like them.

And very quickly, I was in Curry Woods actually canvassing the other day, and I saw three guys who were outside sort of just talking to one another.

And when I walked up to them, they said to me, "Hey, we've seen your videos.

We see the things you're talking about.

And it's refreshing to see someone who sounds like us.

And I think it's important that people recognize that there's someone in this race who is representing more than just one neighborhood, but representing the entire city.

Real quick answer, and this is a visual.

Raise your hand if you speak Spanish.

I can count to ten.

A little bit of Spanish.

Ali's not even going to attempt, because the follow-up is in Spanish.

No, I'm just kidding (speaks in Spanish) Oh, okay.

All right, so let's stay with you, Solomon.

You say you're going to bring down rents.

You promised something called a thousand dollar rental.

How are you going to do that?

So simply, when developers want to build those... Simply?

Yeah, simply.

When developers want to build those giant towers, you require that they put 20% affordable in.

And as part of that requirement, a portion have to be at rents that are genuinely affordable.

So that's a thousand a month, 1,500 a month.

So that corresponds to 30% AMI.

It's already in the city code.

And what we're going to do is we're going to make it mandatory for large projects.

That's a different.

Right now, it's part of the inclusionary zoning ordinance.

It only applies on certain projects.

We're going to make it mandatory and make sure that applies on all of the large scale developments.

And then we're going to use affordable housing trust fund money to buy down some of the units at 50 and 80% AMI to get to those low rentals.

So it's in the plan already.

It's something the city is doing.

We're going to vastly expand the number of units that it covers.

So you would keep it at those kind of restrictions or requirements for larger scale developments?

Correct.

Above 10 units?

Probably around 50.

We'll do the analysis when we get in, but that's roughly the scope of the large scale developments to get, because you have to target the large scale developments to get the number of units that we need to address the affordable housing crisis in the city.

Mussab Ali, free buses?

How are you going to do that?

Yeah, so we have a proposal for a fast and free bus system.

Right now, the city spends $7.8 million a year on VIA, which is basically like an Uber system.

So every time someone gets on a VIA, they pay $2, but the city pays an additional $13 subsidy for every single rider.

We think it's more efficient to have fixed route transit, and so what we believe is we're going to have a $6.5 million bus system that's going to have four routes that connect the entire city.

And the reason it's going to be fast is because 80% of the traffic signals in Jersey City are city run.

So you can actually put a transponder inside the bus, every time it goes to a light, it gets a green light, and now it's the fastest way to get around town.

Are you saying "mm-hmm" and agreeing?

The transponder system that Mussab is talking about is the thing that we should use to make our buses run faster.

Commissioner, how does a four-year budget cycle work?

He proposed that, and why do you think the city council is going to go for that?

Well, the city council doesn't go for it.

You vote every year.

But you analyze and lay out the four years of your budget.

So this year, this is our gap.

We fill this much of the gap this year with recurring revenue.

This year, you fill this much of a gap.

And so by the end of the four years, you've balanced a budget that has a $100 million operating deficit.

I got a comment on affordable housing because you didn't ask me that.

My plan is 2,800 units, 1,400 completed, 1,400 under construction.

I've done 750 units of affordable housing.

People come to me- What does that mean when you say you've done- I put together the financing, compliance work on them.

In your capacity as a county commissioner or- No, in my capacity as the executive director of a not-for-profit development company, including one project that you could see when you look out your window over on McCarter Highway.

So I know how to do it.

I know how to do the economics.

Plans sound good, but you've got to have somebody that actually knows how to do it, knows exactly how much subsidy you need.

So for a smaller building or smaller height, you need about $200,000 a unit in subsidy.

For the bigger buildings that James was talking about, you're looking at $400,000 to $450,000 per unit subsidy.

When you want to get that down to a 30% AMI number?

I can't always tell if you're smiling in agreement or if you're smiling skeptically.

No, I mean look, I think for me the key is who can deliver on that promise of truly affordable housing.

And I think my sort of distinction from the other candidates is I don't take money from developers.

And too often developers have gotten sweetheart deals in Jersey City.

And they've put hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaigns of my opponent, including the former governor, but also including the commissioner.

And so I think you need genuine independence from the real estate industry to actually get what we want, because too often we see these guys get deal after deal after deal.

So to me, the ability to deliver on affordable housing starts with independence from development interests, and I am the truly independent candidate from the developer.

And the flip side is, because you mentioned me, is in six years you have no affordable units downtown.

You've been on the city council, there have been projects that have gone there, and they haven't done affordable housing.

So a lot of concern is will they happen when you're there?

We've got Lee in and then I'll respond.

Just two points that I want to make here.

First, I've taken less money from the real estate lobby than Councilman Solomon has.

Not true.

Less money then or no money?

Less money from the real estate lobby as a whole.

Not true.

That's 100% true.

And the second thing here is I'm the only candidate that doesn't take money from city contractors or city vendors.

Councilman Solomon had an insurance broker who donated $10,000.

He voted for that contract and gave an additional $40,000.

How does it help you provide more affordable housing?

It provides us the opportunity to be independent of any contractor or any city vendor.

And at the end of the day, when it comes to affordability, what we want to do is change zoning across the city.

We're talking about 40% of the city is currently in exclusionary zoning practice in R1 zoning.

We want to transform that to R2 zoning.

Speak English for the... Yeah, so from single family... R1 means what?

R1 means single family zoning.

Single family.

We want to transform it into multi-family zoning.

And what that would do is... You want to do that, you're saying?

We want to do that.

Okay.

What that would do is you could take, for instance, an example project, someone that has one unit, convert that into four units, right?

To give them the opportunity to build four units.

And then one of those units would be deed restricted affordable housing.

So now you build affordable housing not just in some of these big companies, but also all across the city.

Yeah, so I just want to go back and sort of correct the record here in terms of what we've done downtown.

So project advancing with affordable housing.

72 Montgomery, 660 Grove, 619 Marin, St.

Lucie's, all of them have moved forward because of work that I have done across the city.

I was the deciding vote on the council to advance the Bayfront project.

Literally, if I didn't vote for it, wasn't part of the full administration, that project would have failed and that is a project that's going to deliver thousands of units of affordable housing.

And I've also supported projects like 701 Newark.

But again, with respect to the commissioner, commissioner saying you've given 750 affordable units, but you've had 50 years to do it.

I don't think that's a great record to say.

I would say in the last 10 or 12 years I've done it.

But as for Bayfront, hold on, as for Bayfront, when they did it, when they had the shovel, groundbreaking there, Mayor Fulop credited me for all the work I've done for so many years to bring Bayfront to where it was, up to and including finding out how to use tax exempt bonds to close the financing gap, otherwise you wouldn't have it.

So you cast a vote on the city council, great.

The mayor gives me credit for the years I've worked on that project, but also recognize the fact that I figured out how to close a financing gap to make the economics of it work.

All right, let me move on.

Let me move on from this.

That speaks for itself.

This is a kind of quick answer, if you can.

What one skill do you have that makes you uniquely qualified to run this place?

We'll start with you, short.

Sure.

Being on the city council, I know exactly in the administration who we want to keep to deliver good work, and I know who we need to let go to actually deliver a city that works.

On day one, we're coming in, there's no learning curve, we're going to get the city working the way it needs to be.

Do you need experience in the city council or the county commission to run this place?

What's your one skill that you bring?

Yeah, look, so I've served for four years on the board of education and had to close massive budget gaps because of all the money that the governor took away from us.

But I think the most important skill that I have is understanding the law, right?

Like going to law school and understanding the way that the law interacts with our day-to-day lives because that is the most important thing that the mayor is going to be doing.

I feel like you wanted to say something.

Well, so what I would say is two things.

One, extensive legislative experience, both in the city council, but now as a county commissioner, where I've proven that things have gotten done, but I've also run something.

I've actually run something.

I've actually overseen a budget.

I've actually had to hire people, fire people.

That's an important part of, I think, what a job is.

And I've been successful at running that nonprofit.

All right.

Full up.

The mayor has been mentioned a couple of times.

This is a quick yes or no.

Will you take a full up endorsement.

Now.

No.

Will you take a full up endorsement.

I don't think it's worth it.

Anybody.

Oh really.

No.

So if an endorsement was offered, you would say no and you would say no.

Exactly.

You would say yeah.

Well I think for me, right, there's definitely things the mayor has done.

Bayfront, right, Project Heaters, there's a ton of credit for.

But at the end of the day, I am running for deliver change for Jersey City.

Jersey City has become one of the most expensive cities in the entire country.

Property taxes up 50% in five year.

Rent up a similar amount.

We need to change from that direction.

We can't keep doing the status quo.

We can't keep doing... >> I know all of you guys say that, but my question here is downtown is done, right?

Downtown is never going to be affordable.

I don't know why you think that it's going to be affordable, but the incentives are just not there.

>> What we can do, right, what is the art of the possible, right?

There are still, yes, downtown will never be affordable, but there are still thousands and thousands of units that are going to be built, we have to ensure that those are affordable not just downtown but across the whole city.

So there is much more development that's coming to Jersey City and you've got to redirect it from the luxury only model to an affordable model.

So here's two things I would say on Fulop.

First, when he was elected mayor first, he offered me the business administrator's job.

If I took it, maybe we'd be in a lot better position than we are today.

Secondly, a lot of the issues that James talks about, he's been on the city council.

It's okay to vote against stuff, but if you look at me as a county commissioner, and when there were battles, the extent or the degree in which I would fight, like when I fought against the renewal of the ICE contract, that got me punished, removed as the vice chairman, kicked off a public safety committee, you gotta be out there stronger.

You gotta scream, yell, and holler sometimes.

It's just not enough to say, "Oh, it's wrong, it's broken.

I vote no."

Yeah.

And I just want to say-- Anything you want to add on, Fuller?

Yeah, very quickly.

Very quickly.

I mean, I've had public fights with Steve Fuller because of the school funding formula.

When we were being ripped funding away from the governor's office, instead of the mayor fighting with us against the governor's office, he sort of threw us under the bus.

And to me, like, that was our biggest disagreement, that this is somebody that doesn't think education is something that matters to the mayor.

And we want to make sure that in our administration, education will be a priority.

I want to sue the state, have every legislator from Hudson County not vote for a budget until a funding formula that gives Patterson $583 million and Jersey City only $148 million gets rectified.

If we do that alone, if we do that alone, we can improve our education system and stabilize our taxes.

Now, not everybody running is willing to go to the state and fight them and go to court and fight them to the extent that some of us may be willing to.

This song may, this song, this question may suggest that it requires a long answer, but please keep it short.

Name one outside the box thing that we can expect from your administration.

So I think the biggest thing that you can expect from us is the fast and free bus proposal.

I mean this is something that is revolutionary.

It's something that's being done in Hoboken and can be done in Jersey City.

We can afford to do it.

We have the money to do it, and it will connect all the different neighborhoods across our city.

All right.

Commissioner?

So, they're outside the box because they've taken them outside the box over the years.

Bring back a housing court.

That's why these fines aren't being levied and these landlords are getting away with bloody murder.

And a rent receivership program, because these buildings that are being allowed to be run down, forcing tenants out, and then allowing landlords to come in, fix them up, and triple the rents, those two things alone will do more to address the affordable housing problem for existing people that live in our town than anything else.

Councilman, one outside the box thing we can expect from your administration.

Yeah, I'm proud to be running on the strongest anti-corruption platform of any candidate in the race, and particularly one of Municipal Inspector General, which, regret all the walkingness, there's going to be an independent person with subpoena power looking to find corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse in city government.

It will save taxpayers money, and folks will know that there is someone watching, because right now people feel impunity because there is no one actually trying to root out corruption in Jersey City.

Now let me ask you this all.

The school system is a whole other half hour at least that we could talk about, so we're going to give it 30 seconds.

Changes to the school system, would you accept or encourage or vote for mayor control?

No.

Again, I've served on the school board for four years, I'm the only one here that has that experience.

I know what it means to be on the school board, I think it's important that it's independent, but I do think that the mayor should make endorsements every single year and also hold themselves accountable to those outcomes.

Look, the most important service a city provides is education, and the number one indicator of when someone is moving out of Jersey City is when their kids turn five years old.

Yeah.

When the mayor controlled the appointments, it was corrupt, and the state took it over.

So that new position he has will be so busy watching what's going on there.

It would be a total, total disaster.

The mayor can partner, but they should not have the power to appoint him.

Historically, they appointed deputy mayors, who were their political appointments, to go to a school board, and they know nothing about children, or have any children in the school system.

Yes or no on that mayor control?

No, I mean, I think what we need to do, as Mussab said, is get engaged in school board elections.

I was proud in 2024 to endorse just two fed up public school parents.

I'm a public school parent.

All of us felt like we are not getting the education we need for our kids, given the billion dollar budget.

They won, despite having no money, because parents were frustrated.

We're doing that again, supporting three change candidates.

I genuinely think we need to bring change to our school board to deliver a significantly better and higher quality public education.

I think the way to do it as mayor is using the bully pulpit to get it done.

These are kind of super local and probably mostly of interest to me.

I appreciate that.

It's your show.

That's right.

You're allowed to do that.

Tax breaks for the Pompidou Museum in Journal Square.

Will you kill that deal if you're mayor?

Let's start with the guy who's in that ward.

Yeah, I mean all of us want to kill that deal.

So that's an easy question.

100%.

You can't waste another dollar on it.

Under no circumstances do you think it... It's not financeable.

It's $250 million smoke and mirrors budget hole.

I mean we've got such core issues in the city, you know, lack of affordable housing enforcement, you know, lack of basic infrastructure improvements and transit.

We cannot waste another cent.

And the operating deficit on an annual basis, no one has the money for it.

So besides getting it built and how you figure out where all the money comes to build it, every year it's losing money, going down the dark hole.

And without that money we're making things worse even than they are now.

I mean listen, if the Kushner's and the Trump administration wanted to fund it, fully fund it for the next 50 years, yeah sure, we'll take it.

But in the current administration, it's not going to work.

I wouldn't believe it if they told us that anyway.

Here's another question that you guys may not even know this.

The Jersey City Museum, the old museum, the collection is no longer in Jersey City.

It was donated to the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University in New Brunswick in 2018.

The current mayor called it the collection parochial.

Will you promise to bring back this important part of Jersey City's history?

I will do everything in my power to bring it back.

We deserve to have it.

It's a great Jersey City collection and we should be in the Apple Tree House and that's where it should be its home.

I'd love to bring it back.

Apple Tree House is a great place to have it, but we need to get corporate and other folks to do some of the financial subsidies for the operations of it, because otherwise the hole's not going to be as big as the pompadour.

But if it's even a million dollars a year and we've got to go into the coffers of the budget, then we're going to lose programs for kids, whether they're camps or other programs that we need more for the people that live in the city.

You going to bring it home, Mussab Ali?

We're going to bring it home.

I'm a proud Rutgers alum, so proud to talk to those folks and make it happen, but I think to the point the Commissioner is making, we want to build a department of philanthropy and actually talk to corporations.

Look, we're sitting in the city of Newark.

There's the Prudential Foundation, MCJ Amelia Foundation, Victoria Foundation, the devils have a foundation here.

But if you go to Jersey City, there's not a single foundation that you can point to, despite the fact that we have Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan and Verisk.

So to me, it's really important that our corporate partners start to play a bigger role in what does it mean to be from Jersey City.

You've talked about this before, about the parking fees, the taxes, the corporate taxes.

Our corporate community, the Jersey City's corporate community, have underperformed, haven't they?

100%.

They need to pay what they owe.

We did audits.

Even aside from those taxes and stuff?

Absolutely.

So both have to pay what they owe.

We've audited.

They haven't done it.

But then to your point, yes, they need to be more civically engaged.

They need to say, this is our home.

We're going to open our doors to the young people of Jersey City for internships and opportunities.

We're going to invest more money into philanthropy in Jersey City.

Let me give Commissioner the last 30 seconds of our conversation.

So to get back to audits, you know, in 20... No, no, no.

Tell me something bad about the corporate community.

No, I'm talking about auditing tax abatements.

And the city's failure to audit tax abatements, even after the Board of Education gave them a list and said, "Hey, here's the problem.

Here's the taxes that aren't being paid."

So the failure of the city to audit properly tax abatements, since Maureen Cosgrove left as the tax collector, has probably cost the city at least $10 million a year.

Day one, go in, do it.

There used to be an Office of Tax Abatement Compliance.

It disappeared.

All right.

Mussab Ali, give me 15 seconds how terrible the corporate community has performed.

Look, I think that the corporations just aren't doing enough.

And I think that, you know, as a city, we need to transform the way we think about philanthropy.

We need to transform the way we think about dreams.

I think that in Jersey City, so often we've been overshadowed by New York, and we need to allow the people of Jersey City to start to dream bigger.

All right.

Corporate, I mean, cultural change probably needed across the board.

Anyway, Mussab Ali, Bill O'Dea, James Solomon, appreciate your time.

Thanks for coming on with us.

>> Thank you for having us.

>> And that's Chat Box this week.

We're on Bluesky now.

You can follow us there at DavidCruzNJ.

And scan the QR code on your screen for more Chat Box.

I'm David Cruz.

For all the crew here at Gateway Center in downtown Newark, we thank you for watching.

We'll see you next week.

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