Today, the State Senators of New Jersey are being asked to vote on S-3157. If signed into law, it would extend the time citizens must wait between submitting petitions for charter changes from 4 years to 10 years.  This is unreasonable, undemocratic, and harmful overall to civic engagement, and we are asking our State Senators to vote against this measure.

Currently, under the Faulkner Act, New Jersey municipalities can hold votes on charter amendments once every four years. If, through S3157, the waiting period between votes is expanded from four to ten years, it would mean that obsolete and malfunctioning portions of town charters could not be revised or improved with any reasonable speed. For instance, after restructuring their school board for better representation, the residents of any city in New Jersey would have to wait an entire decade before voting on even the most basic reform of local election policy.

This discourages people from taking part in the democratic process, and from addressing long-term problems in their communities.  “The effect of this bill is to discourage and disenfranchise regular citizens from taking an active role in their government,” said Mike Shanahan, Democratic Committeeman from New Brunswick’s Sixth Ward.  “Referendums help give people a voice in how their hometowns are governed.  This bill kills that self-determination.”

The bill also fails to take into consideration the amount of public support for any change in local government–Half of a municipality’s registered voters could come forward with a petition for a charter change, and the town would not be able to put that change up for vote on the ballot until this waiting period had passed.

Among the State Senators, the bill’s sole sponsor is Nicholas Scutari (D-Linden).  In the Assembly, only Annette Quijano (D) from Union has sponsored the misguided legislation. This bill would have to recieve a “Yes” vote from both of these bodies, and be signed by Governor Corzine before he leaves office on the 19th to become state law.

We are voicing our opposition to make sure that this unworkable suggestion does not come to be seen as a reasonable option. As a major grassroots organization in New Brunswick, we see this as crippling to the democratic process. Making sure we keep a fair and workable mechanism in place for people to have their local concerns addressed is of great importance to us as voters.

You can read more about the ongoing process here, at MoxieToday.com

New Brunswick, NJ—Commissioners for the Middlesex County Board of Elections announced the unofficial count of provisional ballots Saturday morning in New Brunswick’s hotly contested municipal referendum.

The referendum question, if approved by voters, would change the way the City Council is elected to a ward-based system.

Ultimately, of the ballots accepted by the board at a public hearing yesterday, 81 were cast in favor of the question and 47 were cast against, narrowing the gap in the race to 82 votes.

The Coalition says the election is not by any means over until voters can be sure their voice was heard, including provisional or absentee ballots that were rejected in error.

“We want everyone’s vote to be counted and we will explore all avenues to ensure everyone’s vote counts in this important election, including a thorough recount if necessary.” said Martin Perez, spokesperson for the Coalition.

The unofficial tally of votes is currently 2,474 no to 2,392 yes.

10/30/09
Alex Giannattasio and Matia Guardabascio interviewing Martha Guarnieri and Charlie Kratovil of Empower Our Neighborhoods:

Alex: We’re coming down to the home stretch on the Wards Campaign. You guys nervous?

Martha: Nope. We’ve got ‘em. We got the votes, they’re there.  All the hard work we’ve done over the last few years allows us to identify our voters by name, so we know our voters at this point.

Charlie: Nope. We’re winning right now, we’ve got ‘em on the run. When we say we know our voters, we mean we know their names and addresses and phone numbers and we’ve talked to them before and they’ve told us they’re going to vote yes. All we have to do is remind them to do it. We ran a real grassroots campaign.

Alex: That’s one thing that I wanted to talk about so lets start there. What are the main demographics in New Brunswick? Who are the registered voters that you’re speaking to and where are they located?

Martha: The big populations for us are the student population, which is huge, the black population, which is getting smaller and smaller, and the growing Latino population. And then there are old, white homeowners, and I guess younger white homeowners in certain parts of town, which are usually people who work for the city. Among people who are “Yes [for wards] Voters”, the two biggest populations that are going to bring us the votes are students and Latinos, which makes sense because they are two of the strongest parts of our coalition.

Charlie: And they’re also the two most disadvantaged, underrepresented groups in New Brunswick

Matia: That’s the Coalition for Democracy?

Martha: That’s right, EON is essentially a lot of students, and the Latino Leadership Alliance is a lot of Latinos, and these two are among the strongest groups in the Coalition, in addition to other community allies.

Alex: In which wards are those two bases–Latinos and students–mainly located?

Charlie: Students are located in primarily two different wards: ward six and ward two. Ward two is Cook/Douglass, Ward six is Rutgers Campus.

Alex: Talk about the general populations there.

Charlie: Over the past thirty years, as Rutgers failed to meet the need for student housing and people wanted to live close to the campus, the students had no choice but to start renting the off campus housing near campus.

Alex: When was that?

Charlie: It happened slowly, starting in the seventies. When the last ward election happened in 1986, first of all it happened in August, so no students were around, and in fact a lot of people were on vacation. So they purposefully picked the worst time to have it. But also, back then the sixth ward was predominantly middle class homeowners, and if there were students living there, it wasn’t ten to a house, but maybe, a landlord on the first floor renting the second floor to one or two students. So now, times have changed big time, especially in the past ten years, to the point where students constitute around 90% of the population. Homeowners don’t even live there anymore; the ones that do are generally elderly, people who are comfortable and for whatever reason want to stay there. But there are no NEW homeowners moving in and buying homes. The only people buying homes are people who want to rent them.

Martha: Except for over in Eagonville, which is what we call the area where Joe Eagon lives over by Saint Peter’s across from Bucchelic Park. Technically that’s part of the sixth ward, but its well separated, over on the edge of town. It goes to show how vastly different neigborhoods can be: you’ve got St. Peter’s, a big blockade, on one side of which you have beautiful homes, clean streets, no parking problems, no crime issues, and the most gorgeous park in Central New Jersey, and on the other side what essentially amounts to a ghetto, the student ghetto, or the Central Avenue ghetto.

Alex: I used to live in that ghetto.

Charlie: Exactly. Now that’s ward six. On the other side of Hamilton is ward five, and in the past couple of years students have begun to spill over into that ward now, High Street, Plum Street, Division Street. When was the last time they built a dorm? They built Easton Ave. Apartments in 1994, they built Rockoff Hall in 2006…

Alex: …All the while the school continues to accept more students…

Charlie: …And they’re building more housing on Busch and Livingston, where people don’t want to live. I don’t have to tell you that College Ave. is the most coveted place to live, followed by Cook/Douglas, yet they haven’t built anything there to live in. The only thing they have built has been the luxury-apartment-style housing which costs more and isn’t as close to the campus as you’d want.

Martha: They’re doing some of it on Easton Ave, over by Century Apartments and across from the Shell Station. But it’s not Rutgers that’s doing it, its some contractors building privately owned living space.

Charlie: But to get back to the point, Wards two, five and six are increasingly becoming student occupied. As Martha accurately pointed out, unfortunately the African American population here has been shrinking…

Alex: Why is that?

Martha: Because they knock down projects.

Alex: Which projects?

Charlie: The New Brunswick Memorial homes. They were four high-rise project towers. They knocked them down and built something that couldn’t hold nearly as many families.

Martha: Watch the video of them knocking down the projects: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNeuppsmD_k

Charlie: That was in 2001. But in general, they’ve been destroying neighborhoods systematically, eyeing it up as a neighborhood they want to redevelop, and then they find the best way to drive people to want to leave for a variety of reasons, because there’s nothing good in the neighborhood, or they drive all the drug traffic there, or because the landlords there don’t maintain the properties. One of the biggest accomplishments of some of the people in our movement is we won rent control in New Brunswick, specifically eliminating something called vacancy decontrol for many properties. Basically, vacancy decontrol meant that if no one lived in your place, you could jack up the rent to whatever you wanted. So if you could force your own tenants to move out, and then leave the place vacant for a month, you were exempt from rent control law, which had been on the book since 1970-something. This actually destroyed so many neighborhoods in New Brunswick because the landlords actually had a vested interest in not letting the tenants stay, the tenants didn’t get any of the repairs they wanted or the services they wanted, and so they would move every year. Constant moving meant no sense of community.

Alex: What would you say to homeowners who might see the City’s redevelopment-by-whatever-means policies as a good thing in the medium to long run that will bring more wealthy homeowners to and raise property values in those neighborhoods?

Charlie: I would say, what we really need is to look at the specific instance of redevelopment and whether or not they actually helped anybody at all. Who benefited? Was it mostly the developers? The construction companies? Or was it the people in the neighborhoods, the tax payers. I would argue that in almost every case, it was the developers and the people who were in on the construction. The reason for that is that almost every redevelopment project in New Brunswick gets a thirty year tax abatement, which means that because we’re so happy that you’re gonna come to town and build your new thing, we’re not gonna make yo upay taxes for thirty years. So, all these arguments you hear from the machine about how “we’re bringing in all of this money, making things cheaper for the residents, and we can hire more police and fire fighters, and still keep taxes low”, is actually a misleading argument. Most of these redevelopment projects cost the taxpayers money. The City chips in to fix up roads and this and that, and gives away our most precious resource, our land.

Alex: The result of which is this puzzle-work of a city, where a gated community might be found right next to a low income area, separated by a busy highway.

Martha: Take for instance Ward One, which constitutes Rutgers Village and the Dewey Heights area. You can’t even access the place unless you drive down Rt. 18. It’s completely isolated from the rest of New Brunswick, and in fact, that’s where most of the cities people live. Thomas Peoples, a member of EON, has lived in New Brunswick for 51, his whole life. He visited the neighborhood for the first time this year; he said he didn’t even realize it was part of New Brunswick until now.

Charlie: There are 32 neighborhoods (depending on how you slice it) and four apartment buildings. All except for one of the City department heads live in four neighborhoods. The Mayor, City Council members, the Police Director, the Sanitation Director all live down there. Now while the city council is important in theory, in practice it basically functions like a rubber stamp for the Mayor, passing all the laws the Mayor passes to them. The people who actually run the City are the ten department heads, people appointed by the Mayor. All of these department heads live in those four neighborhoods, excepting one who lives in a luxury apartment complex just outside of town. And it’s no wonder that their streets are clean, and the cops protect their neighborhoods, and they don’t have the same problems having traffic improvements made. These people are in touch with THIER neighborhoods, they know THEIR problems, and they address them. They enjoy the benefits of ward-based government, without a wards-based system. They are granted the special treatment of being guaranteed someone in their neighborhood who cares about them.

Martha: I always tell this story, probably too much, about the time we tried to get a speed bump installed in Ward Four over by Joyce Killmer park. It’s a very dangerous area for children, and after a little boy was hit by a car, his grandmother, and the crossing guard from that corner came down to City Hall along with a few other people and petitioned for the city council. The City Council president, who lives down near Ward Four was very insensitive to them, and didn’t want to give them special treatment because she doesn’t rely on them for her votes, even though they’re her neighbors. In a wards based system, if she were the fourth ward council person, she would not have been able to do that without risking her reelection.

Alex: Let’s talk about the specifics behind EON’s campaign strategy.

Martha: As I was saying earlier, since we know all of our voters, basically the tactic now is to make sure that they actually do vote, particularly for the students. That might mean helping them to vote early, or getting them to the right polling stations on Tuesday. At this point, we are not canvassing as heavily as we have, except in those swing districts where we can still steal votes from the machine, for example, in the Pine Street Park area and Riverside, places where if we aren’t there, they’ll vote with the machine, but if we hustle, they could swing to us. So now we’ve targeted these areas and sent in our best canvassers. We also have people making phone calls to voters, and it’s important that our callers know their shit, know about the city and know their issues. Third is covering the city with literature, having people with Wards tee-shirts distributing information to potential voters and making sure the community is as aware as possible of the issue. We’re also always compiling a lot of information, trying to figure out who is going to the polls and when, so as to be able to follow up with the base on election day. We need to be able to communicate between polling places, headquarters and street teams, so that everybody is where they need to be. A really awesome –and daunting–thing about the next couple of days is that we have a group of about 75 people coming to help with the last few days of the campaign. We call them the “Weekend Warriors”. A lot of students who didn’t have time before, because of midterms or whatever else are calling us to be like “I’m in now!” so our street team is about to explode tomorrow morning.

Matia: How many people did you say you have working with you?

Martha: About 20 working full-time, and another 30 or so on the periphery, although like I said, that periphery is about to triple in size.

Charlie: People just keep coming in and asking us how can I help; this weekend we will have an unprecedented number of volunteers working with us. I just want to be clear that we do have a lot of people coming from different places, who have a special connection to New Brunswick for whatever reason. Maybe they went to Rutgers for a while and then left because they couldn’t afford it, or people who’ve lived in Jersey for some time and know how messed up New Brunswick is, and they really care and want to change things here for the better. That’s the difference between us and the political machine here: we bring people from other towns who volunteer because they’re committed to change, they bring people from other towns to vote–for instance, people who own property here but don’t live here.

Matia: So, approximately what percentage of the people working for EON would you say are students vs. non-students?

Martha: I’d say around 80% are students, [to Charlie] would you say that’s fair?

Charlie: I would say that 80% of the hours put in are done by students. I’d say it’s about 50/50 as far as people involved is concerned. Its just people with kids and jobs can’t come in during the day, but they help where they can.

Martha: There are also quite a few people out there talking to their neighbors and friends whose hours aren’t clocked, but who are still invaluable to the cause.

Matia: You mentioned to me earlier your policy for distributing funds back into the community. Could you talk about that please?

Martha: Well, while the machine tends to recruit school kids or out-of-towners to distribute literature in the area, we decided to hire people from around town to help with distribution. So we started hiring three or four people a day to go out and hand out our literature for us. We think it’s important that we put any money we have for the campaign back into the community. We could have called up some of our college friends who live kinda cushy lives and could have used a few bucks for beer money, but I’d much rather inject that money back into the communities that need it most, so that’s what we do.

Matia: One of the things that I think has gotten lost during this campaign is the people who are working it. Actions speak louder than words, and I think this is a prime example of just that happening.

Charlie: Well here’s another thing about the phones. I don’t know if you’ve heard the Mayor’s phone message to city residents, but it’s what is known as a robocall. Politicians who are out-of-touch with the people use them all the time. On our end, we have real people calling their neighbors and talking to them. It’s a two way conversation, we can hear what they have to say, they can ask us questions and we can answer them, whereas the Mayor is calling up every resident in the City, telling them how to vote and hanging up. Another thing was the push poll they recently put out. Push polling is a time honored tradition in politics, it’s where you call up, pretend to be an independent subject that just wants to know how you are going to vote, but ask the question in such a way that predisposes you towards one candidate or another. I actually got a call from these people. They said “Hi, this is Unite New Brunswick calling to let you know that the mayor wants you to vote against this new wards question on the upcoming ballot; the current system has kept taxes to a minimum and created better schools. Can we count on your vote?” So I said “Oh, that’s great! I just moved to New Brunswick, what has the current administration done to improve the schools?” She responds “Oh I don’t have that information.” So I asked “What exactly is the question on the ballot?” She responds “I don’t have that information.” So I asked “How many people are on the New Brunswick city council?” “I don’t have that information”. So I asked “Are you calling from New Brunswick or somewhere else in New Jersey?” And she says “No, I’m not in New Jersey, I’m calling from the South.” I said “The South, as in, of America?” These guys don’t know anything, they’re just an out of town corporation being paid to send the message out.

Martha: When they called me, they asked me whether I’d be voting with the Mayor, and when I told the woman I would not, she just wouldn’t take no for an answer. I tried to tell her I was the President of the opposition party, but she just said thanks for my support and hung up. So I don’t even know if the results of the push poll are accurate…

Alex: Obviously one of the most prominent claims the City levels against the idea of real student representation in New Brunswick is that we are transients, who don’t stick around long enough to deserve a say in policy. Charlie, how long do you plan to stay here in New Brunswick.

Charlie: I’m planning to stay around for the foreseeable future. There is no place I’d rather be. People give me shit for not being a lifelong New Brunswick resident. But obviously, I had no choice where I was going to be living before I turned 18. I’m fully committed to this city and its people, whether or not this question is passed. The entrenched political machine is not with the people. I’m gonna fight these guys until they’re done.

Alex: How about you Martha. You’re president of EON and campaign manager of the Wards campaign. Will you be here for the foreseeable future?

Martha: I really like this city a lot. If I move anywhere, it’ll be for a few years to go to law school before I come back. New Brunswick is such a story. It’s just so clear who are the bad guys and who are the good guys. I want to see it through.

Charlie: Yea, you know, in politics often times you doubt yourself and your not sure whether you’re doing the right thing, but here, every time I’ve never doubted it because the people here are SO crooked and so out of touch with the people they are supposed to represent. I’ve never had to doubt that by fighting them tooth and nail I was doing the right thing. By the way, the number one thing that makes people who love New Brunswick and would want to stay leave is our school system. Our school system is a miserable failure. You see the twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings walking around downtown with little babies in strollers. Mark my words, their days in this town are numbered, because when it comes time for those kids to go to school, those people are going to leave New Brunswick. They simply can not feel safe sending their kids to a New Brunswick school. Middlesex County just released a report that we’re number one for violence in our schools.

Alex: Since we’re riffing on that now, tell me some problems you have with the school system.

Charlie: Well, for starters, the kids living in my neighborhood are currently attending elementary school in a warehouse on Jersey Ave. Before that, they were attending school in this beautiful brick building, the old high school. The Mayor ordered that it be torn down, because he wanted to get state money to build a new school. The money fell through, and now they get bussed across the train tracks to attend school in a warehouse. That’s been the case for about six years now, so at this point, that’s what the kids know as school.

Martha: But the City just says it’s nice on the inside. City Spokesman Bill Bray calls it the “swing space”.

Charlie: It’s not just that school though. Every school in New Brunswick has trailers. The Schools are failing our kids.

Alex: What about the brand new high school the city is building?

Charlie: The new high school is a great initiative, but if the kids can’t read by the time they get to ninth grade, its useless.

Alex: Do you have a position on the specialization structure that the new high school will institute?

Charlie: I honestly like the idea. I know I would have liked it in high school because I was always in classes I thought were dumb, and I just wanted to take the classes I wanted to take.And honestly I think that’s the direction that education is moving in, and it’s a step in the right direction. But a bigger step in the right direction would be building an elementary school in my neighborhood so the kids there could learn to read.

Matia: After this whole wards thing i s over, would you say that the schools will be the next big issue on your agenda?

Martha: I can’t speak for the whole coalition, but personally, my big issue is the schools

Charlie: I think we need to elect our Board of Education in the town. It’s criminal that the Mayor can appoint them, leaving the parents no recourse to implement change. What do you say to a parent whose kid can’t get a good education because the Board of Education doesn’t need to listen to what they have to say?

Martha: I was really confused when I first came to Rutgers because it seemed that the students didn’t really communicate with the community at all. So what I wanted to do at first was to create the world’s biggest mentoring program, with Rutgers students mentoring New Brunswick kids. And it would encourage more New Brunswick kids to go to Rutgers. This is something we could do even without the coalition.

Charlie: I was in the RU Big Buddy program. There were 100 big buddies and 100 little buddies. And the new Principle of the school, who is one of the highest paid members of the Board of Education, Susan McGinty, didn’t like the program, didn’t like Rutgers students coming to her school and talking to her kids. She wanted to exercise some control over the situation, so she said, this year, we’re only going to have 20 big buddies and 20 little buddies, and only for special ed students. We ended up negotiating to 30. So 60 Rutgers students who came out to a general interest meeting, who were willing and able to help out New Brunswick schools were turned away, and told “maybe next year”. There are people who say “Oh, well there must be some reason they did this”. Well, keep in mind, this program is free, it doesn’t cost any money and is completely volunteer-based. It’s just that the administration and the Board of Education actively fight to keep students out of the schools. This is what we are experiencing in New Brunswick: a divide and conquer tactic. The use negative attacks on me, on EON, and on students getting involved. They actively fight to keep the communities apart. They tell the students “don’t go into those neighborhoods, you don’t want to go in those neighborhoods, and they spread all these crazy scare tactics in the community, telling people that the students are all socialists, are all drunks, only want to piss on your lawn, and they continue to succeed election after election. But what’s happening now is the students and the community are starting to work together, and once that happens, the sky is the limit. Things like this mentorship program will happen, and will happen on a massive scale. Because the students do want to get active and do want to make New Brunswick a better place.

Alex: Let’s change gears here. What is it going to take for you guys to win this election? What are the necessary ingredients for victory?

Martha: We need 75 people here, working hard Saturday Sunday Monday, and we need about 200 people on election day.

Matia: What is the expected turnout for this election, and how many votes do you need to win?

Martha: We expect a turnout of around 6000. 3100 votes will win. We expect to win between 2700 and 3300 votes.

Matia: So you think it’s going to be close.

Martha: We do. I think it’s gonna be close, and I think we’re gonna be dragging people out to the polls by their hair, down to the last minutes.

Matia: Are you providing transportation to the polls?

Charlie: Of course. We are working with Amigo Taxi. Not only will they be carrying “Yes for Wards” signs on their taxis but they’ll give anyone a ride to the polls for free.

Alex: I’m glad you guys are realistic. I came in here expecting to hear about how you were gonna win 80% of the vote.

Martha: I spend all my time looking at databases and talking to staff and I think that if we hustle in the next few days I think we can take it. Clearly they’re beating us on the lawn sign front — they got more of them and they’re bigger. And they can pay people to put out their lit, so they got more of that…

Charlie:…and they can mail out their stuff to everyone…

Martha:…and in those swing districts, we are out there all day. We put our literature somewhere, leave and come back, and they’ve covered it up with their literature. It is literally war like that. You also have people like Councilman Jimmy Cook and Aide to the Mayor Kevin Jones, who are the two black leaders in the City government who are out there canvassing for the city a lot.

Alex: So you’ve really got mobilize those two bases: students and Latinos.

Charlie: Yea, well, they are organized and ready to go so, well see.

Martha: One thing to keep in mind is that those two groups are the groups that are going to get F-ed with the most on election day. Even if its pollsters being particularly or purposefully slow, long lines will deter students, so we have to be mindful.

Matia: Where can we find out the results?

Charlie: The votes are counted at 8pm. But we’ll work on getting the results posted in real time online.

Alex: Do you think they will call for a recount?

Martha: Sure, if it’s super close…I wouldn’t put anything past them at this point…

Charlie: I don’t think there will be much room for gerrymandering this time; we’ve got it on the ballot, that’s what counts. It isn’t over after the election. But the fact of the matter is that ours is a movement that is growing, theirs is a political patronage machine, and it is shrinking.

Alex: What are some rookie mistakes you guys made during the course of the campaign?

Martha: Internally, the biggest mistake was the difficulty of getting the coalition, which was in charge of running the campaign, to communicate effectively with the army of campaign volunteers. It can make for a situation where you are duplicating work, so coordination is key. There was a point two weeks ago where the campaigners did not endorse a decision made by the coalition, and that caused some confusion, and we had to get the groups together to resolve the issue. Externally, it is very very hard to organize the black community. I don’t know that that is exactly a fault, it’s just the truth, and it’s something we are going to have to work on in the future.

Matia: Why was it so hard?

Charlie: It’s because black people have been systematically targeted by the current administration, to the point where they don’t feel there is any way they can make change. They’ve seen so many candidates come and so many people go. It’s because they’ve been here so long and they’ve never gotten their fair say. And they’ve actually been booted out of town by the hundreds, by families after families, moving to Virgina, moving to South Carolina, moving to Franklin, moving to North Brunswick, because the current administration has actually made quite an organized effort to facilitate that movement.

Matia: Would you highlight the demolition of those projects as evidence of this?

Charlie: Yea, there’s that, but it doesn’t stop there. The area where the Hyatt is now, Hiram Square, the oldest part of the city where New Brunswick actually got its start was all torn down under the leadership of Mayor John Lynch, the currently incarcerated, formerly most powerful politician in New Jersey. He made the unprecedented step of taking a trip to Washington to lobby the US Congress to remove the historic designation from that neighborhood–because it was occupied by black and Puerto Rican populations. That area was home to the largest collection of historic architecture in New Jersey and perhaps America, a fact that almost made it the home to the John Rockefeller-funded colonial city (second only to Williamsburg, VA). There’s still some colonial architecture on George Street, but the vast majority of it was destroyed by John Lynch.

Matia: Are you calling him a racist?

Charlie: I’m saying his policies were racist. He might have had the best interests of the city at heart, but his policies were discriminatory and they lacked compassion for the people he was supposed to represent.

Alex: We’re about to run out of tape, so I think we’ll end it there. Charlie Kratovil and Martha Guarnieri, thanks for your time and good luck on Tuesday.

Charlie & Martha: Thank you.

Several weeks ago, the Johnsonville Press published an article exploring the “wards question” in New Brunswick, as it has been represented in the mainstream media. Later that week, we were contacted by New Brunswick City Spokesman Bill Bray, who took issue with the way the wards question had been represented in our article (which can be found here in full). He offered to meet with our staff to clarify the City’s position. To briefly recapitulate, the Wards question was raised in the summer of last year by the grassroots political organization Empower Our Neighborhoods (EON), a group seeking to change the form of municipal government in New Brunswick. Today, New Brunswick’s government operates under a Mayor-Council system, as laid out in the Faulkner Act of 1981. Under this system, the Mayor works with a five-member city council, elected from the city at large. EON has petitioned for the adoption of a ward-based electoral system, under which each city “ward”–or neighborhood–would be represented by a member of the municipal city council. Because it had not been adequately represented in the media to date, The Johnsonville Press sat down with Mr. Bray to get the city’s side of the story.

It is important to keep in mind from the beginning Bill Bray refused to comment on the political aspects of this issue; as a government spokesman, he focused on the legal matters surrounding the wards question. But he did express concern as to how the issue had been represented by the mainstream media to date: “Certainly not everyone is going to accept our point of view, but I think up until this point, the media has not understood our point of view.  They have failed to fairly or completely represent it,” he explained.

EON’s position and petition

Mr. Bray began by reviewing EON’s position, as the City understands it: “They began campaigning before they even circulated or submitted a petition for wards. Anything and everything they ever said was not only ‘we want wards,’ but it also attacked the at-large system, as being everything from racist, undemocratic, . . .  prone to corruption, the list goes on and on.”  As Mr. Bray and the City see it, EON seems to think that wards will fix the alleged structural problems with New Brunswick’s municipal government.  “Their campaign isn’t just that wards are better,” he said, “but that at-large is terrible, and that’s something very important to keep in mind.”

In April, the ward campaign got some press, and the members of EON became educated about New Brunswick city politics. From the beginning, many EON members didn’t fully understand the history of New Brunswick or its form of government, Mr. Bray said.  New Brunswick has been an at-large system since the early 1900’s, originally under the Walsh Act of 1915, but members of EON had been under the incorrect assumption that the City had switched to the at-large system in the 1970’s when the Faulkner Act was adopted. In the eyes of Mr. Bray, this constitutes a gross oversight and misconception on EON’s part, and illustrates their incomplete conception of New Brunswick’s long history.

EON submitted their initial petition on June 28, 2008 comprised of two questions.  According to Mr. Bray, the wording of the petition was based on a similar initiative that had been circulated in Edison twice in the past, in 2003 and 2007 respectively—a fact to which EON has freely admitted.   Mr. Bray explained the City’s interpretation of the petition as follows: “The proposal had two parts: switching to a ward-based council system and expanding the city council from five members to nine. [The petitioners] were under the incorrect assumption that both questions needed to be adopted, one that would adopt wards and one that would set the size of the governing body.  On their own admission, that was the assumption EON was operating under when they created their ward-based petition.  EON was under the assumption that you needed two questions to get rid of the evil, nasty, discriminatory at-large system and adopt the ward system, and they were wrong.  That has significant implications to the validity of the petition.  Legally, the two questions proposed by the city petitioners cannot be on the same petition.”

Mr. Bray elaborated on this crucial problem with the petition, arguing that the two questions actually conflicted with one another.  “What I mean by that,” he said, “is that they cannot both be adopted.  One establishes a 9-member council with wards.  The other establishes a 9-member council at large.  Under state law, whichever of these two questions gets the most votes is enacted.  Even if they both pass, the one with the most votes passes and the other question is rejected.”

In the City’s eyes, this posed a major problem to these questions being placed on the ballot. “You could have a situation where 500 people vote for wards, and 501 vote for the 9-member at large; the result would be no wards,” Bray said.  “Our question was, and the case law says, when you sign a petition, the signer must clearly understand what they’re being asked to sponsor.  Our position was that EON had got it wrong, because they based it upon [the Edison petition], which also got it wrong.  Because of this, they could not possibly have explained it to their supporters and signatories; [hence] none of the people who signed the petition could have understood what they were signing, so the petition was invalid.”

In addition, Mr. Bray said nearly a third of the signatories of the EON petition were not registered voters, making those signatures invalid, a point of oversight in the popular media’s representation of the wards issue. But in the end, the City held to its above stated position, that none of the signatures were valid. “There were multiple problems with that petition,” but in the end, “not a single signature was valid…which was not mentioned anywhere [in the media].”

The city rejected the petition on July 18th, and EON filed their appeal on August 5th.  At the trial, EON’s stated position was that their petition offered the voters of New Brunswick two alternatives.  “This was the biggest piece that was totally missed,” Bray stated.  Bill Bray found it odd that EON revised their position after the initial rejection of their petition. “EON is no longer all about wards, even though at-large systems are ‘evil and repressive’,” he said.

Mr. Bray next addressed the allegations from EON and the popular media that the City had used underhanded tactics in their rejection of the petition.  “If we were really duplicitous and corrupt, and trying to pull one over on EON, we would not have said anything about the petition, played the old shell game with them and got a couple hundred of our friends to tip the scales in favor of at-large, because then there’s a period of several years before you can petition to change it again. This was not a ward-based petition. This was a ward or our second option, a larger at-large petition.”

Bill Bray said he could understand how the petitioners made this mistake, as it was based upon an incomplete knowledge of the complex legal stipulations of the Faulkner Act. “If you have a ward system and you want to abandon it that is the only time you need two ballot questions,” he explained, “and that’s where they got tripped up.  They got it backwards.”  Under the law, only one question is needed to change the form of municipal government from an at-large system to a ward-based one.  The only situation that requires two ballot questions is when a ward-based system is being abandoned, in which case there needs to be a sub-question stipulating the number of council members on the at-large council.

In the initial stages of the ensuing trial, Judge Willis-Currier proposed that the misunderstanding be rectified by the inclusion of an interpretive statement on the ballot. The City objected, maintaining that “the time for certainty, to eliminate ambiguity, is not at the ballot box; it’s when [signatories] signed the petition.”  There was a group of people who did not know what they were signing, and so Judge Currier issued a stay, effectively eliminating EON’s chance of getting their question on the November 4, 2008 ballot.  Judge Currier also said that there was not enough time for the question to get on the ballot anyway.

The EON Petition vs. the Charter Study Commission

Mr. Bray next addressed the question of the charter study commission, a competing ordinance issued by the city council just two days after the submission of the wards petition. EON argued that because their petition was submitted first, the charter study commission ordinance had to be rejected. “If you don’t treat [the petition] as the introduction of an ordinance, which is how it functions, then the second it’s dropped off, it trumps any ordinances the city subsequently attempts to implement,” Mr. Bray said.  The City does not acknowledge petitions after they have been withdrawn, and now that the petition is gone, it’s as if it never existed because it was never certified.  Because of this, it is no longer representative of a pending change in the form of government.  “If we were to adopt EON’s argument, someone could submit a petition to kill every ordinance the city tried to pass before the public hearing on the ordinance,” Bray said, “Through an action of submitting and withdrawing petitions, you could effectively prevent the governing body from ever engaging in a charter study commission, even if the petition is later withdrawn or rejected, as this one was.”

But what does the charter study commission mean anyway? In this case, a commission of five directly elected individuals “will have nine months to look at all forms of government available to our municipality, through a series of hearings. Experts will be brought in, the public will be able to offer testimony, to sit in on their discussions, and then the commission will generate a report making a recommendation.  That recommendation could be any number of things: the recommendation could be no change, or it could be ‘we recommend adopting so and so form of government.’”  For Mr. Bray the question is, “do you only look at one form of government and vote it up or down, which then precludes later changes, regardless of the up or down vote, or do you look at all forms of government, and bring in more than just the committee of petitioners, [but] a larger diversity of questions to the issue?”

There was a charter study commission undertaken in the mid 1990’s which did not recommend any change—but Mr. Bray was quick to acknowledge that the City has grown in the past ten years.  There has been much more change and redevelopment since that time, when Mr. Bray was pursuing his undergraduate degree on the Banks.  “When I was a student at Rutgers, the students did not walk down George Street between Livingston Avenue and Commercial Avenue in the middle of the day.  Whether it was you, or twenty of your friends, you just didn’t do it.  I graduated in 1998, so you can see how far things have come in just that short a period.  It’s a completely different world.”

According to Mr. Bray, the only thing the City has said has been that now might be a good time to think about changing the form of government, and that they think a charter study commission is the best way to accomplish that. The implementation of a charter study commission would not preclude a recommendation of a wards-based system—or any other system for that matter—and to date, the City has taken no stance on which system should be adopted.

Are Wards Ideal?

There are several reasons to suspect that a wards-based system might not be the ideal, utopian form of government EON seems to purport it would be. For example Mr. Bray mentioned an early justification for the adoption of an at-large system in New Brunswick, made by previous lawmakers in the public domain. Back then, he said, the at large system was adopted as a means of unifying the city, in order to avoid certain neighborhoods bargaining with each other at the expense of smaller or weaker ones. It was hoped that by uniting the city under an at large system, political back scratching could be circumvented—or at least kept at a minimum.

Mr. Bray also mentioned Piscataway, where a wards system is currently in effect: “There are wards in Piscataway, and there are Rutgers students in Piscataway.  There has been no discussion about the impact of wards in Piscataway.  Do they help students? Do the students feel more empowered? Are they better represented?  Have any students run for city council in Piscataway? None of those questions have been asked and none of those questions have been answered.”

Mr. Bray also expressed doubt as to the degree to which EON’s supporters understood New Brunswick’s local government as a whole. “A lot of people who signed the petition are in dorms. A lot of them are new registrants, 18 or 19 years old. So the question is, the people who now want to change the form of government, how familiar could they be with the current form of government? How much knowledge could they have of New Brunswick…and our form of government? . . . The students, or anybody else that’s new to a community, don’t understand where we started from, or where we’re going.  So having the ability to talk about all forms of government and having an entire committee over a simple yes or no will give us more information about what we need, what we’re lacking, and how we can improve.”

Mr Bray proceeded to question why students feel underrepresented in New Brunswick’s municipal government. “[City Council President] Elizabeth Garlatti is a Rutgers graduate, Councilman Bob Recine is a Rutgers graduate… In terms of elected officials, department heads and things like that, there is a tremendous amount of Rutgers graduates [in New Brunswick city government] including myself.” Again, Mr. Bray is a Rutgers alumni from the class of ’98. In addition, the City has reached out to student organizations, for instance the Rutgers Democrats (who, as an aside, never responded to the City’s outreach). But, “the Mayor has regularly met with student leaders in the past”, and plans to continue to do so, although this has been more difficult in recent years owing to the campus and student government consolidation at Rutgers. “The City has responded to student requests and the vast majority of them—over 90%—have been approved. . . . We are always in a constant struggle to make ties and maintain ties with students.”

Mr. Bray also commented on some of the misconceptions established by EON’s campaign rhetoric, for example, that all city council members currently reside in one or two wards, at the expense of the other four or five neighborhoods. “Right now we have five members of the city council who live in four different wards,” a point which, if true, flies in the face of many of EON’s statements regarding elitist, patronage politics. Additionally, the wards, as they exist today, are merely vestigial remains from the alderman system which was in place in New Brunswick in the late 1800’s. Of course today, the populations and compositions of those wards have changed dramatically, and so if a wards system were adopted, the lines would have to be redrawn to provide for equal representation.

Not only does this redistricting pose a daunting administrative task, at great expense to the taxpayer, but it also shows that the ward with which a New Brunswick resident associates today could be changed if the ward-based system were to be implemented. As such, to associate yourself with the ward in which you live is to misunderstand how a ward-based system would represent you as a resident. On these grounds, Mr. Bray takes issue with the assumption that students would be better represented by the implementation of wards. After all, registered voters can currently vote for any member of the city council they see fit, regardless of their occupational status (provided they are registered to vote in New Brunswick).

“Can you cut New Brunswick up into six distinct neighborhoods?” Mr. Bray asked rhetorically.  “You probably can’t. But maybe you could; it’s just food for thought.  . . .  New Brunswick has always been a port of entry city. It’s the mix of people here that make this city distinct.” The constant flux and movement of people in, out and around the city would make it difficult to fairly implement a solid ward system. But, Mr. Bray still does not count out the possibility of a change, if such a recommendation was fairly proposed to the voters.

Conclusion

Like Bill Bray, the Johnsonville Press editorial board is not seeking to comment on the political nature of this argument. In fact, we stand divided on the issue at current time. That being the case, it is important to keep in mind that the contents of this article are strictly geared towards explicating the stance of the City of New Brunswick on this issue. All the ideas expressed herein are those of the City, and in no way reflect the opinions or beliefs of the Johnsonville Press. However, in keeping with the subjective bent of our publication, we would like to extend our thanks to Mr. Bray for his willingness to meet with us. Contrarily to the overbearing image of Bill Bray as suggested by the mainstream media, we found him to be a personable, understanding individual, whose arguments were both rational and informative. We hope our readers will keep in mind that there are two sides (often many more) to every story, and this one is no exception. Perhaps if both sides (EON and the City) can come to compromise in the future, this issue will be settled once and for all. But after all, if Mr. Bray is right, “in a couple of years, nobody on campus is going to remember this.”

]]> http://johnsonvillepress.com/a-conversation-with-bill-bray/feed/ 4 http://johnsonvillepress.com/new-brunswick-residents-unite-for-change-in-local-democratic-party-an-eon-press-release/ http://johnsonvillepress.com/new-brunswick-residents-unite-for-change-in-local-democratic-party-an-eon-press-release/#comments Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:42:56 +0000 Alex G http://johnsonvillepress.com/?p=236 NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ— Launching a bold grassroots electoral campaign of a magnitude not seen in decades, a diverse coalition of 50 New Brunswick residents hailing from all corners of the city filed petitions yesterday afternoon (Monday 4/6) to run for seats on the Middlesex County Democratic Committee in the upcoming June 2 election.

The candidates, running under the common slogan “Democrats for Change,” represent the full range of city neighborhoods in all five New Brunswick wards and include such notable residents as Thomas Peoples, leader of the Fourth Ward Crime Watch and Angela Salazar, 2002 New Brunswick High School valedictorian.

“Democrats for Change” candidates want each neighborhood to have representatives that will put the real-life concerns of their neighbors first on the city’s agenda.

Noting that current city leaders have grown aloof to the needs of residents and are unknown to most of the city, Thomas Peoples, candidate for committeeman for Ward 4, District 5 said: “There is no communication with the Councilpeople. They never come to the neighborhoods. The only way we can have change is if real people step up to represent that actually LIVE in all neighborhoods.”

Adam Gold, a Rutgers graduate and candidate for committeeman in Ward 6, District 6 added: “I just want people to be able to answer a simple question: Who is representing you?”

“Democrats for Change” plan to address citywide issues that impact all residents such as the lack of representation for many constituencies in the city (by supporting ward-based elections) and the need to improve the city’s schools and to make them more accountable (with an elected school board).  Additionally, candidates plan to tackle specific issues impacting their neighborhoods such as improving street cleaning, alleviating parking and transportation problems, offering greater access to affordable and safe housing, expanding and improving city parks, and providing activities and programs for local youth.

“I’m running because I am sick and tired of this city building new condominiums, apartments, and hotels when our schools are falling apart,” said Marge Kerber, member of the Second Ward Crime Watch and candidate for Ward 2, District 4. “I can’t imagine how much more money New Brunswick would have if, instead of providing tax abatements to those that have no ties to this city, they used the tax’ money from these projects to improve our schools.”

Added Brent Klokis, Rutgers graduate and candidate for committeeman for Ward 6, District 5: “We are about more than just downtown.”

The grassroots campaign for seats on the Democratic Party County Committee was initiated by Empower Our Neighborhoods (EON), the New Brunswick community organization that spent most of the past year organizing to return the city to a ward-based election system.  The campaign, still being fought in the courts in the face of stubborn opposition from City Hall, brought EON organizers in touch with thousands of residents.

William Simmons, candidate for committeeman for Ward 2, District 2 said, “This diverse group of men and women embody the spirit of the Obama Movement and the ‘Yes We Can’ attitude that brought change on the national level. Now, we want to bring that same change to the local government here.”

In November, EON organizers and volunteers helped bring thousands of voters to the polls where President Obama won New Brunswick in a landslide.  The “Democrats for Change” campaign is a natural next step for the community group and marks a unique opportunity because every seat on the committee is up for re-election June 2.

“We are in touch with the residents of our neighborhoods,” added Angela Salazar, candidate for committeewoman for Ward 4, District 4, “and they are not happy with the way the city is being run. We are ready to take back our city by any means necessary. Our nation was able to institute change in our federal government, now it is time to do the same in New Brunswick.”

Cedrick Goodman, a lifelong resident and candidate for committeeman in Ward 4, District 1 summed up the campaign: “The time has come for new leadership.”

There are 28 election districts in New Brunswick.  Each will elect a man and a woman from the district to the Democratic Party County Committee in the June 2 primary election.

LIST OF “DEMOCRATS FOR CHANGE” CANDIDATES

FOR DEMOCRATIC PARTY COUNTY COMMITTEE:

Ward 1, District 1: Nona Dempsey & Sam Romero

Ward 1, District 2: Ginile Weeks & Eddie Rodriguez

Ward 1, District 3: Danielle Stransky & Anthony Fuscaldo

Ward 1, District 4: Keisha Jordan & James Woodley

Ward 1, District 5: Olga Martinez-Sanchez & Cristhian Flores

Ward 1, District 6: Greg Davis

Ward 2, District 1: Lily Naha & James Mona

Ward 2, District 2: Kate Feeney & William Simmons

Ward 2, District 3: Caitlin Ferrer & Thomas McKeon

Ward 2, District 4: Marge Kerber & Michael Nazzaro

Ward 2, District 5: Barbara Cepeda & Jaimie Skinner

Ward 2, District 6: Carmen Azcona & Shaun Belton

Ward 2, District 7: Trudia Jones & Corpus Guante

Ward 4, District 1: Sharon Mitchell & Cedrick Goodman

Ward 4, District 2: Angela Porrespita-Jones & Charles Jones

Ward 4, District 3: Yolonda Baker & Jose Solano

Ward 4, District 4: Angela Salazar & Jim Walsh

Ward 4, District 5: Lyndel Myles & Thomas Peoples

Ward 5, District 1: Ruth Mercado & Ian Campbell

Ward 5, District 2: Amy Braunstein & Sean Monahan

Ward 6, District 1: Meredith Neely & Carmen Rao

Ward 6, District 2: Yelena Shvarts & David Harding

Ward 6, District 3: Stacy Milliman & Patrick Lee

Ward 6, District 4: Leor Tal & Michael Shanahan

Ward 6, District 5: Carolyn Selheim & Brent Klokis

Ward 6, District 6: Adam Gold

]]> http://johnsonvillepress.com/new-brunswick-residents-unite-for-change-in-local-democratic-party-an-eon-press-release/feed/ 0 http://johnsonvillepress.com/wards-wards-wards-a-sample-of-eons-ward-campaign-literature/ http://johnsonvillepress.com/wards-wards-wards-a-sample-of-eons-ward-campaign-literature/#comments Mon, 13 Apr 2009 06:21:48 +0000 Alex G http://johnsonvillepress.com/?p=234

The following is a content-copy of an Empower Our Neighborhoods brochure, designed for the propagation of EON’s position on the wards question. We have included it here, in the same issue as our conversation with New Brunswick City Spokesman Bill Bray, in order to juxtapose the two viewpoints. Hopefully, access to both sides will provide the reader with a clearer understanding of the issue as it is presented to the public.

EON

EMPOWER OUR NEIGHBORHOODS

Check out our website at:

EMPOWERNB.COM

Email any questions or comments to:

info@empowernb.com

Empower Our Neighborhoods

P.O. Box 3115

New Brunswick, NJ 08901

(908) 295-8909

THE WARD SYSTEM

THE RETURN OF CITIZEN POWER TO NEW BRUNSWICK

Sponsored by: EON

(Empower Our Neighborhoods)

Dear New Brunswick Resident,

We at Empower Our Neighborhoods would like to formally introduce you to the Ward System. Our goal at EON is to help you, the citizens of New Brunswick, regain your collective voice so that together we can make the city council a true government of the people.

The questions we will address in this pamphlet are:

• What is the Ward System?

• What is the current electoral system in New Brunswick?

• Why is the Ward system better for me and my community?

We hope that you are inspired by this pamphlet to join us. Please refer to the reverse side for our contact information.

Sincerely Yours,

The Members of Empower Our Neighborhoods

WHO IS EMPOWER OUR NEIGHBORHOODS?

Empower Our Neighborhoods [EON] was created in early 2008 by a diverse array of student activists, recent college graduates, and longtime members of the community.

EON seeks to restore democracy to New Brunswick to ensure that the Mayor and City Council truly represent the people of New Brunswick.

Our goal is to reform the way local elections are run in New Brunswick so that the people are fairly represented in the city government.

EON encourages the people of New Brunswick to become involved in this movement by:

· Attending city council meetings and speaking up about the issues in your neighborhood;

· Coming to our meetings to learn about the problems in New Brunswick;

· Talking to the people within your community to encourage awareness of the issues in your neighborhood;

For more details about how you can get Involved please see our contact information on the back.

WHAT IS THE CURRENT ELECTORAL SYSTEM IN NEW BRUNSWICK?

The city of New Brunswick elects the city council as well as other city officials by way of the At-Large System.

The At-Large System is:

· A city wide election process where the people elect the five city council members to represent the city as a whole.

· This system is ideal for smaller cities or large towns with a less diverse population.

Important Effects of the At-Large System:

· The members do not come from every part of New Brunswick, so only a portion of New Brunswick residents are represented;

· The people tend to be disconnected from their government;

· It is difficult to run for office in an at-large system because of the cost of campaigning throughout all of New Brunswick.

WHAT IS THE WARD SYSTEM?

A ward is a district, or neighborhood within a city.

Under the Ward System:

• Each ward in New Brunswick would elect a representative from their neighborhood to the City Council;

• There would be six representatives for the six wards in New Brunswick;

• In accordance with the law, there would be three representatives would be elected at-large to represent the city as a whole;

Important Effects of the Ward System:

• The issues from each ward would be addressed directly by the City Council and they would be more efficiently handled;

• Every neighborhood would be represented on the City Council;

• The people of New Brunswick would be more connected to the government;

• Because the ward representatives come from each neighborhood it will be easier to hold them accountable for their decisions;

WHY IS THE WARD SYSTEM BETTER FOR ME AND MY COMMUNITY?

The Ward System would be better for you and your community because:

• New Brunswick is already divided into wards for the purpose of:

- garbage and recycle collection;

- on-street parking;

- mail distribution;

• The representatives from each ward would be members of those communities so the people can talk to someone from their ward about their ward;

• Problems within each ward would more likely be solved because the issues would be at the forefront of the City Council agenda;

The Ward System gives the people of New Brunswick an opportunity to improve their communities and makes it easier to take care of the issues in each neighborhood.

We at EON hope that you found this pamphlet interesting and helpful. For more information or to get involved in this community movement please refer to our contact information on the reverse side.