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Video-Count: 2
Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=enRLEctzFlc
Video-2: youtube.com/watch?v=qVHGEU1MS7I

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--------- Okay, good morning everyone. We are on the record. Today is Monday, the 27th day of July in the year 2026. This is a budget hearing for the Department of Administration and Human Resources with the Jersey City Municipal Council. We had a scheduled

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10:00 a.m. start. The clock on my cell phone is showing 10:06 a.m. and we have a roll call for the commencement of this budget hearing. Councilperson Brooks. Councilperson Zuppa. >> Here. >> Councilperson Efros.

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>> Here. >> Councilperson Little. Is not here. Councilperson Gilmore. Not here. Councilperson Singh. >> Here. >> Councilperson Griffin. >> Here. >> Councilperson Lavarro. >> Here. >> And Council President Ridley.

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>> Here. >> We have six council members in attendance at 10:06 a.m. In addition to the sign-up it's preparation and notice of this meeting was similarly disseminated on Thursday, July 23rd, 2026 at 1:32 p.m. to the

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mayor, municipal council, business administrator, corporation council, and the local newspapers. So, I can certify our total compliance with the Sunshine Law. Council President, I'm going to turn it over to you. >> Good morning, everyone. Uh this is week two of our budget

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hearings and this morning we are starting with the Department of Administration. Uh thank you all for being here this morning. I'm just finding my notes. And as usual, we have a different uh

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councilperson chairing each of our sessions and this morning session will be led by Councilwoman Singh. So, I'm going to it over to Councilwoman Singh this morning. >> Thank you, Council President. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, uh

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uh and I'm very excited for this uh because this is we have a new director, uh Director Ruby Choi. And just so everybody knows, we have 19 employees. And uh

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with the BA, we have couple of other departments like um communication, utility, HR, IT, and uh internal audit, right? All right, over to you, uh Director Ruby Choi.

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>> Um Shawn, would you be able to put the presentation up? Up, perfect. Everybody can see? Great. All right. Well, um I've been sitting in on a lot of these uh budget hearings, and today is mine. Um before I start with the presentation,

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I just want to say um I started in May, and the last 3 months have been a real learning experience for me. I want to thank everyone for meeting with me, you know, the council, but also all the members of my team, and

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um heads of the various departments in Jersey City. Um thank you for everyone's patience as I asked a lot of questions to understand um history and background of how Jersey City is run. Um I've had many jobs in um

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uh larger city government, um with very complex environments, but I have to say by far, this has been the most challenging role that I've been in. Um and this is not just because of the the budget crisis, but also because of how

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meaningful this role is as business administrator where I directly have impact on how city government is run. Um so I really see this as a true opportunity for us to work together and move the city forward. So I appreciate

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the the teamwork and I'm really looking forward to the partnership. So with that, um I'm going to jump right in. Um So as the councilwoman said, we under the um Department of Administration run the

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day-to-day operations of city government. So that includes HR, IT, communications, internal audit, and all kinds of compliance, as well as the municipal court. Um we collaborate with all nine city departments,

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um and we ensure the implementation of citywide policies, initiatives, and manage the process of introducing legislation and other items to the city council for approval. Um so some stats, nine city departments that I as the BA coordinate, we have

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eight divisions and offices in the Business Administration Department, and then as a city um in totality, we have a total of 3,000-plus city staff. So just to articulate a little bit more this org structure cuz it's a little bit

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complicated um when we're talking about the business administrator versus the Department of Administration. So as business administrator, I oversee public safety, public works, health and human services, and infrastructure. Those are

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departments that have their own um budget hearing meetings, and we've been going through um the budget workbook and all the questions you have. So that's why I have also been helping answer some of those questions. Today's hearing is about the Department of Administration, which

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includes HR, IT, Communications, our office of diversity inclusion, our office of tax abatement and compliance, office of internal audit, the Municipal Court, and the public defender. The Municipal Court and Public Defender

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will have its own public hearing on Wednesday. So, ideally we can cover those questions in more detail on Wednesday. High-level, as business administrator, I oversee city-wide operations,

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but as the department head of Department of Administration, I also manage the internal government functions. And then, overarching, I coordinate all the implementation of city-wide policies and initiatives working with the other departments that may not be represented

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here in this org structure. So, just going into a little bit more detail about the Department of Administration, which each of those divisions and offices are represented in the budget workbooks that you saw for the Department of Administration.

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First, I'll say we have the director's office, which includes assistant BAs and other staff that help me supervise all the divisions under the Department of Administration and coordinate those city-wide policies and

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operations. We have a internal audit team. Actually, recently hired someone who started last week to focus on building out that performance management system, the city stat model, to track performance across

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departments. We also have an office of tax abatement and really contract compliance. This office has existed for a a of years, and they monitor state federal compliance on abatements, contracts, and construction

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related requirements. Um I have under me the director of human resources, um which is by far one of the largest divisions under Department of Administration. Um they oversee the um onboarding and

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hiring of our employees, but also benefits, pension, payroll of our 3,000 plus current and retired employees. Um communications unit is also under me. Um that includes emergency communications, anything that we put out

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on our website, social media, and public messaging. Um then we have the office of diversity inclusion. This is a team that focuses on our uh city contracts, ensuring that we have a focus on MWBE

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um vendors and contractors being part of our procurement um in the city. And then there's IT, um which is my um soft spot here. Um information technology oversees the city's IT infrastructure, network

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security, technical support, and application development. Um I have to say I was uh coming from uh working directly for a large city in IT, we had a ratio of one IT staff to 50

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employees in New York City. Here we have one IT staff to over 300 employees, so we're by comparison, you know, very short staffed in terms of IT support. Um And then um like I mentioned, municipal

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court and the municipal public defender, those two are also under the Department of Administration, but we have a separate hearing for them on Wednesday. So, what have we accomplished? Um a lot of these accomplishments, I'll say, happened before me coming on board,

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but we have a very big role in introducing and coordinating among our various departments the presentation of ordinance and resolutions at City Council meetings. So, that's the stat there,

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about 1,300 since January. And then in terms of service improvements, um we've created HR committees that meet weekly to streamline the review process for personnel transactions.

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That includes hiring and transfers and things like that, but also issues to discuss issues related to labor EEO and the equal pay complaints. Separately, we are also beginning to reorganize our

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internal audit. Like I mentioned, we're trying to create an a city stat model, accountability model, and restructure HR to um support our city employees. So, some of the things some of the

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impact that we are delivering I spoke a little bit about IT. One of the things that we've initiated initiated is the consolidation of public safety IT with the rest of the city. And here we've started to look at cost

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savings and efficiencies by consolidating those two offices. We've also created an integrated management plan for IT users and so forth, looking at their software utilization as well as the infrastructure that supports them.

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We're starting to work on our contract tracking. I think I mentioned this a couple of times in our City Council meetings. Really trying to understand when contracts are set to expire so we can get ahead of those renewals and approvals.

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Um, separately, we're we've also launched a a citywide immigration enforcement interaction training for our staff. Um, we've launched this a couple of weeks ago, and I have to [clears throat] say we've done we've made a lot of progress in um getting

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training for the staff about I don't want to say 75% have completed that training. Um, we're also reviewing all city fees revenue to modernize and maximize our collections. Um, we're updating the city's payroll

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tax collection efforts alongside finance. Um, we're also modernizing the city's uh website for transparency and public access. And then, um most recently, we instituted remote work pilot policy um to stay competitive and hopefully

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support work-life balance. This is the proposed budget. Um, it corresponds to the budget workbook. We have um about 13.6 million in personnel and 3.6 million in other expenses. This total proposed

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budget of 17.3 million. So, just to break it down further, um this chart represents the um proposed budget for each of the divisions that I talked about earlier. Um, I want to call out the most

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significant difference in terms of comparing our 2026 proposed budget to the adopted 2025 budget. This is in IT in particular. Um, just like a couple of other departments that have presented, there were certain things in the capital

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budget um in 2025 that really should have been represented in the operating budget for IT. These were um a total of 1.8 million in contractual expenses for maintenance of software subscriptions, storage systems, and

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other standard tools that really should have been captured in the operating expenses and not capital. So, adjusting for that, um, we have an IT actually a decrease in the, um, proposed 2026 budget and then

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overall for the BA's office, a decrease of about 7% um, in our proposed budget. Happy to go into more detail division by division. So, what we've cut already, um, in personnel, we've cut about $600,000,

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uh, eliminated eight full-time staff, one part-time, and three seasonal positions. Um, and then in terms of programming, uh, cut about 450,000. We ended the, um, employee, um, uh, bike share passes that we had. We

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also cut some professional services, uh, dues and subscriptions, and other related training items. And then in on the contract side, we ended, uh, sorry, we cut, um, $550,000. We ended the vital check wellness

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contract. This was our in-house employee wellness program. Um, we also removed some redundant, um, services, um, that the law department now provides any AO and legal services. Looking ahead, um, on the revenue, new

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revenue, and cost savings ideas, um, um, working closely with IT to consolidate our IT contracts and cut duplicative services. Um, this is related to Verizon phone software, uh, that we pay for. We're also collaborating with all departments

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to track all cost savings and revenue initiatives. This is a big um uh initiative that I have dedicated a number of the BA staff to focus on in the next year, especially as we're compiling the 2027 budget.

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Um and then launching a city stat dashboard that hopefully helps us compare those cost savings and revenue collection with service delivery, which is really important and that's the data that we're lacking right now. In the second budget um under grants and

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external funding, we're starting to look at all of our grants and um try in our new grants to restructure it to recover administrative and fringe costs, offsetting some of our our responsibilities across IT, HR, and administration.

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And then on the delivery of services, um we're looking for new ways um to deliver services um both internally and externally. Internally, we're modernizing our IT infrastructure is a big big focus of ours um

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and integrating those various data systems in order to uh to glean the data we need to support the city stat model, but also to improve service delivery. Um I mentioned that we're looking to redesign the city website for better

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transparency and public access to information. And then um we are also updating our HR policies, focusing on improving recruitment and professional development. It's the end of my presentation and I welcome any questions from the council.

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>> Council, before you move on, I just wanted to record Councilperson Little at 10:09 a.m. so we now have seven council members present. I didn't see you. What time did you enter, Councilperson Gilmore? That doesn't help me.

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10:05 a.m. So, we now have eight council members present. Thank you. >> Thank you, director. different As we have different division and different offices, so I will ask my colleagues to ask three line item

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questions. And then hopefully we'll have 1 hour to ask general questions. Um So, I am starting first question. Director Choi on business administration, can you please explain

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professional services item number three, line item number 312? What are the professional services we are paying for? >> Which division is this reference to? Director >> division Business administration. Yes, I

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administration's office, sorry. >> Um Councilwoman chair, um are we doing it by each sheet? So, we're doing like administrator's office first? >> I think because we have multiple offices and divisions, we can start with BA.

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And then uh we'll move forward to communication and utility. >> Okay. Okay. Just checking. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> So, under the the administrator's office, right? And you're asking for line item

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>> 312 professional services >> Got it. >> administrator's office >> Yes, so this has been removed. >> Okay. Councilwoman Little, do you want to start for line item, please? >> The benefits uh

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and job benefits are >> Yes. Um Do you want Are you ready or >> Yes. She's ready. I I just have one remaining question. My one of my questions was what you just asked. Another was answered during the presentation. So my remaining question for the administrator's office

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um can you explain the difference So there are two assistant BA positions and one deputy municipal administrator position in salaries and wages line item 101. Can you explain the difference between the

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two assistant business administrator positions and the one deputy municipal administrator position? Can you explain each of them what their what their job function entails and and are there any redundancies there? >> Yeah, of course. >> Thank you.

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>> Um so I think I uh in the org chart I described the BA assistant administrator oversees a lot of different things. Um there's the Department of Administration, right? Which I I describe it as our internal government functions that we oversee.

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But then there's also other departments that roll up to the BA's office such as public safety, public works, um infrastructure, and health and human services. So between the two assistant BAs, their delegation

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of responsibilities are around both the um internal facing divisions that we need to supervise and ensure the day-to-day runnings, but also the other departments that have direct city uh provide city services. Um it's it's

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quite a lot, right? Um every day we have um an emergency HVAC breaks or um an item that needs to be moved forward for city council approval. So I really rely on the assistant BAs to help support that, as

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well as driving new initiatives that are coming out of this office. Um the deputy uh municipal administrator, as you all know, um had formally been the acting BA, and I really lean on him for all the institutional knowledge of

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um how the BA's office functions. Um Uh his primary role has been to introduce items to the city council, um but he also manages a lot of the new initiatives like the fees that we're looking at, the revenue projects that

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we're generating um more revenue to Jersey City. So, he serves as both like a great institutional knowledge for me, but also drives a lot of the um items that we present to the city council and the new projects that we're

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initiating. >> Uh wait you're finished, Elena? >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> Um thank you uh presentation. Um there's a couple uh accounting questions here. Uh

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in um as administrator, your your line item for uh your salary, is this going to be prorated um based on your start date in May, and then similarly would Peter's um

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be prorated based on his tenure as acting uh BA and now um deputy municipal administrator? >> That's correct. It's it's been prorated for the 2026 budget. >> Right. And so, that's just not reflected

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in our workbook yet. Um so, if if we can just mark that down as uh something to update to make sure that's accurate in the workbook, that'd be helpful. >> Yeah. >> Thank you so much. Um I'll pass it along. >> Uh so, looking at this old shot for the

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administrator's office. So John Mercer is they're going that person is gone, correct? >> Correct. >> So we have Kevin Lyons assistant business administrator.

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Greg Rado assistant business administrator and then deputy business administrator. Can you explain and I think it's here but just to get clarity um >> [clears throat]

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>> says the deputy administrator's salary went from one it was requested 144 was requested subsequently 200 was drafted. You can explain the differential for the 59

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or 50 55,000 800. It says something to the tune of and validate in a position. >> Yes, so Peter was previously the assistant business administrator.

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He became he promote he was promoted to be the deputy municipal administrator. So that is why there's a change in his salary. His roles and responsibilities have grown since um I I will say last year 2025 when he was

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still an assistant business administrator. >> So just for like the lamest person that's watching I briefly heard you explain to some degree the difference between

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uh the work that Peter's doing the work that Greg's doing. Um but if you can elaborate a little more because for me when I'm looking at a old shot and I'm seeing the exact same position

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um as it relates to functionalities and then the salary um it it's a little I'm taking a little aback. >> Mhm. >> So, if you can further explain the

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difference in duties and although we appreciate Peter's institutional knowledge um one should not be just compensated just for institutional knowledge. >> Okay. Um so, yes, I'm happy to explain it

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further. The The business administration function is similar to a equated to a COO position of um of a company, right? We're a company of um revenue and

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um budget of $800,000. The COO department of a company of that size is a tremendous responsibility, right? We oversee huge departments, public safety, health and human services, public works.

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And there are directors who manage the day-to-day, but there's a lot of coordination between the various departments. So, coordinating with finance, coordinating with the law department, coordinating with um

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um our maintenance of the buildings. That is what I rely the assistant BAs to do to help me manage the day-to-day functions of those very, very important departments in coordinating them with the various departments outside of them,

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right? The deputy um administrator municipal administrator is focused primarily on moving things through for approval in city council, right? Peter's

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here in every meeting. He's the one who knows every item that is on the agenda, which involves in part working with the different departments that are presenting items to the council, but also a lot of back-end work in terms of getting it ready to be presented. So, I

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did say institutional knowledge because that's a lot to catch up on, but also he performs that main function of introducing legislation to be approved by the council. >> Okay. Um Well, moving moving along, if you can

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differentiate your So, I just want to make sure I'm understanding this correct. So, cuz you use the analogy of of a big corporation as CEO, CFO, and COO, and all of that stuff. Um so, if

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you can briefly talk about your functionality as it relates to it and as it relates to different from the assistant business administrator and the deputy uh administrator. >> Okay. Um So, as business administrator,

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I would equate myself as a COO. So, I am in charge of all of these operations. I'm the one responsible for all the decisions that are made in the business administrator's office. I rely on my assistant BAs and deputy to

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move things on a day-to-day basis. Um I give them direction. We have regular meetings. I have a lots of tracking sheets to track the work we're doing. Um so, internally they work on managing

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the different divisions and offices and departments that roll up to the business administrator's office. Um and then for me, things get escalated for whatever reason, they're not moving or there's a policy decision that needs to be made.

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Um I either make that decision or I present it forward to to senior cabinet team including the mayor, to have discussions on how we move forward on that on that decision. >> [clears throat] >> So, that is my role. >> This

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This I just think that there's a a lot of top-heavy um executive and administrators uh at the top. Um Let's see. Well, the next one is um for

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communications. So, I think that's That's all my all my questions for now as it relates to that. Um >> So, Mr. President, >> Question for you're creating a new position,

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um secretary, but it doesn't look like it's being accounted for in the um on the workbook in the total. >> So, the administrator's office secretary >> Yes. >> So, that's actually an error. Um

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as we were going through the mayor's office workbook, that should be reflected under the mayor's office. So, that is being changed and we'll be sending that forward today for the council. >> Small question. >> Um yes, so um we have multiple um assistant business

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administrators. Uh can can we just know the differences in their roles? >> So, I um I've described that they perform a function of liaising with the various departments, divisions, and offices under the BA's office. Um I have a tracking sheet of all the

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projects that they're assigned to, work directly with the departments, divisions on. So, I'm happy to share that with the council um to delineate the work that they do. Um, they're also responsible for any day-to-day requests or

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emergencies that pop up. And between the two BAs, assistant BAs, um, based on the projects they're working on, I may assign some things directly to one versus another based on their background and expertise. >> Okay, so there's no duplication in

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services. >> No. >> Okay, thank you. >> Morning. Um, change topics for a second. Uh, I In [clears throat] your Excuse me, your workbook, there's the diversity and inclusion department. W- W- What specific projects are they

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working on? >> So, the diversity and inclusion office is led by, um, uh, Director Floyd Jeter. >> Director Jeter, great guy. There he is in the back. Yeah, just >> He is here. Um, so he, um, helps promote, um, in the

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MWBE business community all the contracts and work that the city, um, is putting forward in terms of requests for promo- proposals. Um, so he plays a very big role in supporting those events and, um, pushing out

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information whenever the city is looking to procure, uh, professional services or goods. >> Okay, and and w- what about the his staff members, the the other three people in that department? >> So, he runs a really lean shop. Um, his

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staff members are, uh, they perform administrative functions to help him prepare for those events, push out information, response to respond to inquiries from businesses, um, and also liaises a lot with our procurement team, which is under the

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finance department, um, to review, uh, when departments are putting forward those proposals to ensure that they have a MWBE goal and are recruiting from those communities. >> Okay, so it's to assist with

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when we get proposals that were accurately reflecting the diversity of our city? >> Correct. >> Is there any uh Let me ask a different question. Uh which member of your office was responsible for responding to council

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requests for information? >> It's a great question. I would say every member of my staff. >> [laughter] >> Um but I do lean a lot on our assistant BAs um to track that information and follow up with departments.

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>> Okay, and and then uh You had asked You were asked a bunch of questions about um the difference between a deputy and an assistant BA. When was the deputy position made when when was Peter promoted? >> He was promoted in June. >> Of 2026, this year?

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>> Correct. >> And it was determined to give him the the raise in June as well, the 50 the 56,000? >> Correct. >> Next. Is there Now, obviously every department we have in the city has a director. And some of them have several directors

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division directors. So, is it fair to say that the assistant BAs are liaisons to the directors? >> That's correct. >> And they report to the deputy who then reports to >> That's correct. >> Thank you.

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>> Well, hi everyone. Thank you all for being here. Um as I've said in past hearings um this is not singling anyone out or anything like that. I'm just uh um committed to to finding reductions

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um so that we you uh be able to better um reduce the tax rate and hope of providing some relief to taxpayers, however little or more big we can get. So, um I just want to reiterate what

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Councilman Afro said about uh pro-rating. Um so, there were two positions, I believe, that to be pro-rated that are in the director's office. That's obviously yourself as the uh business administrator, and then there's a

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um What's that? >> The deputy. >> The program analyst, right? Or or is El is Elgal Fergali is is that salary amount included in there or is it uh as part of

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I I I'm guessing he retired. I don't know that for a fact. Um if you could just elaborate on that, and whether that needs to be pro-rated as a position. >> Yeah, that person um had left uh before I came on board, and so yes, we should

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be reflecting the pro-rated uh amount on the worksheet. >> Okay. Um I know you addressed to to Councilman Gilmore um the deputy municipal administrator's um salary uh bump uh

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substantial bump of 55,800 for this year. Can you um Why was that not handled as an acting cost? Which has been showing up in some of our other budgets. Um >> He is assuming that role

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permanently, so it's not an acting non-an-acting role. He was promoted into a deputy municipal administrator role. >> I see. Um Okay. Um moving along um um

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just want to There's a grant offset. Can you speak to that? The apprenticeship program? >> I believe that program um existed in 2025. It's no longer um being run. >> Okay, so there is no grant offset. It's It was just in '25.

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>> Yeah. >> Okay. >> [snorts] >> Um moving down to uh to the office of diversity and inclusion uh I I have two program specialist two with the same title, wildly varying

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um disparity in salaries there. Could you just speak to that? >> Um I'm happy to provide more information afterwards, but there different roles and responsibilities for those two employees. Um and they're also um

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have different start dates with the city and different um uh background and experience that often leads to differences in the the salaries of folks with the same civil service title. >> Okay. I mean, you just get to

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sort of get clarity on that. Um I I I want to turn if I may, I'm not sure, staying with the director's office to the um 200 and 300 account numbers under other expenses. May I do that or >> Oh. >> or

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>> Are you asking administrator's office >> The director's office. Uh the line items 201. >> Yes, please. >> Um Well, for 201 much with me. Um So, I see the administration reduced

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that amount um cut it in half. Um which makes sense. Um the the current expense monthly spend is is down on this um

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to date $669. Um I'm just going to point these out because I will um look to propose some amendments around this to reduce these amounts, but uh I last year you spent over $4,100. So, um

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I I can imagine that there's probably some more office supplies still to buy, um but we'd like to just put that on the record record and then we can certainly discuss that later. Similarly, printing supplies um last year I spent over $3,000. Uh again, administration mayor cut it in

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half to 3,000. Year-to-date, the expenditure is $329 as of July 21st. And then um the recreation and educational materials, again cut in half. Um and these are all I'm I want to acknowledge the administration for

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making those reductions, recognizing how much was spent in the past, um but to date $0 are spent out of that. Um Similarly, printing and advertising 305. And uh um [snorts] membership and subscriptions

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um looking at similar types of uh um reductions there. Potentially. >> Oh. >> That That concludes my >> Hold on. I do uh as it relates to the

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um line item 305, printing and advertisement what what Can you speak a little to that? I mean, cuz we have a printing shop in-house. You can't hear me, Shawn? We have a printing shop in-house, so I'm

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confused. Um well, first of all, what exactly are we printing and advertising? >> Um so, I mentioned the Office of Diversity and Inclusion does a lot of promotions. Um so, there's printing for those events. Um and um

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that is where the printing and advertisement cost comes from. >> I mean, we we have the the ability to print in-house. Have you guys looked into that? Cuz I know when DPW, they have a they have a print shop. They make banners,

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signs, all type of things. So, if we can um if we can look just to see if the capacity is there, um so, that way we could potentially have it done in-house. Um also, as it relates to diversity and equity,

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um do you envision embarking on a journey um as it relates to Are you familiar with the Croson study? >> I'm sorry, say that one more time. >> Are you familiar with the Croson study? >> No. >> Okay.

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Um uh I guess we'll have a separate conversation about that. Um to bring you up to date on that, because we really want to make sure we're in the business of making sure that everyone have the opportunity to business with the city. >> Right.

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>> Um Dr. G have done a great job in his capacity as it relates to that office. Um but, I would like to see more locals more minority vendors partner with the city to have opportunity.

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And if you could just talk about the what membership what memberships and subscriptions they are. >> Um so, some of these memberships are um affiliated with business administrators uh in New Jersey. So, for example,

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I'm joining the League of Business Administrators. I don't know if I got the name right. But, it helps with, um, sharing of knowledge among New Jersey, um, uh, other cities that face, you know, similar challenges and problems. Um, so,

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some of those, uh, membership dues are related to joining those affiliations. >> Councilwoman, I just, uh, had a quick question I forgot to ask. Thank you. Um, in the Abatement and Compensation area office, um,

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sub-office, uh, could you speak to, um, how typical it is to have this kind of size staff for the workload of the Abatement, um, and Compliance workload that we we need as a city. We have two

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coordinator, uh, coordinators of Monitoring and Evaluation. We have a clerk, a senior community relations specialist, and a supervising administrative analyst. >> Yeah, um, just to give you some stats on what the team is working on right now.

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Um, so, this is the Office of Tax Abatement and, um, Compliance. This includes public, uh, all public contracts, basically. Um, and they've been in existence for the 11 years. Um,

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so, they have currently, um, in their queue monitoring 130 tax abatement, [clears throat] um, post-construction contract applications, applications, and about seven active tax abatement projects, and 21 public

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contract construction projects, with three pending for commencement. So, this a a tremendous workload for a small team, um, and they work closely with, um, HEDC, who you'll hear about this afternoon, as well as our procurement

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team under finance. >> Thank [clears throat] you. And then could you speak to we have an audit abatements that is hopefully going to be published very soon and hopefully it's going to be completed very soon. What role does this group and this team

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play with that kind of audit and just talk about the relationship of the work they've been doing for the past decade or so that they've been a team and then the situation that we're in where we're now having to pay back and review

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the compliance of all of these audits or all these abatements. >> Yeah. So I I think you'll hear more about the the audit this afternoon with HEDC but this team works very closely with them in terms of compiling the the data and the

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information. Each of these contracts can imagine are hundreds and hundreds of documents and so this office serves as both record keeping but also is for all the active contracts

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working directly with procurement to ensure that contractors are in compliance and any issues that they see they're reporting back to the relevant departments. So that is the role that they play. >> And just lastly I'm sorry. Thank you.

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Organizationally this fits into the administrator's office or administrator as opposed to in finance or as opposed to an HEDC because of the outstanding procurement work that's done or or what kind of

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organizationally does it belong here? >> I can't speak to the history of how it ended up under the business administrator's office maybe some some of you guys may know. I I see their role as equivalent to the internal audit team, right? Like you're

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um independently reviewing these contracts um outside of the departments that may be managing those contracts. Um similar to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, right? They're ensuring that there's MWBE representation in the procurement. So, it's an outside group

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that's doing that. Um procurement lives in finance. Um so, that's uh separate and apart from the BA's office. >> No. No. No. No. Need your mic. You need a mic. >> Yeah, I think that's good. We're good. >> [laughter]

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>> Thank you. >> Direct >> go to her directly. Uh as we have just 1 hour left for other divisions and offices. Uh but before we do it, one more question about professional services eliminated. Can you please talk about

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what are the professional services that those are eliminated? >> So, um this is still the administrator's office. Um my understanding is that was for a um um a stipend for a board position

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previously in 2025. That's no longer needed. >> All right, we can start with communication. So, before we do it, uh Director Choi, can you please talk about what is the communication office responsible for?

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>> So, the communications office is responsible for all public information from Jersey City government. Um a majority of it is emergency communication, right? So, they're coordinating with the Department of Public Safety for any emergency alerts

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that we put out. Um they also put out public information through our website. Um all the programming that you see um in this administration, there's also been a strong focus on other channels of communication such as social media with

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Facebook and Instagram. So that is the communications responsibilities. >> All right. Thank you. So my understanding is that the communications director reports directly to the mayor's office. Is that an

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accurate understanding or do does it report to you? >> So Nathaniel sits in the mayor's office because of the um urgency of some of these communications needing to be reviewed by the mayor's office

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before they go out. But the oversight of this office in this unit belongs under and is under the business administrator's office. >> Okay, thank you. Um I'm also interested in learning more about the media technician that was

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transferred to IT. Will they still be performing the same roles and responsibilities and this position just fits better under IT or what did this did this individual just accept a different position and um and did this particular role was no

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longer needed for for the comms related aspects? >> Yeah, this particular role works on the management of our city's website. Um and then I mentioned that the city's website is currently being redesigned. So we're working closely with IT to

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redesign that website so it makes more sense for it to be under the IT division. >> Okay, thank you. Um So and then I also noticed that the 2025

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budget included $80,000 for dues and dues and subscriptions line item 306 and $10,000 for professional services line item 312. And these were both cut in the 2026 budget and the justification

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comments columns says city comes budget unclassified. Can you can you explain what that means? >> Yeah, so a lot of these dues and subscriptions and professional services were not just for the BAs office, but it's for the

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whole city. So it's been moved to a central account and it's actually a tab in the workbook. That was shared labeled unclassified communications. So this is how we account for all

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centralized communication uh budget items. >> Can you explain what unclassified means in this context? >> I'm I'm not sure the history of how this is named. Um finance

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No. I can get back to you. I don't know why it's called unclassified. >> Okay. All right, thank you. >> Director Troy, is that okay if you stay back for 10 minutes as Councilman Gilmore has couple of questions for you

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about administrator's office? >> Yeah. >> Is that okay Councilman you ask after 12? >> Yeah, I'll ask after >> Okay. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Um I'll start by saying I think it's it can

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be easy to look at an outside perspective you can look at communications and um say it's frivolous but no communications is really important to make sure that the public is getting transparent information about what's going on

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inside City Hall and that there's really not just reactive but proactive communication between the administration and the public but also to to us on on Council. So I appreciate that we have a communications department with a lot of

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strong staff. Just a couple questions to dig into what kind of work is is going on though. So one uh we have Megan Malloy as a public information officer. Um I don't believe she was hired at the

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beginning of the year and so could we just make sure that that prorated salary is also updated? Um because on the workbook it is 135,000 for the entire year when I believe this position came on

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uh maybe in the spring. Is that right? >> Yeah. We can we can reflect the prorated amount. >> Thank you. Um next week we have uh herself and then um Stanley Easton is the two public information officers.

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Um could you just describe nature of having two public information officers? Uh we have these two positions as a kind of senior staff of the office alongside or underneath the communications director Nathaniel Steyer. So we just [clears throat] what

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is the different kind of public information work that each of these roles does? >> So um there are there are a couple of things as you see in multiple department workbooks the civil service title may be

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the same but the job and responsibility of the individual employee may be different. Um so just because the civil service title is the same doesn't necessarily mean they're um performing the same duties. They may be delegating the work separately.

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Um, and so there is another public information officer in this office, um, and it was made through savings in the BAs budget. And we hired this digital director to help lead the expansion of the city's online presence. So those are

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the new channels that I mentioned earlier, um, Facebook, Instagram, and um, um, there's been significant stats in terms of number of people who have been reached through those new channels. >> And the

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um, the more senior public information officer, what is the the role, um, that they play relative to setting aside the digital work and relative to, um, Nathaniel leading the office?

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>> So there's this is a small communications team for a large city government. So there's not just one person who's doing all the work where, just like I was describing the assistant BAs, there's a delegation of

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work between the public information officers among the various departments. For example, you have a public officer liaising with public safety at all times, right? Putting out information, emergency communication. We also have a lot of other communication being put out

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by health and human services, by public works. So the workload is um, divided and delegated among the team. >> Okay. Yeah, I think I I understand there's a a long list of information requests, um, that we're making here,

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but it would be helpful to to get just job descriptions, uh, for these different roles. Um, I understand that things are complicated, there's coordination among different departments and different divisions, uh, but making sure that again we can always go back to constituents and

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communicate ourselves. This is what each of these roles, um especially in such senior positions, are are doing and are responsible for, especially when the civil service titles in some cases obfuscate the differences in their responsibilities. Um and just then just lastly here,

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uh curious how the decisions came about to have the communications director of this office um have a slightly lower salary than the the deputy director and um public information officer and then the

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other public information officer who's the digital coordinator, it looks like. Um >> Can you repeat the the titles again? >> Uh so the communications director um of the office makes a slightly lower salary um 130,000

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than the two public information officers who look sounds like they respectively serve as deputy director and as digital communications director who are making 133,538 and 135.

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>> Yeah, I think one of um the more senior public information officer has been working in city government um and so there is a uh um you know, experience um and background that contributes to that salary. And then the

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one that was recently hired, um she's highly qualified for that role um and we really believe in hiring people with that talent and measure commen- commencing that with the salary that we we think we should be offering.

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Um and so that is why her salary is that. Um and as for the communications director, um I believe uh he came on early in the administration Um and so I think those conversations were aligned with the budget

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conversations of that time. >> Okay, thank you. All your mind time. I'm a little confused because when I see um communications director salary is lower than a public information

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officer. It's a little perplexing but moving past that if you know director uh previously how many public informations officers we had? >> Um I don't have the information for

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that. Um I can get back to you. Meaning in 2025 or >> Yeah, cuz I mean I think I know the ans- I mean of for all I mean

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I think Stan was the only one um as the public relation I mean the public information officer. Um so my question in that because I'm just trying to understand um if you can speak a little more to the

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responsibilities of public information officer um Megan if you could speak more to like what what is her role? What is exactly what does that she do? >> So she focuses on all the digital media

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work that we push out. So that's the website Facebook, Instagram all those digital channels of promoting the work of Jersey City but also emergency communications. And that has increased tremendously as

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our um vehicle for getting information out to the public. Um and uh the other public information um officer who also works on proclamations and other municipal communications

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um that are, you know, working with the clerk's office and other um traditional formats of communication. >> I just briefly want to focus just on the recent hires. So, our primary function is

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social media and updates on the city website. Am I hearing that correct? >> All public-facing digital communication. So, she also liaises with the various departments that have their own, you

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know, channels of communication. Um again, I I find it very surprising coming from a large city how small this team is and how much it takes on in terms of the amount of work it pushes out um

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very quickly often and needing to stay coordinated with the various departments. So, these two public information officers not only pushes out information that is the BA's office or the mayor's office, but also all the other information for the other departments.

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>> But, these other departments have a mechanism to get the information out. Like, I've seen H's website. I've seen recreation website. They have a means of communicating.

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So, I'm just trying to really understand like the the importance's um and this is not to diminish anyone. I don't I don't know the young lady personally. Um I'm just saying, you know, when we are combing through these budgets, right?

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Everyone know that the city is a in a financial crisis. So these are the questions constituents are going to want answers to when they see us in a grocery store, wherever they may see us, right? We're going to be have to articulate and

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explain why we have two public public information officers. And I just want to make sure one that I'm able to articulate it and two more importantly, I just want to make sure that the salary

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suffice the functionalities of the job description. And right now I'm hearing social media and city website. >> That's correct. >> She manages all the new department accounts that you're seeing coming from social media. Previously, there was no

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coordination among the departments. So that is the role that she plays. >> So when you say previously there was no coordination with specific Give me examples, like specific examples. So previously there was no coordination in this area and currently the coordination

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is here. >> Correct. >> How do how in in in any way how does that helps? Like how does that help the city? >> So for example, if there's some information being pushed out by public safety but the Department

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of Recreation does not know and it would impact their operations and their way of communication communicating out to the public then that is being coordinated through a central office. With this person, the public information

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officer, ensuring that the information being put out by the departments are consistent and aligned. >> Previously, there was no infrastructure to get information from public safety to recreation is your position.

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>> Correct. Through social media, no. >> I disagree. Um, I think that while there wasn't great communication, I think that there were some communication around around the board, although it may have been a

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lapse or lag in it. Um, and I honestly I don't know, man. I I I just I just think given the financial constraints, man, I just I I don't know. I don't see the value in this position. That's

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I don't see it. I don't I don't see it. >> You mean the position, not the person, just to be clear. >> Yes. Yes, definitely. I don't again, I don't know the young It's a It is a young lady Yeah, I don't know the young lady. I'm just saying specifically based on the

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functionalities of what this individual is doing, I don't think it warrants 135,000. Um, and again, I don't even know how this position trumps the communication director.

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Um, and the deputy director for that matter. Um, so for me, this is I mean, it it it raised a red flag for me. Um. >> Okay. Um, can we get and I don't know if this was asked for in a previous session, but can we get an

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updated um, employee list for the city because I know in some of the previous presentations, there were some new hires that came in after we got the the workbook. Um, for some of the other divisions. And

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I want to make sure that we're capturing everything because I think there might have been some new hires also under administration since we got the workbooks. So, I just want to make sure the council has all of the accurate information. So, if we can get an updated list when you get a chance.

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>> Yeah, we can provide an active active active employee list for the whole city. Um I have to say that the new hires for administration is reflected in the workbooks. >> Okay, because I have and I don't know how accurate it is because I don't see

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it here and I don't see it in the last employee list that we had, but I have a super supervising admin analyst for the director's office. So, I don't know if that is accurate or not. So, I just want to check the

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records, but it was for 120,000, but I don't see it reflected in the workbook. And it should be under the administrator's office. At least I think it would be. So, I'll verify that with you after. Um >> Okay.

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>> But in communications, can you speak to the difference between line item 203 and 407? 203, we have photographic supplies and 407, we have photographic equipment. What is the

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distinction between those two lines? >> Um so, equipment um I'll just pull that up quickly. Believe the equipment is um for cameras. But I can double check that. And the supplies would be um

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anything in terms of maintaining the the equipment that we have. >> Okay. >> The photographic equipment that we have currently. >> Let's go piggyback. >> Go ahead. >> Piggyback. >> Um thank you. So, I noticed so photographic supplies it zero

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or or no, sorry. Um I'm reading this wrong. Never mind. Piggyback revoked. >> [laughter] >> Very quick question about uh Councilman Gilmore's points. I got it in my mind, but it's is it

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possible to consolidate all the communication departments in terms of recreation, health department, mayor's office. >> And that that is the consolidation. I think that um I think there's

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confusion amongst the council because we're saying that's the consolidation, but we have um public uh information officers or communication directors in other departments. So, if we're consolidating, then why

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aren't all those people under communications? Like for instance, public safety has their own information person. Um I don't know which other departments off the top of my head. Why aren't all those people under communications if we're consolidating? >> Yeah, I think public safety is the

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largest one where we need a public information officer given the um amount of activity that is happening under police and fire. No other department should have a public information officer or at least playing that role. There may

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have been historical um staff who are there, but the consolidation is under communications in the BIS office. >> So, you are saying uh HHS do not have

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any communication person now? These directors are >> There may be liaisons that we work with because we don't have the subject matter expertise of every department. So, there may be communication staff in those departments that we liaise with to

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ensure that we have um we're putting out correct information. >> And then my last question is uh line item 310, uh equipment maintenance and repair. I see that that's a new addition for this

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budget. We didn't have it in 2025. Uh what are we maintaining? >> Um so this is uh equipment that we use to um uh do our social media filming and pushing out of that content.

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Um but I can get you specifics on those exact um equipment items. >> Thank you, ma'am. >> Yes. Um so where where where is the communications office physically located? >> Um they're in different rooms in City

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Hall on the third floor. Um there's a studio where some of the filming happens. But yes, they're in City Hall. >> Okay, the the reason why I asked that um is because I know that the communications director and the informations officer

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uh they both work out of the mayor's office um and that led many people to assume that they are under the administration. Um so with that being said, like how it is is the deputy

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director running day-to-day operations or how is that how is that being handled? >> Yeah, I described that they sit in the mayor's office given the urgency of some of the public messaging that needs to go out and you know, mayor's office needs

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to have awareness of what's being put out centrally um and that is why they sit here for efficiency of of getting those messages approved. >> No, that wasn't my question. My question is how is day-to-day operations being ran? Who's running Is Is it the Is the

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>> It is the communication director. >> Okay. Um and also um with with uh communications um I've been getting a lot of feedback about communications regarding uh

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meetings such as this. Um and um how most of them are not live like when we go through like the Instagram page or whatever it's only live on Teams. A lot of people in the city don't have access

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to that. And so um is there anything to your knowledge um being adjusted where the community as an entirety can see live uh real-time meetings?

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>> Um we can certainly take back that feedback. Um Teams is our main platform for um live streaming these meetings. Um it is part of our Microsoft contract that we pay for. So, if we find another

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platform or channel, it may be additional expense, but we can certainly explore other ways to um make these meetings more accessible. >> And um again, I'm I just want to reiterate like the

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um salaries um they they look a little they actually look upside down. Um I know Mr. Stan Easton has been here for at least I don't know 20 years. Um I know he has longevity. Um so, how do we

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come to the con You know what? That's an offline question. I'll ask that offline. Um no further questions. >> All right. Um Just just basically the org chart was updated looks like last week. Do you have the 2025 version of the org chart for the administrator's

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office? >> I can share that. >> Thank you. Some of the communication positions that were referenced by my colleagues don't have salaries in 2027. Can you speak to that, please? For example, communications director

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and then the two public information officers their salaries are x'd out for 2027. >> Um >> Now what they they parenthetical number means in 2027? Is that for next or we're saying that's going to be in the 2027 budget?

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>> Um Not sure what the discrepancy is there, but I can follow up with you um on the 2027 column. >> All right. Does the So the communications department puts out communications for the entire city. Is

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that fair to say? >> Correct. >> So if the city council wanted to put out statements, videos, they'd be at our disposal to do so? >> Um I believe there's some coordination, liaison support that we can provide.

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Again, we have a small communications team so it depends on the type of work that needs to be included. >> I know you keep saying small, but I I know Jersey City is our second largest city essentially the first large the biggest city in in New Jersey. When you

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say small, what are you what are you basing that on because as busy as we are it doesn't seem like we're we're we're busy to have more people in a communications department. >> So there's a combination of different types of communication, right? The

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emergency communication could be a team of this size in itself. Right? Um given that you have public safety, health and human services, um, public works, um, there's a lot of things that just happen on a day-to-day that you need a

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team managing and reviewing the content and pushing it out. And then there's more proactive communication, knowing the programming, knowing the new initiatives that are coming forward, um, which this team also manages. So, that that that is how I base this. Um,

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now, we're all working with the resources we have, and this team handles all forms of communication. >> Uh, uh, the the council president asked about the new hires list. So, this is obviously more general of the question. Uh,

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were any new hires in the last, say, 2 months, non-essential employees? >> No. >> Would you consider a hire to the BA's office being an essential employee? >> Absolutely. >> Absolute? I I don't mean by by the quality. I I

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meant by, uh, when when the mayor spoke to the council a a couple meetings ago, he said non-essential employees, meaning he's hiring for, uh, 911 operators, public safety. >> Yes. >> Can you speak a little bit more about what's essential for the BA's office in terms of public safety, answering a 911

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call, cuz the mayor said we got to keep this this safe, versus someone working in your office. Uh, I'm I'm not denigrating anyone that does the BA's job. You you have an incredibly tough job running this city. I I just meant when someone says non-essential >> Mhm. >> was being referred to as non-public safety.

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>> So, we haven't hired anyone in the BA's office. We have hired a director of internal audit who oversees the audits of the city, and also is helping us build out this performance management system. I

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consider that role as essential for helping us understand the, uh, delivery of services of every department and comparing that with the cost of those resources, which we don't have um adequate [clears throat] data to do a

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lot of these budget conversations that we're having right now, which is why I think that's essential. We also recently hired a new HR director, which is also under Department of Administration. That is an essential role for helping us

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streamline, improve our ability to recruit, hire, and professionally develop our staff across the whole city, right? So, those are the two hires we have made that I think are critical to the foundations of how we

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run city government. [clears throat] >> I think you'd agree with me. There's there's a I want to say a legal distinction in government. There's a distinction between non-essential and essential. And non-essential again being people who, if there were an emergency, they'd they'd be or or if the budget wasn't passed,

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they'd be furlowed, they'd be they they wouldn't be in in government. Essential services being police, fire, 911. You'd agree with me that there's a I'm not saying the word essential I'm not sparring here with the word of the meaning of the word essential. I mean in terms of government, New Jersey government,

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there's non-essential employees and essential employees. One's public safety, one's not. You would agree with me at least there's that distinction, right? >> Okay. Uh I'm concerned about some of the priorities here because uh with the provisional employees who were laid off, we're we're signaling to our

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city that getting our I'm I'm using the senior bus example again. Taking our seniors to Walmart to places to go is less important than putting out social media content. Can you speak to that? >> So, I've I've said this a number of times in the department budget hearings.

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This process of reviewing our budget is very very challenging. And we did not take lightly the review of provisional staff in compiling that list. We worked closely with department directors to identify the roles and

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responsibilities of every one of those employees. Um it is a difficult decision that we had to make. And the role of council right now is to scrutinize these budgets, ask the

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questions you're asking, and help, you know, put forward what you think are priorities. >> And again, I I agree you have a very difficult job. I take it at face value that you made difficult decisions in in laying employees off. I'm just concerned

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that our priorities are a bit different. >> Councilmember >> So, I will um not a question. I just want to for the record reiterate what other council people have said with regard to uh essential positions,

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um as well as um setting salaries and what what goes into that and um with the position being being paid more than the person they report to. Um and and frankly being paid more than

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uh for a public information officer than I'm not sure how long the other gentleman's been here, but probably closer to 30 years at this point. I'm not sure. But um So, that being said, um so I don't beat a dead horse, um and so we can move on.

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Um I'm just going to point out the line items as well. Similar stuff as uh on the 200s, office supplies, photographic supplies, um to be looked at. Um And and I'm also noticing on dues and subscriptions,

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while it's zeroed out on the budget, um the expenditure report that you provided me shows that we've already spent money on that on that line. $15,935. So, um it's not budgeted, but it's been spent. Um I don't know if you're going

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to look to transfer those again, if those costs can be a um accounting magic to be moved somewhere else, but uh um or if waiting till the end of the year to do budget transfers. Um but I'm bringing it to your attention. And the last thing I just really want to

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bring up and it cuz the corporation counsel mentioned this during our law hearing is um uh or maybe made reference to it. The idea of changing um the amendments that the city council can do and um I'm I'm

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I'll direct this to the corporation counsel herself and maybe the city clerk's office can can assist here as well, but it's my understanding that we can only do line items. Like while we may want to um remove a position and say consider it as

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not essential, um that we don't actually have that authority, but I I would like that confirmed for me um in writing by someone because that's just an assumption on my part based on past history. Um but if there is the authority to

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actually um eliminate um uh public uh line items for specific titles or positions, um I'd like to know if that's possible for us. I don't know if that's something you can look into or if I should go to the law

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department at this point. >> I can I can certainly follow up with the law department and I believe that is already outstanding request, but I'll I'll bump that up. >> Thank you. >> Sullivan? >> I'm done with this communications, yeah.

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>> Thank you. As we have multiple division and offices left and we have just 30 minutes. So, can we request 30 extra minutes? Is it possible? >> I'm sorry, an additional 30 minutes you said? >> So, can is that okay?

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>> That's okay for us. I'm deferring >> Okay for council council president? >> We may not need it. I think we've hit some of the meter ones but I defer to the chair. I defer to the chair. >> Yeah.

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>> All right. All right. So, next is utility management. Can you please uh talk about this office? What is the responsibility for this office? Director. >> So, this is not an office. This is an

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employee. The employee is um employed by the water company. And my understanding is that this is a historic historical carrier um of a person

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and the city has an agreement with this company related to his pension. And so that's why we carry him in our in our records. But his salary is completely reimbursed by the water company. >> Um

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How about overtime wages? >> 100% reimbursed by the water company. >> Okay. All right. Thank you. >> I'll just Yeah, I'll just quickly note that again I brought this up last week and we started to discuss but

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just in a terms of accounting we see some kind of reimbursements in the form of grant offsets in some of the workbooks that cancel out the amounts in the budgets that were presented and then here we don't see that reimbursement. So, I think just

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getting consistent in how offsets and reimbursements of that nature are accounted for, that would be really helpful. Thank you. >> Mhm. >> I guess I would just comment I understand this employee probably has a contract um and that can't be amended um but I would

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I would offer that going forward um you know, having non-city employees on our city pension program is probably not the best practice because we are then still responsible for those payments. So, I don't know if this is a one-off he's grandfathered in, whatever, but is this a practice that is still currently being

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pursued? >> My understanding is that this is the only employee that is um that has this status, but >> Okay. >> We can look into it. >> Any question on this? Otherwise, we can move to HR. >> Nope. No questions.

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You're looking right at me, so I think uh >> All right. Uh Director Roy, uh Ruby Chow, uh how are we doing with HR Director? Uh do we have someone new? Do you want to talk about it? >> Yes. Um today is her first day. Um her

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name is Stephanie Pagán. Um she is starting to uh help us think about transforming HR in terms of modernizing our our processes, streamlining operations, and working with the various departments,

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particularly the ones that have issues with recruitment and professional development. So, we're very excited to have her on board. >> Um in the past couple of um I mean, different departments have been having issues with HR. How do you plan to make

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HR more functional where people feel they are being answered? Um if you can talk a little about it, please. >> Yeah. I think our HR division is working with all the resources that they have to make

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it as customer friendly and streamline as possible. There are um many challenges in terms of hiring um that is not I have to describe before not necessarily HR processes, but more

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related to challenges with recruitment and finding the right person to fill the role, which leads to delays. Um so I think we have to look internally to see how we can better communicate to candidates exactly what the roles are

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and the salary uh ranges so that we avoid this um delay and and um you know, back and forth that sometimes departments feel. Um I mentioned early on that we have created HR committees,

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so we meet weekly now to review all the requests that are coming through from departments. This has streamlined the review process because this committee consists of um representatives from law, um uh myself, so that we can quickly go

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through those requests without paperwork having to be be bounced around different offices. So we're definitely um looking at our operations to streamline it and make it more customer friendly for the departments that we work with. >> Thank you, Director Choi. And can you

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please talk about uh line number uh item 312 and 314? >> Uh 31 312 are our uh professional consultant specialization services. So this includes um

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Jersey City Medical Center. So these are um employee medical services. Um medical exams that we do for civilian employee civilian and uniform employees for our their application for employment.

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We also included in that are background investigations. So we have a vendor that does that when we're bringing on staff. We also have a vendor that does psychological exams for non-uniform and uniform employees for

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for duty. We also have a vendor that does drug testing for employees that we're bringing on. And then under 312 we also have a technology contract for the software that we use to do the onboarding paperwork. Thank you.

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>> Can I do a follow-up specifically on that item? So are these open-ended contracts? >> I'm sorry. >> Are any of these contracts open-ended? >> They should all have end dates to the contracts and had of eight

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yes. >> Morning they're yearly contract. >> They're what? >> Yearly annual contracts. >> Yeah but I know they're annual but are they open-ended meaning um is it we get charged as we use the services so >> Correct.

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>> Um yeah. All of the contracts? >> Yes. >> I look at the spend on this the request is for 800 312 823,000. Um Sorry the mayor's approved line was 823,000.

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Correct? Um last year we spent over million um 1.1 million 1.15 million Um, then looking at the spend today, for 312, um, we've spent $157,000

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to date. So, um, so I'm just trying to reconcile that. I'd like to see uh, the spends on these particular contracts for the last 4 years, um, to be able to see what, uh, um,

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whether we need to look at these more closely and right-size them, as I've said in the past. >> Yeah, we can provide that. >> Sorry, one more question, uh, Director Choi. Um, I see new hired local 246

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requested $55,000. Can you talk more about it? It's in draft. >> Sorry, um, new hire? >> Yes. >> Uh, full-time? >> [clears throat] >> That was requested, but it it is no

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longer a position that we're hiring for. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Um, okay, I have a couple of questions. Um, I'm a little confused in line item 101,

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Lourdes Almanza resigned last year and was backfilled by Melissa Branco. Um, Melissa Branco was then terminated, but they have different titles. So, um, Lourdes was a human resources

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coordinator, Melissa was a management specialist when she was backfilled, and then subsequently terminated. Are these two Are these two positions both now vacant and are you planning to hire for either of them, or were they not or were they not essential for the for

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the, um, operation of the department? >> So, um, the human resources coordinator position is no longer being hired for.

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That was a a cut that was made in the in the in the personnel. Um and then I'm sorry, the other question was >> Management specialist. So, this is >> Um Melissa Bronco, um >> And that was part of the provisional list,

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which is also a role that we will not backfill because it's a reduction. >> Okay, great. Um thank you for clarifying. Um Director Becerra uh from finance mentioned that when he came into his role, he found that no performance

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reviews had been done of any employees in the finance department for the past 10 years. Um I understand, you know, the performance reviews are not necessarily a um a metric for,

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you know, for hiring and firing per se or or reductions in forces because of existing union contracts. So, the performance reviews would not have been relevant um in terms of of any reduction in force. However, um they do seem relevant when we're

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looking at who we want to promote internally and who we want to um advance to, you know, higher positions within the city government. Um can you speak to whether the HR department will be implementing a performance review system for city employees? >> Mhm.

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Yeah, that's exactly one of the areas that we have our new HR director looking at. Um I was surprised myself when I came here to hear about performance reviews. Um My understanding is is complicated

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because you have the unions, you have other um stakeholders that need to be part of the process in terms of a determining how to conduct and implement these performance reviews. So, we can't just do it wholesale next week. Um there's a lot of conversations that need

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to have, but that is definitely one of those areas that we'd like to look at and work with the unions on. >> Thank you. I was just going to ask a couple questions. Um line item 105 I on acting position costs um out of

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title pay for five employees from looks like end of the winter uh through next month. Um could you just explain uh what this uh out of title pay is for? >> Yeah, I believe these were for um employees who were on leave. Um

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Do you want to >> There are a couple of employees that are currently in FMLA, so we have other employees fulfilling those additional responsibility and based on our labor uh contracts and union contract, we have to pay them acting costs.

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>> Okay. Um that's Local 246. >> Um 246 and JCSA. >> JCSA, okay. Uh thank you for that clarity. I think it goes back to the conversation we were starting to have last week about um you know, which employees and which

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positions get that kind of out of title pay and that extra compensation for having to take on work beyond the scope of what they were hired for when there are absences and think understanding that these are baked into union contracts for these positions, that's really helpful.

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Um as we don't have a a standard across the city, it sounds like, but um they bargained and they've they've won that. Uh then just 314 um the line item 314, the 150,000

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uh budgeted for workers' compensation, is this are these claims that we owe or are just is this based on hand? >> These are for professional services attorneys that we we utilize for reviewing workers comp

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claims. >> Okay. And that lives under 314 instead of 312 just it's contractual instead of professional services. >> Yeah. >> Okay.

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I thank you. >> Councilman Kay, follow up on that. Just go Just to that line item as well. Just for the record it's a um reduction from 195,000 adopted in '25 2026 the mayor has come in with 150,000.

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So 45,000 reduction from '25 to '26. Um but the spend in '25 was 67,113 dollars. And the year-to-date is zero. So um that as well. >> Um Director, we have

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uh 1 2 3 4 5 senior personnel assistants. If you can explain um I guess the difference in in their roles. I see there's a different in salary. Some is low as

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80 Yeah, the lowest is 82 um and the highest is 130 140. If you can explain um difference that position.

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>> Yes, basically if the functionalities are different, their responsibilities as well. For example, the person that is holding the 140,000 salary is the division director, well, deputy division director currently. So, there's no civil service

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title uh specifying that role. That's why the title is used as senior personal assistant. The other senior personal assistant with a high salary is an office director, which again is the same um

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explanation that no civil service title as uh office director. So, we using that same um title. >> I see. And your name, ma'am? >> Joann Rosa. >> Which Oh, wait. What is the the

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You have a new director? She's not here today, though. >> She's not here. She just started an hour ago. >> This was she She could have came. She get uh 165. We could have put her right in the fire. >> [laughter]

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>> Oh, okay. So, those um So, although they have the same the same titles, some of them is doing more sophisticated work than others. >> Correct. And the other ones, they are in the ranges of 84,000. Those are the HR generalist.

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Again, uh civil service no have a HR um series of titles. So, we using the same title, even though their responsibilities differ from one of another. >> Okay.

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Ready. >> Oh, um as it relates to HR, um I know this is is been going on for some time now. So, at one point, the good lord um What's

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What's the uh on 440? What was that that used to be? >> Uh incinerator authority, right? >> JCA at one point um the city had absorbed some of those employees and dissolved that department.

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Um so a lot of them have been reaching out. Apparently, there's still some things that has to be worked out as it relates to time people were owed. >> I can look into that and get back to you. >> Okay. Um

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how much how much did we how how much did we save from the layoffs? >> Can you repeat it, please? >> How much money did we save from the layoffs? >> I think it was 1.9. >> Okay. And and and can you go >> You will leave, but not prorated for the

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half of the year. >> Okay. And and did you can you just go through the the the process with me of layoff? Like how does that work? >> If I'm >> So the administrative process or how we

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>> Yes. >> So I I can speak to how we came up with that list, but then I can refer to HR in terms of the administrative part of it. I Assuming that might be your question. So we took the list of all provisional

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employees. We um We looked at all the provisional employees that have been with the city for more than a year, right? Because those within the the 12 months we're assuming would be

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trying to take exams or work their way to getting into civil service status. Um so there's that one-year grace period. But for all of the provisional employees who have been here for more than a year, um we took that list and um we worked with each department who had those

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provisional employees to get feedback on their roles and responsibilities and how it compares with all the other employees they have in the department. Um you guys may be aware there's a separate and more

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um lengthier process for layoffs related to civil service. So that's why we focused on the provisional staff. Um in terms of coming up with the with that list. We had feedback from department directors. Ultimately it was also the mayor's office, the mayor

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making the final decision on the list of employees. In terms of the step-by-step administrative process, I can refer to HR to explain what they did from the the lists being created. >> Once we received the final list, we

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generated the the termination letters. Which it was all uh with the HR representative, the each HR representative made an appointment with each individual.

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Um they were on site at the time. And they were extended the termination letter. >> Now, whose whose decision was it and you guys probably don't know, whose decision

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was it to involve the police? That that that was something that was very problematic for me. I'm of the opinion, first of all, it's hard to digest this news and then in a short period of time, a couple with all that, the presence of

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the police. Um so I'm just trying to figure out like whose whose direction was that, whose position, what's the rationale behind it? >> So um the uh the police was uh aware. There were

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no uniform police present when the when these letters were issued. However, you know, there was um there was an issue with a termination recently that led to um

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some concerns about safety in the workplace. And that is why we had to alert the security within the buildings where employees were um were at at the at the time um in case there was another instance like that.

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>> So >> about protecting the employees in the building. >> So the issue something happened previously before these so at a an act of caution to protect other employees not necessarily individual so you had police present.

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>> Yeah. >> Okay. Um now as it relates to the 31 people that were laid off the total saving is 1.9, correct? >> Um yes, I can double check on the budget

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numbers there for the entire city. >> Yes, the bigger question is that a combination of salaries or salaries associated with benefits? >> I believe that was salaries and benefits but I can confirm um

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with the finance department. >> I think um in light of all that if we can have like some some form of protocol um as it relates to individuals being laid off or furloughed or anything um

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I would much rather have seen an email go out two three weeks in advance explaining the position and why we have to do all of that stuff versus I mean they were saying people got notices and like they was a terminated immediate

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they were terminate Can you speak to the time frame as it relates to the notice and the actual effective date? >> Yeah. Um So, this this was a discussion that we had internally um about the time frame of notice to the

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employee. Um my understanding is in the past, it has been done in the day of. Um and for for a number of reasons, we decided to do the same. However, the

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term the termination of the employee is actually 2 weeks after the employee was told um that they were terminated. So, they had they have a paycheck 2 weeks after the day we told them to leave. So,

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that is the effective date is 2 weeks after they were >> I'm I'm speaking about like if you're saying someone's like how much notice was given, not that when the check is going to come. >> Mhm. >> I'm trying to figure out like >> Yeah.

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>> we told them Monday on a 11th and then Friday on a 13th, it was supposed to be actually >> Yeah. >> figure out that time frame there. >> Yeah, I mean, we can definitely talk more about the reasons behind that decision. Um >> No, no, director. I just want to be

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clear. I'm just asking what was the time frame? Did we notify them that they were being laid off Monday? And it was it due immediately or was it due the following week? What is the time frame and what >> They were told the day of.

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>> They were That's my point. So, in the future, if we can like give someone grace period because, you know, this is it's a huge it's a huge thing for someone to like imbibe and take in.

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Um granted, we're in a financial crisis and we have to do what we have to do, but I would much rather have liked to see a notice go out via email than certified mail or the director of the department could have had a conversation with that

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person. It's a hard pill to swallow in general and it's it magnifies that and it's like, "Hey, we got to let you go. Hey, well, we got to let you go right now." I I just think that it it sets a bad precedent for how good government

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supposed to work. >> I I understand you. I hear you completely. Um that is why I was trying to say that we had thought about the pros and cons of that time period. Um and we can certainly talk about that some more offline on how we can improve

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that process. >> Thank you. >> If if I can piggyback off of that, please. Um I noticed Business Administrator Troy that you chose your words very carefully when you said that um uniformed police were not used to escort

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the people out. Um I asked the mayor's office about this directly because I also have a problem with someone being terminated and then escorted out by police. I think um if there are safety concerns, having police on site is one thing, but having them escort the employees out shows a lack of

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respect for for the employees' dignity. And um what I was told by the mayor's office was that they were plainclothes police. They were still armed. They were still on duty. Um they just were not in uniform and I I still have a problem with it. Um whether or not they were wearing their

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uniform is not really the important factor there for me. So, I just wanted to echo Councilman Gilmore's concerns about how our employees are being treated. >> Any other HR question? >> All right. So, please give us the background. I know

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Mr. Carroll was was the acting HR director. I'm just I'm just trying to follow along with the notes here in in line K on this spreadsheet. So, >> Joanne, um Joanne Rosa is the acting director sitting right here. >> Right. Right. If you read the

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spreadsheet, it says Joanne replaced Jimmy Carroll. So, I just want to go back and go through the go through the >> correct. >> Right. Right. So, so then then it says the the new HR director's replacement for Joanne. But Joanne's not going anywhere. Right. Uh

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you can you speak to that a little bit, please? >> [cough] >> So, my understanding there the HR director had always had a deputy director. And so, with the hiring of our new HR

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director, Joanne's going to take the role of the deputy. >> All right. So, we have a director, a deputy director, and two senior administrative analysts. What are their roles? >> So, basically, to give you a little bit of history, in the past, HR was a

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department. Being that the department was absorbed as a division under administration, the same organization structure remained the same. So, in the past, the persons that were functioning as division director

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currently are functioning as office director. So, some of the senior personnels are office director. >> I mean, Joanne, so you were you were at Excuse me. >> [cough] >> You were in the acting role for acting

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director. >> Until today. >> Until until today. Okay. Um, how long were you in that role? >> Well, I was actually the department director and then the division director. I was six years. Six years.

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>> Okay, so so HR has been running under your direction for the last six years. >> Correct. >> Um Jimmy Carroll's no longer with us. He's in the He's in the courts now. >> Yeah, he's in a different role. >> Uh what decision went into naming a a

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director of HR other than the current structure that we were in? What what What what what emerging circumstances was the city in the way HR was currently running required a new director, a new hire?

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>> So, um my understanding of the posting of the HR director was related to um the administration coming in and needing to really look for leadership in areas that we wanted to transform operations.

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Personnel, this This is the division that um you know, brings talent into the city, um leads training, professional development. It's a very critical role to make sure we have the right people running city government. Um

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and so that was a decision made by the administration to post that position and is and see if there was anyone in house or other places who would be taking on that leadership role. >> Just on that uh follow-up question, uh acting director

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Rosa. So HR has 36 employees including the director or not including the director, the new director we have from today? Including that? 30. >> [clears throat] >> I I I guess my point was

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J J Abrams has been doing the the job for the last 6 years. We're in a massive budget crisis to the point where we've never seen this amount of aid given to any city before. Did we really need to hire a director right this second for $150,000 given the

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fact that we're putting a 15.5% tax increase before our our residents? Is that an essential hire? Again, essential meaning the term for government. Not not not not not the not not at the source for a good hire, a necessary hire, an essential hire for this city to operate this current

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current position. >> Yeah, I I I think I agree with you in the definition of essential. However, I think we just talked about a couple of areas where we do need to improve our HR operations. Performance evaluation is one of them, which would impact how we

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make budget decisions in the future. And so that was a decision made that it is a critical role that we had to fill. >> Uh uh Director Choi, um you you said something that stuck out to me um and it was um to bring people into Jersey City. Um

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and so my question for HR is what are the steps taken to ensure that someone qualified out of a city with a population of 300,000

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um and and also um city workers, employees, um what what what steps are we taking? Because we we talked about um you know, we just had the communications uh meeting um

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and the one thing I don't see uh from communications is um communicating that we're hiring. Um so people don't know, and there are highly qualified

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people in Jersey City. Again, it's three You can't say 300,000 people all 300,000 people are not qualified. That doesn't make any sense to me. Um so what steps are we taking, I guess through HR and through communications,

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to um make sure that we are hiring people from within, uh people with the same stakes that we have, people who are looking to you know, help

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you know, drive uh uh uh the leadership that that we need here. Uh people with concerns, homeowners, and things like that. >> Yeah. What When I said bring people into Jersey City, I meant City of Jersey City government. When I

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say Jersey City, not necessarily outside the geographical boundaries of Jersey City. I mean bringing people into city government. Um one of the areas, like I said, we're looking to improve is recruitment. Um one is making sure we're

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on all the platforms, networks, communication channels to push out the job postings. Um we we we're literally trying to improve our budget and you know, in outreach in that way. Um so that's definitely an

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area where we're working to improve, and look, we're we're trying to communicate out in various channels. So if the council, you guys, would like to help us, too, we'd love to loop you in um as we're doing this recruitment and posting. As as much as we can amplify

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the communities that you guys represent, we're happy to consider all candidates that would be the best fit for those roles. >> Yep. All right. Um just several questions for me on on HR. Um so just looking at the organization

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chart and following up on what my colleague said, um the way it's created is there there's there's no lines um and I on this particular organization chart. So, um

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Miss Rosa and Miss Riccola are off to the right here and so shall I assume that they you you're reporting to the HR director? Is that um Okay, and then the others under

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four different areas, employee benefits, um WFM and employee relations, payroll, and risk management, um who who do they report to directly? Miss >> Up until today, they reported to Joanne. Um they will report to the new HR

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director. Now, the new HR director may want to do some reorganization, which is why um you know, that that organization chart could change. Um it is in flux, um but we're we'd like to give her the opportunity to meet with

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every division and think about how she wants to restructure her leadership team. >> Okay. I I'd like to get some information about how many um employees within this department are reporting to each person at the

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the middle level below the director, right? Um including Miss Rosa's and Miss Riccola. Um so that's a total of six people. I just who's how many people are reporting to them can provide who's reporting to them on this list, that'd be

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>> Mhm. >> All right. So, let me um just uh I I don't know if I I don't recall if you actually spoke about this already, that the individual terminated laid off um and as part of the recent

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provisional layoffs. >> Can you speak to who that was and what role they played? >> Can you repeat the question, please? >> Uh the Just looking at the line, there's a management specialist um who was terminated

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as part of the provisional layoffs. Can you speak who who that individual is and and what they what role they played in HR? >> So, her role was a HR specialist. She was one of the HR rep embedded in one of the departments. She was uh

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uh HR rep for the Department of ATDC. And she was under the structure of workforce management, employee relation and workforce management. >> Yep. And so, her her her responsibilities

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will be assumed by other people in the department. >> Correct. >> Yep. >> [clears throat] >> Um I I'm just going to reiterate what my colleague said about um the hiring um only that we've hired and and frankly, I

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I learned something new coming into this hearing. Uh last time I was on a council, I HR was a its own department. So, there was an appointment for the HR director. Um that's not the case anymore. It's now a division. Um

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and so, the city council has no role in the hiring or of that position. Um here and in terms of advice and consent role. Uh that being said, um as my colleagues have said, given the

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fiscal crisis that we have, um I think it's imprudent um ill-advised to be hiring uh a new director when as was pointed out earlier by my colleagues six senior

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personnel assistants to um senior uh supervising analysts um and the the talent in in-house to be able to obviously Ms. Rosa herself was the HR director. Uh but the talent being

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internally here to be able to bring someone on board. So, I'm just that's not a question. It's just me saying I disagree with that decision and uh that choice. Um and that needs to be uh um Well,

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going to look to see we've talked about turning over every stone. Um I've talked about that and then other council people as well at this point. So, um I think looking at what what stone can be turned here to possibly reverse that uh um decision and

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uh be able to save the the taxpayers but also just um as it been pointed out by it was Councilman Griffin that we have the we have the talents right here in Jersey City, right in here in our offices to do this do this work. Um and I think uh um I mean I've said that for past

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appointments the idea that are we bringing people in who understand the the city itself and um and so consistently bringing in individuals who are um who have a lack of institutional knowledge but also a lack of and

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familiarity with the city itself or its employees, right? That's so important in this role as HR director to know all of the employees to know who these people are um that are working for us and busting their butt in every day. Um so, I'm going to turn over every stone and

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try to find a way to to reverse that. Um that being said um uh I I just want to read it right on 312. Um getting those um contracts and the spends on that over the past several years. And uh

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um And also on contractual services as well. Where um see uh $150,000 allocated down from $195,000 last year in 2025, we spent $67,000

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on this line item. And this year year-to-date $0 spent. So, definitely going to be looking to right-size of that. Um but ask for the department's input on that in terms of making sure you have the dollars in that line to

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provide the necessary services. I yield my time. >> Thank you, Councilman. Um Thank you, acting director. Now, it's turn for IT director Noble Verghese. Total number of employees full-time 12,

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part-time one. Um I have just one um Can you talk about the line item 314 contractual services? >> Yeah, I will start and then I'll um turn to the director to give you all the

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details. Um the three 314 contractual services, um this is a significant increase um when you compare it to 2025 because we did shift um over a million dollars that was

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captured in the capital budget of 2025 incorrectly when it should have been in the operating expenses. So, we can go through in in um in detail what the items are captured under um 314.

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>> We can send over an actual uh spreadsheet, but it's like to give you a high level, it's our Newcastle Communications, which provides uh phone support, tech support for our uh phone systems, our Cisco um SmartNet, and our uh Fortinet firewalls. I'll list all those in there, but I can send you an

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actual spreadsheet that lists out all of the contracts. >> Um any plan to consolidate IT for the for the city for all the departments? >> Yes. So, uh we're starting with public safety,

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um working with their team as well, trying to consolidate the staff resources as well as the software and um other applications and systems um that they that we use citywide. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome.

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>> Can I jump in just cuz I have to leave? So, if I if I may, um just on 314, uh the increase Correct me if I'm wrong. I think I read it somewhere that it's attributable to uh uh

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monies were spent in in capital dollars on this these expenses. So, you you'll provide us the list of the contracts that were paid for in the past. Um I I I'd also like to see the um the capital

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ordinance and that might not be out of your purview on that stuff, but uh that um from which the money was drawn in the past. Um and this came up uh in a previous as well with uh

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I think it was uh DPW um with monies being spent out of the the bond in the past. And this has been one of the uh areas where the administration has suggested that these were done improperly

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um and that they couldn't be paid through uh through capital dollars. And so, we're putting it all on the bill in right now. Um so, I want to verify that that these are in fact uh because

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it's my understanding that capital bonds are all uh are approved by um DCA uh in many cases. So, I want to make sure that that's a um because part of that DPW cost some of it is still being absorbed by uh uh um

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by a capital bond and part of it is not. So, I just get some clarity about why that's why this one has to be put into operating expenses as opposed to capital dollars. >> Yeah, we'll follow up with you with the specific um capital bond ordinance.

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>> Okay, thank you. Yield my time. Thank you all. >> Uh question, um media technician, what is their role and why are they under IT and not under communications? >> Um so, I'll I'll let the director talk

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about their specific responsibilities, but I think this is a situation similar to um what we were trying to explain with HR is that civil service titles may not um directly uh explain the roles and

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responsibilities of the employees. Um I'll let the director talk about the the the staff that are in those titles and what they do. >> This is uh specific to that one specific title, right? That person um is working on the city website, currently works on

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the website, um and has been a part of the ADA uh uh compliance process um that we've worked on for over the the last year or so, and then also will be a part of the team that is working towards the uh new website uh full development and

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support. >> So, will they be >> So, they're working with I'm assuming communications. >> Yes. I quickly ask Director uh Verghese, data pro- progress processing programmer, this position did not exist before,

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but you requested >> Yes, because of the data analytics that's needed throughout. Um so, in IT, there's the physical infrastructure, there's the computers, the servers, all that stuff that work, there's the telecom side of it, but then there's also the data that we use

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throughout the city. Um and there's really no good way to have a data lake and then be able to asse- assess some of the data that's used citywide. So, one of the major initiatives that I'd like to take on is streamlining it so that we can get rid of redundant software. There

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are software that are used, say, in specific divisions, but they're different software, but they're using it for similar data. So, this person will be able to analyze and right right-size the application support. So, one of the things that we've done is launched a whole application support

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team to help drive through that process. So, this is a specific person that works with data and is programming. So, they're not just technical as far as fixing computers, but there's a different skill set. >> Thank you, Director. I have a question, um about the um

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seasonal computer service technician. Um I saw you requested $10,000. Um the administration's proposed budget includes $5,000. Um my question, essentially, is

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what realistically, what work can someone do in in a seasonal capacity? I mean, for for $5,000, this is probably like they're working for 1 month, maybe two. And

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And I'm wondering if it's even worth bringing them on board or or just simply having the existing computer service technicians perform this work. >> So, my goal is interns. Um a couple hours a week to help with asset management, help some help desk

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calls is the goal. So, to have either young person out of college really be able to like just come in and help us and do some of the asset management and help desk. >> Should be one individual. >> Say that again. >> This is for one individual. >> Yes, yes, yes. >> Okay.

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Any other question? >> So, direct which Um name again? >> Noble. >> Noble. So, Noble, you're you're the division Well, for intensive purposes, you're the division director for

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information and technology, right? >> Can you repeat that? >> You're the division director, correct? Here. >> Any other question on IT? Right. Any Now, we have less than 15 minutes left. So, any question on any

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office or any division can be just asked in next 15 minutes, please? >> Yeah. So, as it relates to municipal court, is someone here with respect to municipal court? >> So, we have a Wednesday public hearing for municipal court. >> But, they're under the BAs uh

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>> That's correct. >> But, they're separate Are they special? >> [laughter] >> Okay. Ocean. >> Internal audit. >> Oh. >> Department of management. >> Having internal audit. >> [laughter] >> All right. So, just want to say that

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there are four employees full-time, no part-time, and director Alex Gaults is here, right? >> Correct. >> All right, anyone questions? >> Yes, thank you. Um

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So, I understand audits happen on a recurring basis, um but can you explain the mission statement of this division and what this division does on a day-to-day basis? It's a little unclear to me uh what this division is specifically auditing and and how does this differ from the

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auditing that the that the financial department does? >> Yeah. So, um with uh most companies uh of the size and scale, there's normally a office that does internal auditing,

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um which could be financial related, but could also be operational. Um in this case, these are auditors looking at operations. Um and they also work in conjunction with the finance department and any

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auditors that are external to government, external to city government, that is auditing the city. So, for example, when the state does auditing of the city, um this internal audit team is uh working directly with the finance department to

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offer responses. Um so, the employees themselves, um two of them are currently actually working very closely with the commerce division in reviewing and auditing um licenses and um

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uh any of the data that is being tracked and managed under commerce, but there are rotating um sort of areas that we would like to focus on, and the staff being supported by a new director um will be um

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uh directed to look at things that we're concerned about internally. >> I have a follow-up question, if that's okay. Just um I'd like to get clarity on the difference between finances and operations. Operations are the the functioning of

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the different city departments and and things. >> Yep. So, um there's financial auditing, which is looking purely at the budget numbers and accounting to make sure that we are paying our bills, that we're doing all

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the things based on, you know, best practices. Um operation auditing is looking at how um different departments and divisions are doing their work per policies and um uh directives that are managed by the

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city. Um I'll just say one of the projects we're looking at, for example, is our um auditing of IT fixed assets. So, those are computers, um data systems, things that are around the city, but we want to

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make sure we have tracking of them and that they're being used properly. So, that's an example of operational auditing versus financial auditing. >> And and these roles are outside of the scope of what

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directors, managers, supervisors, and then up to your office, what the ABAs and um deputy BA and yourself would do, like that that that that fall outside the scope of what just general supervision and management is tasked with in terms

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of tracking to make sure that the functioning of our departments is working. >> Yes, because you need a cert you need a um objective party to be reviewing the work of other departments and divisions. Oh, um one more at >> Let me give you a perfect example.

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Because I've had the opportunity to work with them. Um so, in IT itself, we have an actual asset management tool, right? Every time a computer gets assigned, the technician assigns it to the person. So, in our work with internal control was to actually double-check our work. It's like really quality control, making sure

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if it's happening cuz you know, things happen so many times in the in course of a day that we're putting out a lot of equipment. If a tech misses something, this gives us an opportunity to really have quality control. So, that's one of the projects that we've worked with internal um audit on is making sure just auditing

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our process um and going through the database that we have with the assets and making sure it's assigned. And it sometimes it's just random sampling. Like they'll pick up what what equipment does Joanne have and verify that what's in our system is it is actually accurate to what, you know, it's on her desk.

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>> Thank you. Um has there ever been an internal audit of landlord-tenant office of housing preservation or other divisions within HEDC that are relevant to what we've seen for years is the, you know,

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the impetus for our >> rent protection special uh special rent protection, excuse me, special investigatory committee that we have set up? >> Um I I'm not sure in the history of their work. Um I'm um need to double-check what their

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audits contain. Um but HEDC is actually coming at 1:00, so I think that's a great question for them. Um but this is something I'll follow up and see if there was any historical audits or reviews. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Any other question, Council member?

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No? All right. >> Sure. Hi, export. >> Thank you. >> Motion Motion to adjourn at 12:23 p.m. Motion was made by Councilperson

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Gilmore, seconded by Councilperson Singh. All in favor of the motion at 12:23 p.m. All council members present by acclamation, please say I. >> I. >> I would like to say thank you to all the director for all the directors for

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answering our questions. You have a wonderful day. >> Thank you. >> adjourned here at 12:23 p.m. Thank you so much everyone present and everyone watching at home. Remember, teamwork makes the dream work. Have a great rest of the day. See you back at 1:00 for the additional budget hearing.

Part: 2

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Good afternoon everyone. We are on the record. Today is Monday, the 27th day of July in the year 2026. This is a budget hearing for the Department of Housing, Economic Development, and Commerce with the Jersey City Municipal Council. We had a scheduled 1 p.m. start. The clock

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on my cell phone is showing 10:05 p.m. May we have a roll call for the commencement of this budget hearing. Council Person Brooks is not here. Council Person Zupa, >> I'm still here. Council person Ephos here.

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>> Council person Little. It's not here. Council person Gilmore. Council person Singh >> here. >> Council person Griffin >> present. >> Council person Lavaro >> here. >> And council president Ridley

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>> here. We have seven council members present at in attendance at 10:05 p.m. In addition, at its time of its preparation, the notice of this meeting was similly disseminated

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on Thursday, July 23rd, 2026 at 1:32 p.m. to the mayor, municipal council, business administrator, corporation council, and local newspapers so I can certify as for total compliance with the Sunshine Law. Council President, I'm going to turn it over to you.

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>> Good afternoon. This is our second session of the day. This afternoon, we will be reviewing HEDC. Thank you to all of the members of that department for being here this afternoon. And uh just

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like every other budget hearing, we have council people chair each uh session. This session is being chaired by Councilman Lavaro and Councilman Griffin. So, I will hand it over to them at this >> Before we move on, I just want to record

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Council Person Little present at 10:07 p.m. So, we have eight council members present. >> Council Brooks just arrived. >> What was that? I didn't hear any anything.

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>> Brooks is here. Okay. So, now at 10:07 p.m. as well. So, we have all nine council members present. I wish I had eyes be all over the place. I don't. Uh, good afternoon everyone. Um, I would like to thank everyone for being here. I

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see we have the office of commerce, uh, planning, uh, economic development and and other, um, divisions, uh, including finance. Um, so I'll pass it on to my colleague, Councilman Novaro.

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>> Thank you, Councilman. Um, welcome everybody. Glad to see everybody here and see all the division directors um here to present. Um, thank you all for taking the time to be with us. Um, so this is I think our first co-chair situation. Is it? Yeah. So, we're going

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to we're going to follow the same protocol that we've done at the past budget hearings, which is um Director Chillon, you'll present your presentation and then um then we're going to go division by division uh line by line and kind of go through the uh um

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each each division's budget. Um we're going to do a little bit of a different order um than what was provided to us. Um and uh we'll start with the director's office when we go through that process and then we're just kind we're prioritizing the ones that are uh

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have more staffing and things of that nature that uh and funding as well. So starting with housing preservation, construction code, city planning, affordable housing, zoning, commerce, etc. Um and then um myself and Councilman Griffin will alternate

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between each division. So, I have the privilege of starting first, but I'll turn it over to you, director, and for your presentation. >> Okay. Well, thank you very much, council president, as well as council members for having us here today to present our budget. Um, we're very excited to be

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here. I want to first introduce who uh we have at the table and and available for you all for questioning. Um, we have Director Maynard Woodson for the Division of Commerce. Um we have Zakiyia Gregory who is our fiscal analyst that's assigned uh from the department of

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finance um to our to our department. Um obviously you know the BA um we have deputy mayor Kesha Pudar. We have division of city planning Tanya Marion. We have Joe Severini the construction code official. Um we have Janna Noel who

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runs our office of tenant landlord within the division of housing preservation. Um, as well as we have director Gigi Gazison from the division of affordable housing. Oh, I'm sorry, Salo. You're a little blocked by Zakiya. Um, yes, Salad Diaz

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from uh who's the acting director of community development. Okay, so we're going to go through the presentation. Okay, so HDC, what do we do? Um, we are housing, economic development, and commerce. We focus on housing, land use, construction, and

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business licensing. We have nine divisions um but there are 13 budgetary entities and nine boards uh that we deliver permitting and inspections um development review affordable housing business licensing um certain specific tax collection aspects and federal grant

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administration namely our division of community development and business support. Um I think most of you are familiar but we'll go over a little bit. Um we do things like construction code permitting and zoning review and um certificates of occupancy and approvals.

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Um master planning, implementation, redevelopment, as well as staffing for three different land use boards. Uh affordable housing compliance, rent control, lead safety and tenant legal services, as well as business licensing um and some, as we mentioned, some tax collection as well as federal grant

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administration. within the nine divisions we generate uh or we um our proposed operating budget that we have in front of you all today is $9.21 million and um in 2025 we our revenue generation was $34 million.

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This is how it's uh our our department is broken down. So I mentioned that we have um nine divisions but there's 13 budgetary units and that is because it's nine divisions plus the director's office and then three of the land use boards uh are done on separate budgetary

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units. Um I actually don't know the background for that. We have a total of 134 uh employee headcount. Um that's broken down within the director's office that provides leadership and oversight over the nine divisions and and the boards. Um we have six employees in that

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division uh or that office. Um within the division of commerce um they do licensing and collect certain municipal taxes as well as oversee the cannabis control board and the alcohol beverage commission. There are six employees in that division. Housing preservation has

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the office of tenant landlord oversees short-term rentals, lead inspections, and oversees the rent leveling board. They have 23 um uh headcount employees. uh economic development that provides business support. That's one employee. Uh the office of the construction code

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official does permitting inspections uh as well as certificate or different certificates. Most most people uh you know the certificate of occupancy that's 42 employees. The division of zoning that does permitting and zoning review does the initial review before things go

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to permitting within construction code. Uh that's 10 employees. affordable housing that does compliance for all of our municipally mandated affordable housing in the city as well as maintains the housing portal. Um that is seven employees community development that

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oversees all of our grants from US HUD uh our federal grants as well as oversees the affordable housing trust fund and the CSBG board that's 22 employees. uh city planning that does all of our approvals throughout the city. Um the master plan resonings re

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overseeing redevelopment as well as s uh staff's three land use boards that's 15 employees. Those three boards are the planning board um which are all the hearings uh for land use. um the zoning board of adjustment that is primarily variances and appeals as well as the

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historic preservation commission that does certificates of appropriateness things that cannot be approved at the staff level related to historic. All three of those are just budgetary units. They do not have any employees. And then uh the latest division uh tenants right

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to council uh which is two employees in the budget um but it is uh paid for uh um through the affordable housing trust fund um and right now is primarily a pass through to tenant legal services by the waterfront project.

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Okay. So what have we accomplished? We've delivered revenue to the city. Um largely that's comes from commerce construction code and housing preservation. primarily they generated 32.4 million of the 34 million. Um we've supported new development in the city.

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Uh we've approved over 6,000 so 6,190 new units of housing through the land use boards. 597 of them affordable. So that is almost 10%. As well as 5,493 new residential units were created. And

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just to un uh to talk about the distinction there, one is approved meaning it has the approvals to go forward. The other is actually built meaning it's received a certificate of occupancy. Someone can occupy that unit. Um we do find that uh the approvals uh

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like what was built lags approvals, you know, because it takes a few years to build buildings. Um they they conducted 28,657 uh inspections in construction code and issued 3,800 permits. Um, from a a

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housing perspective, we the the monitoring of our affordable housing tripled um since 2022 from one a little over 1,000 to about 3,000 and housing preservation issued 577 east summons last year as well as 377 lead state

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certificates. Um, our revenue uh is a like a 4 to1 return to the city. How where does the revenue come from? a little bit more of a of a breakdown on where it comes from. So largely, as I mentioned, it's commerce, housing, preservation, and construction code. Um,

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you can see the revenue number in comparison to their budget. So little over 13 million in commerce to only a little over 500,000 in budget. That's a 26 to1 return. Housing preservation, 10 million uh was a $1.2 million budget. 9

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million in construction code is a $3.6 million budget. um city planning, it's a little closer to one to one to one, but one thing I wanted to note here was that they secured over $3 million uh in contributions to the open space trust fund. Um

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okay, so now just a little bit more detail. So this is talking about city planning and zoning. As I mentioned, over 6,000 units approved last year. 597 of those were affordable. Um they also uh through the the zoning process um

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$936,000 went to the affordable trust fun trust fund due to the use of the affordable housing overlay. So when you use the overlay it's a mix of creating new units as well as anytime there's a fractional unit we collect uh money for that and it goes into the affordable housing trust

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fund and then there's some more details about how those numbers break down between the different boards. The applications received by the planning board uh were about 257 which led to uh the units approved that's shown there. There's 198 uh or 93 applications um to

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the zoning board uh which led to a little over uh 198 um units, 20 of those affordable. 484 applications submitted to the historic preservation commission. Um those broke down to 440 were certificates of no effect. 41

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certificates of appropriateness. Those are heard by the board. Uh and 253 demo applications. And then the division of zoning that we mentioned processes um uh applications before they get permitting had over 4,000 applications. And those

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broke down to we say ZRA or zoning review application. That's a little over 15 1589 zoning determination letters 1315 COS 693. and they issued over 500 violations last year. >> Excuse me, director. I'm sorry. Um, can

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you just go back a slide? Um, I'm a little confused. So, planning board, it says they approved 577 units. >> Affordable affordable units. >> And then in the blue it says 597. So, 20 those 20 are still accurate, but they

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just weren't approved by in the zoning board. It's because 20 were approved by that's the total for planning board and zoning board together. >> Thank you. >> For building permitting, um, this gives you not just the numbers that I've already kind of spoken about with the

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permits and certificates that were issued, but as well as a little bit of a a view into 2026. Already this year, they've issued uh 1,696 permits, 193 certificates. We just say certificate because there's more than

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just certificate of occupancy. They've completed over 12,000 inspections. They've collected $5.6 million in revenue and they've already generated uh 2,200 units of new housing. Housing preservation. Um this is how

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their revenue producers uh I mentioned they are also a large revenue producer. how they break down. That's the hotel occupancy tax, landlord registrations, vacant and uh foreclosure of properties as well as short-term rentals. Um the details of those registrations. So you

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can see the numbers uh 1784 for landlord registrations of five and up. Landlord registrations of 1 to four units are a little over 2,000. 510 short-term rental permit applications. Uh there were 56 tenant petitions filed. five rent

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leveling board meetings where they heard 19 cases and then there's you know there's listed vacant property inspections as well as the identified vacant properties. Um they competed 448 lead inspections and issued 377 lead safe certificates as well as from an

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enforcement perspective 577 e summons and illegal short-term rental summons of 69. We also have been conducting the rent control audit. It's a fourphase audit. Um the first phase of that is is coming to an end. Um and will soon to be we're working with the administration to

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to release the first phase uh shortly that is focused on uh inventory of uh rent control properties. Uh the division of affordable housing um you can see their how their units are monitored. So since they started uh when

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they first actually uh took over from the office of tenant uh of tax abatement and compliance the monitoring of affordable housing there were only 54 actually in the initial time. By 2022 there was 1,54. Now there's just under 3,000 that they're monitoring. The reg registered

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portal users went from a little over 6,000 in 2022. We're over 15,000 now. Portal pre-applications are up to 16,000. A little over 16,000. Um and constituent intakes which have to do with uh constituents walking in to the division of affordable housing uh are

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around 430 tenants right to council. I mentioned that we do that through working with the waterfront project. So these numbers were provided by them. Uh they received over 2,424 inquiries. Um they screened 544 individuals. 320 of those were

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eligible Jersey City residents and 207 of those were for right to council matters. They those 207 received legal services, 176 of them receiving full legal re representation. Um they were able to close uh 179 cases and there are

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66 currently active cases in commerce. You can see that over time their revenue has continued to grow from um 7.7 million in 2021. Now we're up to 13.3 million in 2025. That revenue is broken down through a mixture of

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different things, but the parking lot tax is the largest aspect of that. There's a mass transit tax, there's ABC license fees, and there's a cannabis tax. Um they process 27 different license types. Um, and last year that was 1,259

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different licenses were processed. They heard three uh uh applications at the CCB that were approved. And just as a matter of like fact, um there are 26 uh total cannabis businesses open in the city and uh 45 smoke shops. And we have

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reached our cap for smoke shops. Okay. Now, let's look broad more broad at the entire department. So our entire department is um broken down through personnel contracts and other operating. It is largely personnel. It is 90.5%

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uh personnel. Um that's our largest uh budgetary category and our contracts are a little under 8% and other operating all through all 13 budgetary units uh is $151,000. Just so you have a little bit more

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information on how that breaks down, these are the budgets by division. Our largest budget being construction code, our smallest being things like community development and tenants right to council that don't really um add to the city budget. Um but if you want to understand the contract breakdown in the bottom

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right corner, it shows you how those break down. So some of our contracts are the affordable housing portal. Our attorneys and stenographers to staff our boards are you across the board. you'll see those in in the budget. Um, and the tenant legal services that go to the waterfront project, short-term rental

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compliance. Um, there's an outside vendor we used for that contract. It you'll see it in the budget, but it has since been discontinued uh in this, you know, search to find savings. So, as of July 9th, we no longer have that service, so will not be on the budget

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going forward. What you see in the budget is what we need to pay them to get current. Um this as I mentioned different board attorneys and the the demo review for historic. So to talk about what we've cut already I felt like it was better to give a larger picture than just from 2025 to

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2026 because there's not an enormous reduction between the two years though we did lose um five pos there were five positions eliminated in 2026 but there were six eliminated in 2025 and I do think that that gives a better picture of you know the losses that we've taken

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in 2024. our budget was over $10 million and as of this year what we're putting in front of you is $9.2 million. So it's an $800,000 cut. Um which you know I know we're looking for large cuts but it's that that for such a for a small

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department that does so much um uh it it's it's a that cut is is significant for us. Um and our headcount uh is 131 with three part- timerrs. That's very tight. you know, we're trying to do uh the most we can uh with the smallest budget we can.

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Um where those reductions came from over time, just to be clear, this is more about what the requested column versus where we are in the draft more than it is 2025 compared to here. But there were reductions in housing preservation. As I mentioned, we eliminated the short-term

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rental uh platform. So, we won't have that going forward. um the stenographer for the rent leveling board and there were two clerks in that office cut into the 2025 layoffs. City planning eliminated the urban designer position. We had since I came in in 2017 running

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the division of city planning, it was very important to me to staff that office with an urban designer. We did have that position staffed uh until our urban designer left in 2024 and we were unable to fill it in 2025 and we continue to put it in the budget but it it it you know it didn't make it in. Um

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we also deferred some GIS 3D mapping we wanted to do. We wanted to create some 3D uh models that we could use to help uh put uh development proposals in context for you all. So that we cut um construction code uh lost one clerk in the recent layoffs uh as well as cut uh

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some uh OE items. Uh commerce, there was a prior ABC secretary stipened that they cut. They cut a court reporter and they also lost a clerk in the 2025 layoffs. Um, and some of the other things are a little smaller, but affordable housing,

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the most notable one is that they lost uh their operations coordinator, administrative assistant in the 2026 layoffs and some of their portal costs were cut. Looking forward, we're working closely with the administration to look at new revenue streams um by increasing fees. I

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know there was an ordinance in front of you all. Um, so we did we are working very closely with them on that and that included our nonUCC fees um for construction code. We are working with them also to look at our UCCC fees and see if it's there's potential to raise

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those. We're working on a billboard registration and licensing program with the mayor's office that has the potential to bring in some money. We're looking to do a city-wide curb cut curb cut audit and increase those driveway fees um uh and expanded auditing as I

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think the BA mentioned in the last session um auditing for for parking lots. We always continue to look for grant opportunities um to fund any of our offices and um we're always looking also at ways to deliver higher quality services with the same staff we have. Uh

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one example of that are these permitting work workshops that we have been doing recently. Um we did we ran two we're doing them in conjunction with JCEDC. They're very focused on small business support. We've done two already and there are five upcoming. They will be uh one one a month till the end of the

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calendar year. Um and we're very excited to be rolling those out and we want to make sure our constituents know about them. So we would like to work with you all on that. And that concludes my our presentation. We are open for questions. um in any way needed.

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>> Thank you. Um so the way that um Councilman and Lavaro and I um thought we would do the question portion was to start with ward A, work our way to F and then the ATL large council um people.

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So Rolando, can you >> Yes. So we're going to start off Oh, y'all don't have >> the director's office. Start with the directors. I'll start with the director's office. >> Meaning line by line. Is that what we're talking about? the budget. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> So, councilman, you can proceed.

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>> You have questions about the line items >> for the director's office. We'll start with the council president Councilwoman Denise Ridley. >> Uh, I do not have specific questions for the director's office.

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Councilman Brooks. >> I do not either. >> Councilman Zupa. >> Okay. Councilman Efos, >> what are the uh contractual services that exist within the director's office

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line item 314? >> It's it's Lexus Nexus. It's um what we use to do the LLC lookup for writing violations because so many of our divisions use the same service. We we did it out of the director's office and it's what they use to get through the

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LLC's to find an individual. >> Thank you. I'm I'm just curious because law department relies on Lexus Nexus as well. Is there any way to cross over >> when when we um first wanted to add this in, we did originally approach the law department. I think that was maybe 3 or

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four years ago. Um and we were advised to get our own contract. I would be happy to work with the administration to see if there's cost savings there. we don't have a lot of users. Um, in HUDC, we assign individuals in each division that needs it a user. So, that might be

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potential savings. I also want to note from the org chart, there is one staff member um in the director's office, but they actually serve two different divisions. That's why they're on our budget. Um, this is the person that is both a uh enforcement officer for the

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division of affordable housing and a hearing officer for uh housing preservation. Um, it's Lendy Salazar. I was trying not to use names, but just so you know, that person sits at 342 MLK with both of those divisions. Serves

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both of those divisions and but divides her time. So, we we put it in the director's office. >> Great. Thank you, >> Council Person Little. >> That answered my questions. So, thank you. Okay, >> person Singh,

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>> you said in order by Wards, Councilman. Um, >> oh, I'm sorry. I skipped you, Councilman Gilmore. >> No, don't worry about that. >> I was just looking across. I apologize, Councilman. >> Um, so as it relates to that individual now, so this 75,000 is a combination of both duties, correct?

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>> Yes. >> And do we know at what time and what days they're at either location? >> They're at they're they stay at the same location. Both of those divisions share a space. So, she is there all the time and reports directly to both of those

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directors. Um, if you'd like to know more, you know, Gigi is here. She can speak to like how they divvy up her time. >> Yes, Gigi, if you can just speak like as it relates to the function and it's is it like 8 to 12 in the morning with this

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or is it as needed? It's got a little bit of a delay. Green light should appear. Give it a minute. >> Uh no, it's basically based on need. Uh she seamlessly has uh incorporated herself into both. Uh Janna is here as

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well. We both work with her very closely. Uh she's incredibly organized and efficient. So she, you know, she manages her time accordingly. Uh if there's something urgent and a violation needs to be issued, she will devote her attention to that as she sees fit. and John and I work very well together to

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make sure that we're not competing uh for her time and attention. >> It was a way in the past to solve a need both offices had but try to be as fiscally responsible as possible. both offices asked for an individual and this was you know an attempt to do that uh

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efficiently >> and also the resignation that's on guess on two 227 the 18,000 is guess two months of that annual salary >> oh for the first employee in the list so

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so I had in the director's office we actually lost two employees as well over time and the one is showing up still on here this was our person that managed uh the Tyler roll out, right? Our per our permit portal. We had an internal uh

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director's office staff member that was our kind of tech support and helped support all of the divisions when they had any problems with the permit portal. When that staff member left the city, they they left on their own choice to go to another opportunity. It was decided

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to not fund that position and to move those duties to the IT um division. And so when we need those duties, we speak to one of the members of the IT staff. >> Thank you, Council President Singh.

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>> Thank you, Councilman. Uh, Ania, can you talk about line item 307, training and meeting expenses? There was no amount in 2025, but you requested 5,800. Can you please talk about it?

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>> Yeah, it's um it's actually it's not that there's no amount. It's that that one line item throughout the entire city budget actually exists in HR. So what they do is they ask us to request the number that we need and then it is then they decide how much of it is allocated

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in the HR budget. So there is an expended number probably very similar to that number from 2025 and then that's why it's not in the draft column. So, I don't know exactly how much of it carried over to HR for all of our um all of our divisions, but that's why you

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don't see it in the other two columns, but it is regular uh need for all of our offices. We do do training and and attend usually conferences. They could be local, they could be national, not an enormous amount, but we do do that. >> Thank you, Ania.

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>> Councilman Griffin. >> Uh yes. Um, I'm I'm just looking at job titles. Um, and this is the first I've heard of this one. Can Can you explain to me what the director of economic and industrial development is? >> I mean, it's a civil service title, and

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civil service titles don't always align directly to what their, you know, functional title is. Um, as you can see on the org chart, his functional title is the the deputy director. >> Thank you. >> That's the civil service title he applied for. >> Thank you. And also the training. Um, so

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the $5,000 requested was for the entire HEDC. >> No, that's for the director's office. >> That's just for your office. >> So largely that is um I attend the APA national conference once a year. It moves around to where it is in the country. It's I find it extremely

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important learning experience. it is for the deputy director to attend one conference a year and usually there are some local things within the state of New Jersey that uh we attend as well that are just for the day or whatever. >> Okay. Thank you.

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>> Okay. >> Chair chairman respectively. I'm sorry I could double back. >> Sure. >> Um so it's a question um I guess specific to the director's office but would go for all divisions. Um in your presentation you talked about um the

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revenue that's generated both by fees and some I I don't think you specified uh summons re revenue generated by summones. >> Um I mean are you looking for a breakdown for for that? >> I would love one but no that's an

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ongoing project. >> Okay. Um but just for I guess starting with the director's office and the question would apply to all the all the other divisions. Um we won't see as an offset um fee revenue or

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summons by >> well first of all summons revenue is collected by the courts. We don't get any fees for that. But also all revenue that is taken in goes into the general fund and only the council, the governing body can determine how it is distributed

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unless there is like the dedication by rider thing you guys have heard about. Unless there's a specific reason like for example the um open space trust fund, the affordable housing trust fund, something where that money has to go into that account, those are the only

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things that uh do not show up in the general fund. All of that money that we're talking about that's brought in shows up in the general fund and you all allocate it. It's not dedicated to any specific division or any specific, you know, specific, you know, uh, activity.

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>> Got it. Sorry. Just one last followup. I mean, one of the things that we've heard from the public is, um, you know, wanting to hold developers accountable, uh, hold bad actors accountable, and that could potentially generate revenue

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through issuing summones. Um but for the purpose of this budget hearing and also in you know going line by line we as a council we're not going to see that um that revenue from either fees or from

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violations that that's not offsetting your department's budget. Is that correct? >> Correct. You're not going to see that. >> Okay. No thank you. We what we do we can break down like in some of the slides um I think I showed you if we knew where the revenue was like for example for

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commerce we can break down revenue that we bring in any of our revenue numbers can be broken down but there are certain things you're not going to see like you're not going to see if we issued a ticket that's not going to even if I did you know like even if we had the number it would show up in the court's number

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it wouldn't show up in our number but we can break down like any of our um like for example If one office like commerce has 27 different license types, we can break down revenue by those 27 types. We can break revenue down uh what the planning board brings in or versus the

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zoning board or something like that or any specific um construction code, you know, like breakdown that you guys might want. We do track that. We just mostly focus at the end of the year on the totals per office. >> I'll just address that as well. So for

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the revenues don't show up on the departmental budgets. It's we're dealing with expenses but um tomorrow we have finance department of finance and it's my intention I'm chairing that to uh to look at the revenue section as part of that and go line by line on revenues as

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well. Um so and if dire director Troy can give a heads up to the finance director that'll be part of the the conversation as well. Um just uh staying with your office um very quickly uh um

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that in my head and I forgot. Um I'm I'll just say first of all you you clearly run a very lean office and I'm sure that's probably been the case for many years now. Um, and so I don't have any particular questions. Just want to point out kind of a the expenditure

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rates on the 2011 and 306 um are low at this point, but they're low amounts of dollars. So, just put that put that out there for you. Um, that's it. Moving on. >> Okay. >> Oh, I I will say one thing. I just learned something about the training and meeting expenses here. So, um, because

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we've gone through a couple of other, uh, divisions and departments and seen that they have training and meeting expense lines. I don't know if it's zeroed out there. I don't recall off the top of my head, but we should probably revisit that if that's the policy moving forward for everyone. I do recall once upon a time when I was on this that uh,

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I think that was the way it was approached and consolidating all >> I think maybe it's been about I'm going to guess three years. I don't know if any of the other directors remember it. uh it used to stay within our departments and and it showed up and the expended showed up and maybe three years

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ago they switched it to this uh idea that it gets aggregated. I think the idea is that across the city it gets in one pool and maybe some offices use it, they don't use it. Um it allows them to to make it a little more lean. >> I'm not sure. I can't really answer to that, but it's been

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>> Sorry, I can't answer to that. That line item got incorporated under the HR division. >> Okay. Um, director if you can or BA if you can answer. Um, so

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according to state statute I believe the revenue that come in via construction code is supposed to reside within that jurisdiction. Can you confirm or deny that any of you? >> I mean we are supposed to spend all of

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the construction code revenue back into construction code. Yes. and and construction code has requested more staff to be able to um fully staff that office. That is a desire of theirs uh to do that. So if that is a possibility at any point in the future, they would like

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to do that. >> So So we're clear, all of the money that's generated via construction coal is supposed to go back into that office. Now is is it applicable to use those

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funds for new hires salaries and things of that nature >> in construction code? >> Yes. >> Oh yes, absolutely. It so it's not like a dedication by rider type thing like it doesn't need to go into its own account and that they only they use it but the

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DCA does want to see that you're investing in in the construction code office. So when you say it it's not like a dedicated so where where are other avenues where it can be spent >> goes into the general fund and only

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>> so it goes back into so it's wait I'm confused so is it state or is it not? So I I think there are two different questions here. Uh the mechanics of how the revenue comes in goes comes into the general fund for the city, right? Um and

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then the allocation of how that money is being spent is a a different um conversation about how we fund the division within HEDC. So >> sounds like it's restricted. >> I'm sorry. >> Money goes into the general fund, but it sounds like it's restricted to

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construction code. Is that >> it? It's not restricted. Maybe Joe can speak to it a little more. It's a guideline. They would like to see you invest in construction code, but it's not a restriction. >> Council still has jurisdiction over that money. >> So, our fee schedule is is set up to

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only make enough money to run the department. And that and that's for salaries, fringe benefits, operating expenses. Um, we haven't changed our fee schedule in over 20 years because we've

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been making way too much money and the state will never allow it. But, um, they they it's something that the state does. They don't go after us for it, but they don't they want to see us invest in the department

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with the funds that we're collecting. >> Yes. For instance, we're we're short on elevator inspectors. So, they want me to hire a third party elevator using the additional funds from my office to pay a third party. That's what they're asking,

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you know, one of the things they're asking for my office to do. >> Thank you, Joe. So in light in light of all of that, right, for me it's it's problematic because I believe two people

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were cut part of the 31 from construction co and here you guys testimony is the state would like to see us reinvest $9 million for the most part back into that division. So, I mean, we

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just have to have some type of comprehensive plan because just based on like people waiting on inspections and things like that, it's seems like it's taking forever. And I and I get it. They're building on every other block in the city. But if we have

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the opportunity to hire from the money that's generated from that department, I I think that's a that's a no-brainer. Uh I think if we can exp especially if it's not a financial burden to the taxpayers um I think we should we should explore

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that. >> You're you are correct. One person it wasn't two but it was there was one >> oh it was one person. Okay. >> A clerk technical assistant. >> I'm going to turn it over to my co-chair Councilman Griffin who's got the

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construction code. Oh great segue. Oh, we're going into housing preservation. >> Oh. Oh, we going housing preservation. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Um yes. So, we're going to go ahead into housing preservation. Um so, I'm going to ask uh council president

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um to begin. >> Okay. Um question in regards to because this housing preservation commission is for the board, right? Similar to how we have the budgets for the planning board, zoning board. This is a board specific,

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not a division budget, per se. >> No, no. Housing preservation is a full division. Are you talking about historic preservation? >> Oh, I'm on the wrong one. I'm on historic preservation. >> My bad. That was next. >> That was a very simple one.

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>> Okay. Everybody's thing is in a different order. >> Yes. >> Let me get to the right spot. Got you. Okay. Circle back to me. Okay, we'll go ahead with um Councilman Brooks and then go back to Councilman

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Ridley. >> Sure. Um could you So, housing preservation is a division and what are the um their offices nested within that division? Correct.

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>> According to the city uh ordinance? Yes. >> Okay. And that would be office of landlord tenant. >> Yes. And what what are the other ones? Short-term rentals >> is it's primarily office of landlord tenant. I think it's still written in the city ordinance that it has code

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compliance, but it no longer has code compliance. As I think you all know that was moved to quality of life uh a bunch of years ago, but how it functions, it's the office of landlord tenant. That that's the only true office. >> Gotcha. And um you already spoke about

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the uh termination of the contract for short-term rentals. >> Um is so my understanding was um this was a contractor that was basically maintaining a database and or

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were they actually corresponding with the owners of the short-term rental units? uh they were not doing that but they did provide the digital platform by which you applied for and that the team did compliance for uh short-term rentals

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as well as they did um like scraping of the internet to find uh illegal units. We were able to transition the application process back onto the permit portal. So sometimes we talk about as Tyler Tyler Technologies is the company

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that that secures that permit portal. So that uh process has been happening um over the last few weeks. Uh as I mentioned it was only July 9th that we we cut that contract. Um and uh the enforcement side of that uh will wind up

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being primarily through cclick fix. It was one of the the changes the cuts the austerity measures. >> Okay. And um you know there's a lot of different short-term rental platforms. There's Airbnb, >> VBO,

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um you know, and then people I guess you could go just do it yourself like through a realtor. >> So we have the city has a good relationship with Airbnb. Many years ago, the law department worked closely with Airbnb and they agreed to a an

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agreement. I I'm not exactly sure if it's a contract, but an agreement with the city. So they require their users to get a registration number. That registration number is generated by the office of housing preservation and um they permit the taxes and the money to

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the city. If we could do something similar with the other major players for example like VBO um that would be very beneficial to the city. It cuts down on the enforcement issues because you won't you're not able to even post your property unless you've worked with the city. um as well as it would then

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generate more money. >> I don't know if Jonna wants to talk about it. >> Yeah, I just wanted to jump in. Good afternoon, council. Um so from a compliance perspective because that is one of the concerns when we were discontinuing our services with short-term rental. Um we were able to

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export reports from the platform that includes the URL to all of these advertisements. So even without the platform, we have the data that if we have a constituent that complains or a cclick fix request that's submitted, we can cross reference to that Excel sheet

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or that export and find those advertisements. >> Thank you. >> Well, um I'm sorry, just to follow up to that because I know like with um Uber, if you're not a New York resident or you're not registered in New York, you

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cannot pick up trips there. So, is there any way we can do that with these platforms who are not in agreement with Jersey City? If if if they don't want to agree to our terms,

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then they shouldn't be allowed to participate here in Jersey City like Airbnb is. Is there any way that can be done? >> That's something we would need to talk to the law department about. Um, I know that that's how we made the agreement with Airbnb in the first place was

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through like their law, you know, our lawyers talking to their lawyers. So, we would have to talk to them to see what's possible. Like, could we serve them a letter that do we need to do anything from an ordinance perspective? You know, I I'm not aware. >> Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Uh, the president.

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>> Okay. I'm back on the right page. So, so um I see that we have a replacement now for the director of housing preservation and in our last session uh with HHS we saw

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that the director moved over. Is this change official now? Um it's not official. It was on the org chart due to HR being involved, but there will be we're we've been actively searching. I would say that's been one of my primary

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duties over the last few months is to post for and try to hire um a new director. And so uh announcements will come in in the next few weeks. >> Okay. Cuz that was going to be my next thing, not to you specifically, director, but um to the administration

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if we can be mindful of letting the council know when these changes take effect because we don't really get a notice uh when there's a new director hired. uh or a new division director. Like similar to earlier today, if we didn't have the HR session today, the council wouldn't have known we had a new

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HR director. And it's not just this administration. The last administration was horrible at letting us know uh when people changed also. And it is the administration's um right to hire and fire, but it helps us when we're reaching out um to these directors for

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answers on different things if we know who they are. That's Councilman Zuka. Good. Councilman Efros, >> uh to follow up on the short-term rental

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question, um just learned early this morning, uh I think we've gone through over,300 resolutions and ordinances so far this year. So, correct me if I'm wrong, but did we not recently vote on approving an RFP for a new vendor uh for short-term

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rental uh enforcement? I know one was in the works. I don't remember if you guys voted on it, but either way, we're not putting one out. We we we were planning on that was the intent. We were working on it uh through the first half of the year was to put that was the intent uh

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through conversations um with the rest of the administration regarding budgetary choices. We decided to not pursue that. So, we are not putting one out. Is that something that you all would be seeking out next year if we're in a financial position to be able to do so? Do you feel like from the data that

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we've collected and the information we've gotten, we're in a better position to just do it ourselves? >> I think we would monitor what happens if we are successful with the processing of the uh applications internally to the system we already pay for. Um, then maybe there's not a need. I think the

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main part to monitor is the enforcement. So, we'll have to see if we're successful. some of the things that Councilman Griffin mentioned working with the law department maybe it's not necessary but or maybe we could contract out for a much lower amount just the

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compliance um we'll have to monitor for the rest of the year and then propose you know next year what we think we need >> okay thank you um on the uh landlord tenant office um I also

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asked earlier this morning uh because the administration um department has internal audit office in it. And so I asked about has there ever been an internal audit around um the gap between the rent protection

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enforcement that uh we we want to be doing and that we need to be doing for our residents and what we are actually uh able to do right now because we we all know there is a gap there. um when we have a hardworking land tenant office, John, I appreciate um all the correspondence we we often have uh

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between our offices, but um has there ever been uh setting that office aside because it sounds like it's not as relevant. Has there ever been an audit um of just what kinds of rent protection enforcement needs there are? What is operationally getting in the way? And

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this is the subject of our rent protection special investigation committee, but is that audit um has it has there ever been one? >> I don't believe there's ever been a specific audit like that um other than the like the rent control audit that we're in the mid midst of, but I do

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intend um with this idea of looking for a new director. I did specifically work to look for someone that had a background and a history um in in tenant protections. And my thought was that we would spend the rest of the year really doing a deep dive into this division and

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doing whatever reworking we need to um to to make the changes necessary to set them up for better success. So um certainly we could have discussions about using the uh audit office to help with digging into some of that to see to

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to like really pinpoint where our weak points are. Yeah, I I would love to be helpful and my office would love to be helpful if we can in any way there. I'd be really curious to see what comes out of that. Excited that we have a director who's committed to that. Um, and

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segueing to the rent control audit report. Um, can we get a sense of how that is going? Are there staffing needs that are reflected in this budget or not reflected in this budget that would be helpful in making sure that gets out there? >> You know, what might be helpful is even if we just go through the phases of it.

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Janna's leading this effort. So, she'd be great to talk about it. Um, but I'll just give a high level, right? So, there's four phases of the audit. One is to create the publicly accessible inventory list um of rent controlled properties. So, that's the one we're soon to be rolling out. Uh the phase two is to identify the properties that are

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exempt from rent control that actually have something on the books where they've gone through the process to be officially exempt. Then there'll be a tenant notification phase um and expansion of the enforcement efforts. And then the last phase is going to be establishing the base rents for all rent

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control units. Um, some of those phases do need external help. Some of them Janna and her team has been doing a great job in doing internally, but she definitely feels that some of them she's going to need external help. I don't know you want to. So, um, just to give a little more

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detail about the first phase and how we've been working through that. Um, that's really about going through basically all of the registrations that we have on file in our office, going back to sometimes the 80s, the '9s to see what these landlords of these

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properties were indicating the property rent control status to be. Um, unfortunately, sometimes with transfer of ownership, you know, property owners think that they're no longer subject to rent control or the new owner doesn't know the rent control status. So, going back that far has been important. um

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through a combination of the New Jersey tax assessment search, our uh you know registry, we've been able to compile this list that hopefully we will be able to promote to the public soon. Um but simultaneously, we've been issuing

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summones to landlords that have not complied. So, we're trying to do two things at once because in the later phases, we're going to have to establish the rents for these properties. And if we don't have any registrations on file, how what's our starting point? Where do

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we go? So, not only have we been working through identifying the properties, but we're issuing summones to non-compliant landlords, prioritizing those that have not uh registered at least for the past six years first so that not only are we prioritizing th those negligent

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landlords, but we're utilizing our resources as efficiently as possible. um maximum, you know, uh basically maximum outcome. >> Thank you. Um >> I have a couple more. >> Yeah, go ahead. >> Um

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in general, uh for the landlord 10 office, um appreciate that. Hopefully we can get this this audit out there soon. But in general, uh staffing, what what other staffing needs are out there? What is reflected in the proposed budget here to kind of meet the gaps in your

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staffing needs? And um to what extent would those would any additional kind of staff or some specific additional staff help generate revenue in to cover the costs of the office itself? >> So sorry, >> are we talking about construction code right now?

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>> No tenant housing >> and housing preservation. >> I mean co-chairman, >> I'd ask that we refocus and we'll definitely get there. I definitely want to get there for sure. Um but we're we're on construction code. No, no, we're on 10. We're on housing

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preservation. >> I'm sorry. Housing preservation. I'm sorry. Is this housing preservation we're talking about? Okay. >> Yes. >> Gotcha. >> I will say that. Yeah, I want John to answer um and and be specific, but I will say that the the directors were

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instructed to do extremely lean budget, right? We understood there hard decisions that had to be made this year. So, I wouldn't say that the budget reflects what they want or what they hope to do, but I think it's a fair question like if we added more, what would that do? So, I'll just want to put

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frame it within that context. >> Understood. >> Hold on. I'm sorry, Jake. Um, because of uh time constraints um and this is a larger this is a you know large hearing. Um if we can ask other questions offline

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and I and um I think we should go ahead into construction code. >> I think the others would need to finish there. >> I apologize. I didn't mean to disrupt things. >> We're happy to talk with you offline, but we appreciate the sentiment.

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>> Sure. >> Yeah. I defer to the co-chairs on how to proceed here. I mean I happy to kind of wrap up my questioning here if I but I defer to the chairs. >> Yeah, go ahead. Wrap it up. >> Okay. Yeah, J, please. >> Sure. Thank you.

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>> Um, so I will say that in the budget that's being proposed right now, there are staff that are that we've allocated line items to that are currently being paid through our lead grants. Um, we're hoping to repurpose those staff going

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into next year if these grants don't continue into next year. So, I believe that that's what's reflected here as well. >> Yeah. I mean, we're trying to reassess uh the role of lead within the office and how we would use that that money. Obviously, if they're working on a

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grant, they have to continue working on the grant. Um but we are looking at all of that and um we will do we'll look in more detail about uh the impact and from a revenue standpoint. >> Sure. I could ask questions about housing preservation all day. So I'll I'll yield to my colleagues. Thank you.

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>> You >> No, go ahead. Go ahead. One qu Go ahead. >> Let's do one question because you guys demand to ask a question. >> Okay. Um I have a couple really quick questions. Um so the employee in this division who was um arrested for

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allegedly accepting a bribe um which we have zero tolerance for um are they still currently getting paid because they are are still shown as their fullyear salary on this sheet. >> They're currently suspended without pay but from a budgetary perspective um they

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have a right to stay on the budget and needs to be budgeted for. I think I'd have to defer any questions about the long term of that to HR. >> Okay. Thank you. >> As as noted on there, there are on the org chart, there are a few employees that are either suspended or on leave. I

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mean, that's the one that's suspended. Um, and so I noted those through an asterric just so you could understand from an operating standpoint what staff we actually have physically there on a daily basis operating. And just to clarify, not to interrupt, but uh you have to mark them suspended

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without pay for a criminal charge. You can't just fire them. Correct. >> Correct. Well, I mean, I'm not HR, but my understanding is they must continue. The slot slot must be held. They have a right to due process. Okay. But they are suspended without pay, not with pay. >> Yes, that's my understanding. >> I was asking that so that people I also

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agreed zero tolerance for that. I just want people watching to understand that we're not just hanging on to people who are accused of accepting >> to hold them from a budgetary perspective, but not necessarily pay them currently. Okay, thank you so much. Um my sec my other question is I notice both in this division and in other

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divisions we have um contract line items for um stenographer whether for the rent leveling board or the planning board or the zoning board. Um would it make more sense to would it be more costefficient to hire a stenographer inhouse and have them work across the various divisions

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and boards as needed or is this the most costefficient way to do that? Uh sometimes we have boards that meet at the same time. So I think there could be some challenges. Historically that's the way the city's always done it. They've always outsourced it. Um so uh you know

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I don't think that's a situation we've specifically looked into before as an opportunity. Um I could speak with the administration if that's something that the council wants us to look into. I do think there's often multiple meetings though running at the same time. >> Okay. Thank you. And then my very last

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question. Um there is a uh lead poisoning inspector position that was listed as a new hire that you requested but that the city um administration declined to provide um funds for

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I I would assume these are probably revenue generating positions if they issue violations is um so is and how how will that affect both you know keeping keeping kids safe from lead poisoning most importantly and and also um would

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this have been a revenue generating position? >> I mean actually when we've looked at what gen uh revenue lead has generated, it hasn't reached the levels we actually anticipated. So it's something that we're looking at closely. I don't think right now we actually have that need. So I think we're going to be okay.

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>> Okay. Glad to hear it. Thank you. >> A follow-up question. How are we monitoring lead poisoning right now as we have vacancy? So it's it's our office doesn't really monitor lead poisoning. That's happens in HHS. What we do is we uh do lead inspections. So all uh

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properties that meet certain criteria have to be inspected. They can either get those inspections on the private market. There are private contractors that offer it or we offer the inspection services. There is a series like a list of criteria that those inspectors use

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like do they see peeling paint for example, things like that. If uh if you're clear, they're given you know a clearance and then uh they only have to come back I think it's every three years every 3 years and if not then they have

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to remediate uh th those lead issues. So we have a a secondary grant that is a lead remediation grant and if people meet uh certain income requirements we the city can provide them the remediation services at no cost. um if

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not uh the building owner has to remediate. So that's the way we're handling it. It's more from an inspection standpoint and an administrative standpoint more than the actual poisoning. The poisoning and the follow-ups from that happen at health in health department.

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>> Thank you. U can I ask one question? >> So I just want to >> um question about line item 308 mileage allowance. It was it is 24,000 in the past 24,000 it is pretty significant

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amount. Can you please talk about it? >> So in general if you see mileage across our entire department um our inspectors do not have city cars. They use their own cars to go to inspections. So, we follow the um standards within uh either

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JCSA contract or or union 246 contract in terms of what they're allowed from a mileage allowance. If they meet the certain criteria, uh certain stops a day, certain stops uh uh days per month, then we pay them that. So, that's what that item is.

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>> Any of the head or directors are using uh city transportation, city cars? Currently >> we have two cars uh assigned to the department. One is a general car that is for use by any employee across the entire all the divisions and one is

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assigned to the director's office. That's all we have. While we have actually um 60% of our all of our staff are either inspectors or technical, we have a significant amount of inspectors across the board. So we don't have city

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cars like for them. The actual number we have we have like 32 inspectors. So we we could never provide a fleet of that size. >> Okay. So they are they are just claiming for mileage. >> That's what it is. Yes. >> Thank you. >> People who don't need to go out

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regularly like who have a periodic inspection here or there have to go to a site. We offer the one city card they can all share. Um I also think um in light of everything 24,000 for the volume of

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back and forth in those cars I think it's worth it because you get the city car and his insurance and all that is just paying mileage. So I think just given the volume of all that I think this 24,000 is reasonable. >> I I brought the um I I know I heard you

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all speak about it in another hearing. So, I brought the transportation reimbursement schedule with me. Like, this is what it looks like. It's in all the union contracts. And there's the maximum amount per month for 246 employee is $275. Um, and for a JCSA employee, it's 357,

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but that's that's like the the maximum. >> Would you be possible to give it to us this? >> Yeah, this is part of the union contracts. >> Thank you, >> director. I want to um focus on a few things here. uh one. So this uh

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individual that's replacing director Richardson, is that person tenatively there until a new search is done? Uh what's the status of that? >> They're in the process uh of being of of going through the hiring process. >> Okay. So I would my only suggestion was

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to ensure that individuals within the department have an opportunity present themselves to um >> it was an open call. anyone could apply. >> Cool. Um, so as it relates to the um

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the lead inspection, um, I know at one point we had received some money via a grant and then it kind of like, I don't know, got caught in the pipeline. We weren't really able to execute. So, if you can talk uh about

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where we at right now as it relates to that. Sure. So, we there were two different grants that we went after. Um, one was related to the lead inspections and the DCA provided that because it was a new state mandate. That grant we used in full and it has been completed. The

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second one that you're talking about uh referring to is the lead remediation grant. So, that was it. It covered some staff time, but it also specifically was meant to when lead was found uh like when an inspection was done and it was found that it needed remediation, it was

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to help pay for those services. But there are very strict criteria you had to meet to be able to take advantage of those. And so that's where what you're referring to is we had to give some of it back because either we didn't find, you know, enough houses that needed the

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remediation or the people that were found didn't meet the criteria enough. There are some bills in front of you, I think even on the next council meeting that are paying some contractors that did do some of the lead remediation work, but the DCA gave us more money for remediation than we were able to spend.

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>> All right. Um my last was just a comment that um I think that we need to really like ramp up um enforcement on the Airbnbs. I didn't even know it was another platform that rented out short-term rentals. I thought it would that most I thought all of it went

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through Airbnb, but I know that >> Lord Jesus every other week I'm getting a call about a Airbnb. Um so I don't know how but I know we need to create some mechanism especially given the lack of

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affordability in this city um and one's individual to find housing I mean one's ability to find housing >> we recommend um constituents put in any um concerns or complaints through cclick fix right now that's our best mechanism we don't we no longer have a proactive

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mechanism Okay. Um be very quick. Uh lines 308 314 um 308 24,000 uh allocated in 25 as well as in 26. Um

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last year expended $14,099. this year. Um, as of July 21st, $641. So, going to look to, and I've just been saying this to everybody who comes through, look to rightsize that and, um, offer that as an amendment to my

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colleagues, but happy to talk to you about it. >> Yeah. I mean, I think I think it's always hard to know exactly how much you need, but if that's how what we spent last year, we probably could could handle a little less. I don't know if anyone else already spoke about this, but the contractual line 314

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um >> the contractual line is this the specific um program we spoke about. So, we owe them all that's left in here is what we owe them for services already rendered through July uh 9th, not

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anything more beyond that. So, we we it's $38,000 a quarter. So, it's just what we owe them. >> That's the Airbnb. >> It's the Yeah, it's it's Avenue is the company. It's a they do uh I think they just changed their name again, Numo or Nemo, something like that. Anyway, it's

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the service that provides the short-term rental. >> So, we can reduce that to 38,000. And >> I mean, the number that's in here, 100 is what we owe them. >> We owe them 100. >> Yes. Yes. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> I have no other questions.

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>> Moving on. >> Yeah, we're moving on. All right. >> Construction code. Finally got there. Uh it's been on my head um in my mind. So um I will um go down the line as we've been doing and start with the council president more day.

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>> Um I'm good. No questions. >> Councilman Brooks. >> Sorry, a lot of sitting. Um, uh, could you speak to the position? Actually, two questions. One, um,

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Director Chilone, we've had an ongoing conversation about the elevator inspector position. Um, and that's a position that needs um, state certification. Correct. >> All of our inspectors have to have

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certification at the state level. Yes. There's three different levels of certification, but yes. >> Okay. Um, and I guess my my second question is the other positions that were uh requested. Um,

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well, actually, so right now, do we have any elevator inspectors? >> Unfortunately, we have three slots for elevator inspectors. One of those slots is a part-time inspector. He is still here, uh, thank goodness. um two the

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other two were filled but uh in this year we lost them. We lost them to other com uh competition. Elevator inspectors is probably our one of our most challenging inspector position to keep filled. It's a very competitive uh environment out there. You have to have

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a significant amount of experience as an elevator mechanic to even get your license as an elevator inspector. And elevator mechanics are in high demand and elevator inspectors are in high demand across the state. So I know that Joe has worked diligently on this. When

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we look, we do exhaustive searches. So we post on uh the legal municipalities, which is where most of the inspectors look for jobs. We also in the past have sent letters to every single certified inspector in the entire state directly

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to their home or whatever is listed in their registration at the state level. Um it is very difficult. That is why Joe mentioned he is working on a contract for a third-party inspector specifically for this this trade. >> Thank you. Yeah, I was just going to say

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this is a revenue generating position. >> Absolutely. >> Um is there any um opportunity in addition to a contract to having some kind of pdeium um or like specialist position? I don't know what the union contracts would allow, but um you know

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if this is something that someone could be hired to do as a second job or or something like that. >> So that's how we wound up with a part-time person. We've always advertised for the job, but if someone comes and applies that says, "Hey, I'll do this, but I can only do it x amount

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of hours or x days," we take them. We don't turn them away. So that's exactly how we wound up with our part-time inspector. Currently, we will take licensed inspectors for whatever we can get. >> Got it. >> In general, the finance department has worked with us every time. Um if we

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someone comes in the door and it doesn't meet exactly what's in the budget, they know that, you know, if we find someone, you know, please let us hire them. >> Just to >> So to be respectful of everyone's time, it's already 20 after two. Can we limit

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the questions to two, please? >> Two. That's fine. >> Yeah, >> I I'll do I'll do one. This is what >> one second. Just a follow-up question on Councilman Brook's question. >> Excuse me. Oh, hold on. Let let him finish

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>> question what he asked. Uh, >> perfect question. >> Go ahead. Go ahead. >> You mentioned third party. Um, so can you tell me how does it work? >> Sure. I'm going to turn it over to Joe. best for him. >> We would we would put out a request for

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proposal to all the licensed third-party inspection agencies that are licensed by the Department of Community Affairs. I believe there's eight or nine of them that do elevator inspections. They will get back to us with a percentage of the fee that they would charge to do the

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inspection and the city would get an administrative fee for whatever they charge. We would review each proposal and uh go with the best one not just for the money but who can do the most inspections. We are um quite a few

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inspections for fiveyear inspections uh short and that is where we generate most of our money from. >> Thank you. That will likely be in front of you all short. >> Yeah, Tom. >> I only need one question. Thank you. Um

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I I I view construction code as one of the more important uh departments of the city just not just because it's revenue generating but but towards C given all the construction we have going on. Joe you and I speak frequently and I appreciate that um accountability and accessibility. Uh any this question is

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for anyone Joe Ana do do you think you have the resources built into this budget as is to be proactive with some of the investigations going on because what we've the reason why I speak to Joe so frequently is because residents will uh call concerned about what they

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believe whether it's accurate or not to be illegal improper construction activities and and uh the only mechanism we have so far as they call our office and I report it to you, but is there any way to be more proactive with with some of that?

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>> I mean, and to be honest, the this the staffing that we have is extremely tight. It it does not really allow for proactive inspections. I mean, of course, we ask the inspectors to be vigilant when they're out on the street. If they're on a call to go to a specific uh different properties, if they see

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stuff, we ask them to be proactive. But they are all scheduled all day long doing inspections. And even the sub codes on a, you know, time to time basis, depending on how tight things are, also will will go into the field.

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So, um, you know, we're not staffed at the level that we'd like to see, but we understand, you know, budgets are tight. And so, we we put together a budget. We feel like we can do what we need to do, but it is at that that level. It's not extremely proactive. >> And I would ask this of any department

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in the city. Uh, when the inspectors go on cicklic fix and respond, can we make it a policy that uh a ticket doesn't get closed out just because it's forwarded or it's acknowledged? closed is the issue is no longer in existence. Is there a way we can start

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training our our our staff to ensure that we have take that's open until it's it's resolved? >> Um I know that in construction code for example, Joe himself deals with the cclick fixes. Um so I'll I'll ask >> Hey Joe, I'm not signaling you out. I'm

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just saying generally speaking this is something that we >> No, no, that's okay. They we we when we get a complaint and we go out and we issue a sovereign and a violation, we say it's closed because once the ticket is issued and it goes to the courts, my

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office has nothing else to do with it. Uh we're relying on the prosecutor and the judge to, you know, find them to the highest extent that they can. Um leaving it open would leave leave it open for 6 months because it takes that long to get

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to to court. I mean, not just that that ticket is issued, but that the behavior alleged ceases. >> Well, yeah, they they they remain open until we get compliance and then we close it with the compliance. >> Thank you. >> I just want to say on that, um I know

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like at least what's that address on MLK? There's been all type of infractions and violations issued. I don't even know. I think they're >> MLK in court. No, MLK 170, whatever it

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is, MLK 4 MLK. Um, so we can get a I guess a update on that. Um, because to council person Zuper point is constituents come to us about a problem and once city is deployed there and

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citations are issued like for us, we think that's the end all be all. But the resident is like, well, the behavior is still going on. And so there's a disconnect with issuing of tickets and remedy the problem and things like that. So >> yeah, we're limited on our ability to

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make them comply, right? Our mechanism, our summons or violations and then it moves on to the court system. It's a challenge that I feel I know I've had these conversations with Tanya and with Joe in the past. Um we don't have control over it once it moves into the

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violations and stuff. We can't like we can't um >> Sorry, I just would like to keep moving. Did we get the D& yet? >> Okay. >> Yeah. And if we could stay with the the budget and the line items. I'm happy to continue after this if uh folks have

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more time. >> Right. I will be uh quick with my couple questions. Um, director, you mentioned a little bit earlier um that construction code makes way too much money and the state wouldn't permit an increase of fines.

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So, it's been a couple decades um since we've increased fines. So, it's good to know that there's revenue being generated here. if you could just reexplain um how we're stacking that reality up against not hiring some of the positions

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or the administration not um choosing to to fund in this proposed budget some more of the hires like another building inspector, another electrical inspector. I understand elevator inspectors a trickier one. So that's one of my questions just stacking up the decision

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not to make some new hires even though there is really significant revenue being generated and then relatedly looks like we have 100k in overtime wages. Um is there anything we can do to try and bring that overtime down or uh is that

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just related to hiring more full-time and permanent positions? If you can speak to those. >> That's correct. the we can the overtime is there because we don't have enough inspectors to do the jobs. We want them to finish what they start during the day

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and if it gets too late, we want them to stay and do it. Other times they'll come in on a Saturday to catch up on the inspections. Uh we're mandated by law that we get the inspection done within 72 hours. Um, so if we get a complaint that it's been pushed off, we'll get

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somebody there during an off hour or Saturday to move the inspection along. And it is challenging to find people right now. A lot of the workers are they don't want to come work for a city. They're working for themselves. They're

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doing much better. Um, and there's just not a lot of qualified people out there yet. And other towns pay the inspectors more. state pays them more. I've had a lot of people leave to go to the state for that reason. So, we have to look

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into, you know, making it more competitive to bring people here to Jersey City to work. >> Thank you, Council Person Little. >> Um, those were my two biggest questions

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I was going to ask, so thank you, Jake. Um, I guess, uh, my third question, which is not as pressing because it's a smaller number, but I will ask it now that I have the time. Um, is, uh, professional services. You requested $10,000. Um, you got zero

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dollars. Uh, what were those? What have those been used for? And, and how will that affect operations? >> Sure. I'll turn this over to Joe, but those are for we had budgeted for that because there have been times where we've needed consulting engineering services like in an emergency. Um, and

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so that was something that wound up getting cut, but Joe in the past has been asked to do things like that. So, do you want to talk to that? >> Yeah, that's correct. We we get complaints about facades or buildings that might be imminent hazard. We rely on the property owner to get their

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engineer to give us a report. And sometimes they're not available and we need to make a decision. We have to hire an outside uh engineer or somebody to evaluate it for our uh purpose because we don't always want to accept theirs.

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Uh sometimes they just want to knock the building down just to get away from historic uh approvals. So, we would like to have somebody on our uh staff or contractually to take a look at it for us to give us a better answer.

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>> Okay. Um but that's not in the budget this year, so we won't be able to use that this year. Okay. Thanks. Um, and then I guess as a followup to one of the questions that Councilman Eras asked, um, so the three I guess big ticket new

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hire inspectors, um, you you mentioned the elevator inspector is a very difficult role to fill. Um, but the building inspector and the electrical inspector were likewise zeroed out. So, we are not hiring any of those this year. Um, are are you still looking for

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those? are they're not in this year's budget, but are you still um actively putting those positions out there because my understanding is they are revenue generating positions? Um are you still actively trying to hire with the hope of bringing someone in uh next year? >> Yes, we we we are still actively

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trying to hire them. We have ads on the League of Municipalities and we we do send out uh letters to um all the licensed inspectors throughout the state. >> Okay. We do have some vacancies though throughout. I mean, I know the budget sheet shows some cut, but we have a

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building inspector position open. We have two plumbing inspector positions open. We have a we're onboarding a fire inspector um that it's in the org chart. And then we have the two elevator inspector positions. So, all of those are advertised for and we are actively searching and looking to hire.

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>> Okay. So, even though there's no money allocated for them, if if you found someone if you found someone tomorrow, you would still be able to hire them. Those ones there are those are the positions there are money allocated. Um if it's on your org chart like this is the org chart it means that there's that

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that is in the budget. There were more positions that uh the director had asked for that those got cut but we we were able to keep the baseline level that we had last year and any vacancies were currently hiring. >> Okay. Um that's

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>> limit to two. I I I know. I'm I'm just saying that's not what it looks like in the spreadsheet. >> It might be. It might be. I'd have to look specifically, but it might be that like there's a name there, but it's prrated amount because they left or like for building, for example, one person was promoted from inspector to sub code

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because Joe was the sub code. So, that person is going to show up in the budget. Um, but now they're the sub code. So, I promise they're in there. It's there. I promise they're there. We're not We're not at We're not looking for people that are not funded. Okay, I'm going to councilman Gilmore

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question as I already asked another one. >> Sorry, I'm going to turn back to Gilmore. I know you spoke if maybe you could limit to one council and then say >> so I just have a follow-up question but more of a statement. Um, so on the DCA website, local financing notice,

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dedication of revenue fees for uniform construction code enforcement, it does look like there is a dedication by writer. um as it relates to those funds. So, just wanted to put that on the record. Um but my bigger question is I

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was trying to allude to earlier if there's an instance where a individual in or entity has outstanding violations that we have not been able to I guess enforce or whatever it is. How is it

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that they're able to get additional permits pulled? The uniform construction code allows us to continue issuing permits and doing inspections. The only thing we cannot do if there's open violations is issue a

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certificate of occupancy. >> No, no CO will be issued. And I believe the one you're asking about is the one that does not have a certificate of occupancy. The only way to go after them is have our law department take them to

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superior court for show cause. >> I just I mean something has to be done as it as it relates to that. Um because we don't want people to just be circumventing the rules.

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um you open up a can of worms before you know everybody and their mother and father be doing it. Um so I know I was speaking with Deputy Mayor Kashab about this issue and I understand the nuances and it's very problematic but I think we have to have to figure out a way to

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resolve it. Um and frankly I'm tired of people keep calling me about the same same issue you know. Um Council Person Singh. Thank you councilman. So there was there is a salary that increase by 22k and the

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justification says that additional license um just if you can share what license was that 22k um knowing the exact person that's hard to

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speak to. Oh, July 13, 2026. >> Supervisor customer service. >> We can talk about it offline because it's more of a personnel issue, but that person did take on additional duties. >> Okay. Thank you.

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>> Any other questions? >> Thank you, Councilman. >> Councilman Griffin. >> Um, yeah. Uh, well, just to, uh, piggyback off of Councilman Gilmore, um, I rode past that property and they have these fake permits up. It's like a

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picture of a fireman or something like that saying work is being done here. I I don't I I don't know how we're allowing that. Um but you know, I just wanted to put that out there. Um so

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with permits, you know, there there's a a a dollar amount equated to that. Correct. >> Um with permits there's like >> Yes. >> They have to pay for your permits, right? And it's a there's a calculation uh that it goes through there. It's all

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standardized and it depends on I mean Joe can speak to it more size of the project, what they're doing, cost of the work, but yes. >> Okay. So that's that's lost revenue. Um but um I have a question. You may not be able to answer it now, but I'm going to

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ask it on the record. um when it comes to permitting and and losing money. How many um two family How many two families have been converted into three families without zoning approval or construction

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permits in the last 5 years? And how many garages have been converted into residential units without permits? >> Well, we would only know that if we were aware of their existence, but I know historically. Um and actually this is a

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better question for Tanya. Um the zoning officer has uh come about come into these situations quite frequently. Um historically the city has been trying to combat the illegal third units for many many years. They would issue violations. The unit would get ripped out uh and

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then the person would just build it back again. So one initiative that we undertook was changing the way that the zoning laws were written to actually legalize it. but they have to come in and take a proactive action with us. Um, and so Tanya's office works on a lot of

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those cases where we are able to let them have the third unit as long as they go through the process and legalize it. And that's where some of those payments that I spoke about come in. Depending on the size of the building, it can either become an affordable unit, not so much the twos to threes. Um, in those cases,

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they pay a fractional amount, right? Because it's not it's not a, you know, it's not one full unit. It's a partial unit and they pay into the affordable housing trust fund. It is something we work on pretty regularly. We work on it very closely with Gigi's office. If a person chooses to make it affordable,

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her office comes in and they deed restrict that unit. If not, Tanya's office processes that payment and that payment goes to the trust fund. >> Well, that way. So, so with that being said, um has has it have you been

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getting a good response to that? People coming in taking out permits. Are we seeing like a a a great number of people doing that? >> I wouldn't say a great number, but in the three years I've been doing it, this is the first year that I see people

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legalizing their third unit. >> Um thank you. Can I can I uh >> Tanya follow up on that? So is it possible to uh raise fines significant

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amounts in case people are building without the permit? Is it possible to raise or have charge a significant fine? >> All fines across the city have a maximum of $2,000 a day. And so it the fines are

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they're issued by the courts not us. But yes, like they could charge the maximum, >> right? Yes. So that we would have would we would not have that pro ongoing problem. The stronger our courts are, the more likely people will come into compliance and work with us.

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>> Right. Thank you. >> Okay. Um I'm going to ask my questions and then we'll move on. Um just very quickly uh um just making a point here, not necessarily need to respond, but um

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pretty much every expense line inside of the 200 down um are either zero spent in 2026 or underspent. looking at uh it's 308

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um $65,000 for mileage. Year to date, it's $12,772. So, look, >> so we do have some challenges. Um I I know this was spoken about in one of the other hearings or maybe at the last council meeting. There are some challenges with getting the inspectors

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to submit their reimbursements timely. So, we find that they come in really late, >> really late >> and at the end of the year. And actually, I mean, I don't want to put any pressure on Zaki, but Zakiyia has been a champion for this within our department and really working hard to

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try to get the the the inspectors so to submit timely. Apparently, what she has found is that the union contract does not require um them to do it within a certain time frame. And so, there have been times where she's tried to get a little heavy-handed with it and try to, you know, get them to submit. and they

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pushed back and said that there's nothing in the contract that says that they have to submit it within a certain time frame. So that is a challenge we deal with internally and they show up at the end. >> Ac I completely understand. I can see that happening.

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>> So um the one thing I'll just uh ask is have we considered here using city vehicles? I mean, you would need so many. All of the inspectors are out at the same time and we have almost 40 in the department. So, I mean, we haven't really because

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it's just so intense. We just need so many vehicles. >> Do flex car. No, >> I mean, but they're all out at the same time all day, right? Most of these it definitely the construction code ones um but most of our inspectors are doing the

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maximum amount of stops um and the maximum amount of days. So they are out all day. We do do that. I mean that's why we have the one car for people who don't go out on a regular basis. >> Um what was the amount revenue generated through construction code? >> It's just under 10 million.

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>> Under 10 million. Um are we able to get a breakdown of that? Um how that comes in under what? >> Yeah. I mean you means like by type >> types of revenues. >> Yeah. Yeah. We have it. It's it's a little tricky because the we can usually give you like permits versus

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certificates, things like that. When you start breaking down permits too much, it can be a bit of a challenge to pull out the different revenue. But yeah, we could we could do that. >> And then make it a little more challenging if I might, which is that um is there some way to to to link or

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figure out which which position titles are generating the revenue? So, what I've said here is that I I definitely want to make sure that we're putting our money into revenue generating positions here in Jersey City. And let's hope we can somehow figure that number out. Um,

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most in instances of someone pulling a permit, they're pulling mo almost all the trades, maybe not elevator. Um, so it I don't know how much it would help us to break it down by trade because, you know, if you're building a building, you're using all of them. Um, and then

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the staff, the administrative side, they're supporting all permits. So, I think it would be hard to figure out, you know, which trade, for example, is bringing in more revenue than another. But I will say that the entire operation is supporting all the revenue that

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they're bringing in. And beyond that, right, the director's office also does anytime we're working on constituent concerns. Um, even the court system, you can think of it that way as well, right? Because they're all it's all part of that process. Um, but as an office, as a as a the construction code office, it is

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revenue generating. Every person in that office is doing stuff that contributes to revenue. >> If it if it's not tied to title, then based on what type of inspection or something like that that's being conducted, we can figure out what the numbers are there. >> We'll break it down the best we can.

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>> Great. Thank you. Um, I'm going to yield and let uh, Council Griffin move on to city planning. Okay, everyone. Um, we're going to go into city planning again because um, you know, we're running out of time. We have

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20 minutes left, I see. Um, we're going to limit it to two questions. If you have any follow-up questions, please let that be your one of your questions. Um, and I'm going to start off with Council President Denise Ridley.

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>> I'm good. Brooks sneaks up on you there. Um, line 312, uh, could you talk about, um, the any, uh, there's a note about demo permits review by vendor?

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>> Uh, the department requested 100K and, uh, the administration budgeted 40k. >> Yes. So actually that line item is for all consulting services and that was actually broken down by a certain amount of money we had planned to use um to improve our GIS for 3D modeling. The we

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we reduced that um at looking at where we could cut things. We had to keep the 40,000 because the 40,000 is an active contract where we use a third party to review all of our demo applications. Thank you, >> Ephros.

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>> On overtime wages, just uh curious the source of overtime wages for city planning. >> It's all the land use boards. It's the staff serving the boards in the evening. Um the staff are largely 246 employees and they uh work during the day

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processing applications and reviewing them and then they have to do the board meetings at night. We cover that office covers five boards two I mean five meetings a month. Two planning board meetings, two zoning board meetings and one HPC meeting. And so those are all

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staffed by the the planner who has that case right and so they are paid for their evening work. Does it make more sense to keep this uh kind of dynamic or would it make more sense to bring in um any any of those officials part-time or

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even full-time who work in like alternate shifts? >> I mean if the issue is that if you review an application um you take that application to the board. So what we the way we handle it I mean Tony can speak to this more but especially doing virtual we're doing virtual right now

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for the summer they can manage it a little better. have someone get on just beyond during their cases. Get have them get off. Tanya and Matt are very good at staggering um the cases to try to put the staff that gets overtime earlier in the agenda. Maybe if there's ones that

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they're covering themselves as uh like Tanya is a management employee, she can do later ones. I don't do you want to talk to any Yeah, the management of the especially since we've gone virtual is a lot easier to basically kick people off when their applications are done or if I

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get a if if I'm in a meeting that lasts five and a half six hours which is typical I'll have two planners there in person hopeful that the application will be heard but if I'm on Zoom and I see it's not going to happen, I can say, "Okay, you're done. Just go sign off and if we

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need you back, we can call you back, but most likely, no." We actually save more money virtually keeping it tighter. Um, otherwise, jutherwise, they're just there with us at the hearing for the six hours. >> That makes sense. Appreciate it. Um, I I

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know that was like a two-part question. May I ask just one more brief? >> Go ahead. >> Thank you. Um and then Tanya for for yourself um with the combined role of zoning and planning um leadership uh is

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that primarily like out of financial I know we were talking about it earlier this year but is that primarily out of a sense of like saving some money? Um and also just you know what kind of obstacles or challenges are there with a combined role or is is it mostly just fruitful to have it all under one

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position? I I think actually I'll speak to this before Tanya does. It's really a vision issue. Um the in the past sometimes there was um challenges in the relationship between the zoning officer um and the staff of city planning. Natanya ran the zoning board for many

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years and so was intimately involved in that and was very aware. Um and we we try to um staff the zoning division as well with as many city planners as possible which is more common elsewhere in the country. They often are combined

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and when you come in for example if you have a question as a citizen usually you're in most cities um at sometimes they might call it like the plan desk or the zoning desk those questions are often uh answered by planners. So, this is a vision we have for how city

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planning and zoning should actually work together. Um, and so there are some reworks that I know that the administration is working on later in the year and this is one of the ones for our department. We have a few different things we'll be bringing to you all and this so I would say more than money it

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fits into a vision but it is a cost savings because we are not paying an a second division director in that in that division. >> Thank you. Um, I want to circle back on Councilman Brook's question about the demolition permits is, um, how we're spending

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$40,000 on that contract. Is there a reason that those can't be issued inhouse? I think it's pretty well known that already the timelines for getting your response uh, from historic are some of the longest we have here in the city.

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Um, and so that is a way to cut down on that. Um, this is Tanya and I working together to try to find a solution to speed things up in historic. Sorry, I'm I'm confused. Oh, okay. Okay, never mind. I I understand. Thank you. Um,

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and then my other question was similar to my question about possibly bringing a stenographer in house. I know I notice all these boards we have um we we have a we we contract an attorney.

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Um would it make more sense to have someone who you know have have that position be in the law department of city hall and have them be an in-house attorney? >> Uh city hall has not in my knowledge has never staffed a land use attorney. Um

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and we need someone with the expertise of land use. And so, uh, that was a decision I guess made many years ago, um, to do it out of house. I think if that's a desire of the council, we would have to have those conversations internally with the administration. >> I'm just wondering if it might be more

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cost effective. >> So, also just I think within the MLUL, the planning board and the zoning board are autonomous and they have their own contracts. So, within the MLUL, they are to hire their own attorney and make sure as part of it that they are able to provide the transcript. So I don't think

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that we could even do that. >> There will be some cases where the interests of the planning board or the zoning board for example may not fully align from a litigation perspective or a legal perspective with the city. So if we had someone in house doing those services, we need to get conflict

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attorney anyway in those instances. and um a significant bulk of the expenses we have for our land use attorneys can often be the litigation that proceeds uh from from applications. >> Okay. >> But just to clarify, the HBC does use an

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in-house attorney. They do not use an external one. >> Thank you. >> Um Tanya, if you can just speak to uh line item 305, printing and advertisement. Uh

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>> oh. Those are the requirements to sunshine the meetings in the newspaper. >> It cost 16. No, that the advertisements cost that much. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> Good lord Jesus. Public. Oh, okay.

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Right. I yield the rest of my s. that's driven. >> You guys are still required to advertise in the paper even though >> this is prior. So I think going forward we'll be able to bring that uh number down with the guidance of the clerk that we can now do digital but historically

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yes it has been quite a big expense. >> Newspaper went out of business and y'all paying that much for average. >> I think that's what kept them in business. Oh >> right. They were probably not happy with the change in the law. >> Yes. Councilwoman S.

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>> I'm good. Thank you. >> Oh, it's me. I'm sorry. >> You go ahead. Um so with planning um so you know there's there's been a lot of um

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a lot of uh controversy with with um how how things are planned in the city when it comes to um affordable housing, parking and everything like that. Um, is there any type of um

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revenue stream that would be attached to parking um and adding parking um through different by planning through and having it done through different

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departments like the parking authority thing like that? Do we have land that that we can put into the master plan um and and plan it out for parking and like >> centralized parking? Is that what you're talking about?

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>> Yeah, like centralized parking like like uh because I know we sold we sold a a lot of uh land uh parking authority land that used to be centralized parking lots. Um and and when that happened um

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you know there became an issue with with uh parking where people are double parking on all the streets. Um I mean I just look at it as like a safety thing um where where you know people are driving past I see people's windows get um not windows but mirrors getting taken

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off and things like that. So, is there any way or anything we're doing to look at that like in the master plan identifying locations where we can put parking and generate revenue for the city?

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>> I think related to existing parking lots and stuff, I'd have to defer to the administration on how they would want to handle that, if they would want to do it centralized or not. Um, I don't know if Tanya, do you want to speak to the master plan? Sure. So I believe that the department of

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infrastructure is redoing a parking study and I would say that that would kind of be a jumping point. There are various planning policies throughout the country where there's a payment in lie of parking and that money becomes centralized in order to pay for centralized parking. It's not a policy

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that we have in place but with the division um sorry department of infrastructure with them starting that study I think we can start having a conversation on at least moving forward how we can do centralized parking how we can basically pay for it as well.

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>> Okay. And even even if um you know if we need to get creative like partnering with um these these uh highrises I mean there there are buildings in my community with 80 units zero parking

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and and and and it's already you know a a condensed community right without that building and then that building comes in now you have 80 residents I'll say at least 20 of them have cars um and

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they have no place to put them. So if if we can focus on that and and focus on it being a a revenue generator, um I I think that you know we we we can uh not only make some money but

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alleviate the stress that's gone caused uh to many residents when it comes to parking and and and trying to park and and you know driving around double parked cars and hoping they don't get into an accident or get sideswiped or

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anything like that. Councilman, that's all I had. >> Okay. Um, I have just one question and if you answered it already, I apologize and just tell me answered. Um, so regarding the clerk who is

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promoted, can you just speak to that as to the rationale for the motion? um that that uh was a uh a specific specific personnel issue, but um it was also someone who took on additional

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duties. They were transferred from one of our internal or other uh divisions here uh at HDC into uh city planning and took on additional duties and um their salary was much lower than the other clerks doing similar work.

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I I just realized it was in 2025, so there's nothing to >> Yeah. >> talk about here. Okay. I don't have any further questions. We were We still have what, nine more divisions. I'm not sure exactly how many there are. So, um, we were talking amongst ourselves and just

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uh needing to pos schedule another follow-up hearing to uh go through the rest of that. Um, we wouldn't do it justice, but I tried to squeeze in another 15 minutes. defer to the BA regarding that. Are there other questions though on other

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divisions we could cover in the 15 minutes? >> I have a few general questions. If you're uh open to it, but um as the councilman said, if you're willing to come back, then they can go through the other divisions, but I have a few general questions from the presentation. >> Yeah.

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>> Okay. So, one question we were talking about the boards and I know that um or what was communicated to me from some of the board members was that we move the specifically the planning

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board, but I'm assuming all boards from in person to virtual in an effort to save money. >> Just the zoning board and planning board uh and historic preserving, not the other boards. Yeah. >> Okay. And do we see or what do we

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anticipate the savings be by doing that? >> Just this summer alone 12,000. >> Okay. And how is that like what's the difference between a person or general >> food? Yes. Some of it is overtime. I'd have to look drill down into that further, but it's also security which is something that I took into

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consideration. we were hitting up against issues where we those meetings have a tendency to go very late >> and it's after the hours that the buildings typically close um and have don't have security on staff. So, we were trying to minimize uh the overtime

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for the security needs. You know, there's various things that go into those expenses. So, that was a way to save money. Council President, I also add um I think the primary motivation for attempting the virtual this summer was not the potential financial savings,

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which is incidental and beneficial, but to see if we could speed along clearing out our planning board backlog. Um because we had evidence from the past that applications could be processed much faster uh in a virtual context, for example, during CO. Um so, as you know,

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we have a very significant backlog at the planning board. So part of our hope is that this would be a way to clear it out faster. >> Okay. Sorry, a follow-up question. I don't know if possible. Just asking because there's so much backlog. Is it possible to have two boards for planning

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in so so like six or whatever is the requirement. So six members each board just because or maybe it can be a not the ongoing thing just on a temporary basis because of the work these

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volunteers or board members have. >> Yeah. I mean so far the way we've handled that is to have special meetings to try to clear some of the backlog. Um Tanya did you look >> I mean according to the state statute the

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municipal land use law what regulates us you can't have >> Bring the mic a little closer to you >> yes >> you can't have two separate boards we can try to be creative and maybe do an AB and a team B and try to run a meeting

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every week but I can't constitute a new board not two do you know what I'm saying >> okay do you think about what can be the solution uh to just in future. Yeah. Staying till the end of the agenda

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>> like you all have to do. You have to stay until 1 or 2 o'lock in the morning and Tanya's advocating for longer meetings. >> They're board members and they're volunteering their time. >> Money we could spend on council meetings. No,

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>> one of one of them is sitting next to you, council person. So, >> as a planning board member, I have expressed that I think we should hear more cases, but many people do not want to stay past 10:30 or 11 at night. I understand that because they are volunteer council. We are we are paid to

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stay till 1:30 in the morning. Um, but yes, I I agree that it would be productive to stay until we hear more cases and finish the agenda. And many times when we try special meetings, not to speak out of turn, what we don't get is quorum. What if we try to do special

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meetings to say, "Okay, we're just going to have as many meetings as possible." We don't make quorum because people will say, "Well, I can't do it." >> Just because this is also revenue for the city. The more we approve, you know, so I don't I'm no pressure, just something if you guys can be great.

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>> Just so you understand though, it's not on our discretion. The board is a separate entity. So, it's really up to the board chair to make that those um recommendations to the rest of the board members, but um you can happily reach out to the board chair and express your

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your concerns. >> Thank you. >> Motion. >> May chairs, may I ask a question? >> We still have a couple motion. >> No, it's after >> Oh, no. It's It's 3 p.m. But I would love >> I'm I'm available if you would like to

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ask the question. I don't mind staying, but of course I see to whatever the council would like to do. >> You ask the question. >> Thank you. Sure. Uh I'll be brief. Right. To council office. Um a couple things. Uh one, are we uh where are we

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in hiring for the vacancy for the director position? Um, and then two, if you could just explain some of the money that's moved around in the other expenses around the grant offset, um, and the consultant services. Um,

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also with the grant offset monies, um, it looks like, uh, it just says nonresidential fees from the affordable housing trust fund. Um, my memory says that the residential and non-residential fees can both apply uh to this

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administrative cost. So, if you could just provide some clarity on those. >> Yeah, sure. Um, yeah, I don't know specifically about the note, but the fees that are supposed to be going into the trust fund going to the trust fund, they get allocated. Um, we are in the process of constituting that trust fund

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committee now to determine what the next trunch of money will be. We did receive a grant in the first year that is showing up here. There will be more money than that in this next um goaround. So, we anticipate having significantly more. That's all in

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process right now. And um as I mentioned before with housing preservation um during these last few months, I've done extensive interviews and searches to find a director of this as well. And in the next coming weeks, we have some exciting announcements of uh some stuff

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we're working on. This one's not 100% settled, but we're we're working towards filling it. It's very important to us to have the right candidates for you all. We know how important both of those are both for tenants rights and and advocacy. So, uh we're being very

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careful about the hiring there and um but we we feel really positive about the direction it's been going in. >> I appreciate your attention to this essential position in my view. Thank you, chairs. >> And >> thank you. I get a motion to adjurnn.

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>> Second. >> So, we have a motion to adjurnn at 3:03 p.m. Motion was made by council person Griffin, second by council person Lavaro. All in favor of the motion to adjourn at 3:03 p.m. By acclamation, all

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council members present, please say I. >> I. >> We are out of here at 3:03 p.m. Thank you so much everyone present and everyone watching at home. >> Remember, teamwork makes the dream work. Have a great rest of the day. Stay safe. Thank you. Thank you to everybody. Thanks.