During a three-hour Hoboken City Council meeting on Wednesday night, the council argued over a resolution for the city to negotiate with the owners of a historic church to keep them from turning it into condos. The owners of the old stone 7th Day Adventists Church on Ninth and Bloomfield streets plan to carve out six condos there, but have pledged to keep the exterior structure the same. The proposed council resolution would ask them to preserve the inside for some sort of community use, and instead build more densely on property they partly own at 83 Willow Ave. But critics of the proposal said that the owners have already said “no” to similar offers, and that the measure was only brought up as a political stunt. Click here for more.
Students from schools throughout Jersey City were sworn in as members of the Jersey City Youth Court on Feb. 15, marking a new approach to dealing with minor crimes among kids. Youth Court is a program that was started in the 1990s by then-Attorney General Janet Reno, is an innovative, peer-based model that will train youths to hear low-level, real-life cases involving their peers in the hope it will prevent their getting involved in the criminal justice system. Jersey City thus becomes the second city in the state to launch a youth court program and joins more than 1,150 youth courts operating in 49 states and the District of Columbia. “This is something that will change people’s lives,” said Mayor Steven Fulop. Click here for more.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, Union City has started an ID program to help local residents get municipal services and attend local programs. The ID will not allow people to vote. The number of residents who came to Town Hall to fill out applications on March 1 quickly approached 500 only a half hour after the applications opened, according to an anonymous city official who spoke with a reporter. This exceeded the building’s occupancy limit, forcing the city to shut the process down two and a half hours earlier than planned. They reopened the process all day the next day, and will continue to sign people up from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Click here for more.
