Jersey City Mayor Discusses Urban City Collaboration

 

Steve Adubato talks with the Mayor of Jersey City, Steven Fulop, about the collaboration between urban cities, the importance of diversity on the police force, and legalizing marijuana.

4/6/19 #304

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Welcome to State of Affairs. I'm Steve Adubato. We're, in fact, coming to you... I can get this out, from the beautiful Agnes Varis NJTV Studio. Once again, we're joined by Steve Fulop, who is the mayor of Jersey City, that happens to be the second largest city... I do this every time! Yeah. You're a little biased. You're from Newark. But... Are we not in the largest city? That's debatable. It's Brick City. That's debatable. That's debatable. And you also have a very productive relationship with the mayor here? Yeah. I'll be at his State of the City tonight. And he's a good personal friend and I wish him the best. But, you know what? Like, actually I think, the better Newark does, Jersey City does. We're intertwined. So... You're not competing? Isn't everybody competing for valuable development? And tax ratables? No? I mean... you know what? I don't think we've kind of gone head to head on any sort of issue like that. I mean I'm a cheerleader for him, and the only thing I would have changed in hindsight, speaking on that, is I probably would have joined him on the Amazon proposal instead of doing a competing proposal. I should have thought about it a little bit more and said, "Let's do a regional one together." Sure. He would have been amenable to that. We would have focused a little bit more on the housing, him on the commercial side. It probably would have been a little bit more appealing. Mayor help us on that. Because I know that the New York situation... Yeah. ...people will decide for themselves what they think of the question of whether them losing Amazon made sense for... Yeah. Yeah. ...them or not. The competition to try to get them here? Yeah. Overall, tax incentives, government tax incentives to... Yeah. ...attract certain businesses who may not otherwise come overall? Yeah. You say? I think... well, look. It's been good for Jersey... Essential? Essential in the right circumstances. So you have examples like Goya in Jersey City, right? That they were in Secaucus, they threatened to move, they moved one mile, and they got a massive incentive. That sort of example which New Jersey has done repeatedly doesn't make sense. You have... What about if they were potentially going to move out of the state? Yeah. I think... I don't know the particulars. So to me, I think you should call the bluff on that, really, because it's difficult to move, and generally I think that that narrative is one that the companies just use in order to garner the tax credits. I think we should be targeting with the governor, saying some of the smaller businesses, some of the kind of new technology, and also, you know, the big corporations outside of..."