Mayor Baraka will present the State of The City address this evening at New Jersey Performing Arts Center where he will discuss Newark’s accomplishments over the past year in Education, Public Safety, Job Creation and Training, Municipal Finances as well as Neighborhood and Downtown Development. The Mayor will also discuss his plans and proposals for further progress on these and other concerns.
Here are some highlights of what to expect:
Public Safety
Mayor Baraka will discuss what Newark is doing to address crime and violence including combining police and fire, hiring 250 more police officers, focusing law enforcement on blocks in which 80% of crimes are committed, enlarging the Shootings Task Force, making the training of new recruits more community friendly and focused on conflict resolution, concentrating walking patrols in areas with the highest violence, and improving police community relations through creating the nation’s strongest civilian review board and putting a civilian in charge of internal affairs.
Mayor Baraka will also outline new initiatives to bring community and police together including civilian academies and Community COMSTAT to give residents more information about how the police operate and involve residents more deeply in fighting crime.
The mayor will describe an unprecedented effort to address 16-24 year olds that are beginning a life of crime by committing robberies: “For every 25 police officers hired, we have made a commitment to hire a trained social worker to be a part of a robbery task force. This social worker will begin to intervene in the lives of these young people when they are arrested. We want to provide them with the supports they need — both emotional and physical to change their life around.”
He will describe a pilot victim’s outreach and crime reduction initiative that “targets victims of violence in high crime areas 18 -30 years old. It will allow us to provide services, training and counseling to survivors of violence who may become perpetrators of violence or a homicide victim themselves.”
Schools
Mayor Baraka will outline the progress towards improving Newark’s schools and returning local control, which has been achieved through cooperation and collaboration between public and charter school advocates and parents. He will also speak out against those who choose sides and seek to divide public and charter schools based on “expediency or the influence of big money.”
“What the Governor doesn’t know is that while he was away, we were working in this city trying to live up to the promise of equal education for all of our children. We don’t all agree, but we understand that we must struggle until we can find unity; that our children depend on it and our city demands it…. A leader would try to bring us together not further separate us. A leader would recognize that we should never advance some children at the expense of others.
“There will be no rolling over people here because if you try to roll me over you would have to roll over thousands of Newarkers that stand with me. This is Newark not Fort Lee you can’t just stop traffic here without repercussions.”
To improve the failing water infrastructure that has resulted in elevated lead in Newark schools:
“We need our state legislature to support Assembly Bill 2281 sponsored by Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle out of Bergen County that puts a 10 cent deposit on all plastic bottles that allows consumers turn the bottle in to get their 10 cents back or allows the monies to be collected for statewide water infrastructure. Or we need to put a 5 cents tax on all plastic bottles that are sold in our state and 5 cents on all plastic bags. This exists in more than a dozen states across the country. All the monies collected must be dedicated to fixing our water infrastructure throughout the state. A tax on plastic bottles helps us address an environmental issue as well as create a fund for our water infrastructure.”
Job Creation and Training
Mayor Baraka will talk about the city’s many new initiatives that are already reducing unemployment and preparing residents for well-paying jobs.
He will also reveal new initiatives including:
- Seeking increased procurement by Newark’s anchor institutions of goods and services from Newark businesses.
- Incentives for employers to hire Newark workers
* Legislation to allow any Newark business whose workforce includes 51 percent or more of Newarkers to receive payroll tax abatement and any business that hires ex-offenders to be exempt from payroll tax for that individual.
- Sponsoring a displaced workers ordinance that doesn’t allow new contractors to arbitrarily get rid of old workers and pay new ones lower wages.
- Street Academies. Up to 60 young people will be put in classes in the morning and internships and community service in the evening to reconnect them to school and employment.
- Seeking a federal investigation of the unfair hiring practices at the seaport and the fact that there are segregated unions and that the seaport workforce only slightly resembles Newark residents
- Mayor Baraka will reveal that he will shortly announce a comprehensive jobs plan that calls for at least 17,000 jobs created in Newark at a cost of almost 1 billion dollars.
City Finances
The City is pleased to report today that as a result of 2015 operations, Mayor Ras Baraka’s first full year in office, a surplus balance of $29.5 million. The City’s Water Utility Fund and Sewer Utility Fund each also reported healthy operating surpluses of $14 million and $6 million respectively. Significant gains were made in property tax collections and receipts from employer payroll taxes and parking taxes. Most notably, previous administrations left consecutive operating deficits of $30 and $22 million along with more than $20 million in unpaid bills.
Mayor Baraka will talk about the 90 million dollar deficit he faced on becoming mayor and how he is returning the city to fiscal health.
Neighborhood and Downtown Development
Regarding downtown, Mayor Baraka will say:
“We talked about developing our downtown in to a 24 hour community. Since then Prudential has opened its new tower. We welcomed Nike store, Starbucks, Blaze Pizza, and many other retail spaces up and down broad St., Market St., and Halsey St as well. We broke ground for the Haynes Building development which includes a Whole Foods. A new Tryp/Wyndham hotel and in the last 12 months we have begun construction of close to 1,000 units of residential space in our downtown neighborhood alone. With the residents help we have secured the funding to complete the Riverfront Park, and after almost 10 years of no movement we finally closed the deal on Triangle Park across the street from the Prudential Center. This will be a 22 acre park with a 3 acre walking bridge similar to Manhattan’s High Line, connecting the downtown community and the arena to the ironbound and Penn Station. This will trigger development all around the area, of commercial, residential, retail, parking, hotels and more.”
With regard to the city’s neighborhoods, Mayor Baraka will describe progress over the past year including:
- Stepping up enforcement on stores that are taking advantage of the community, and moving residents out of troubled buildings in to new housing and rehabilitated properties that have been neglected for decades.
- Designating parts of the south and west ward as areas in need of redevelopment to create a redevelopment plan for the area and appoint a master redeveloper.
- Developing a plan to look at seizing underwater mortgages from banks that are adding to the blight of neighborhoods.
- New townhomes, mixed residential housing and artist housing.
- Reopening the old St James hospital that was closed for years as a neighborhood health center.
