Mayor Ras J. Baraka presented his fifth State of the City Address last night, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. In his speech, Mayor Baraka focused on equitable growth and ensuring that all Newark residents and neighborhoods benefit from the city’s surge in investment and development.
He announced three new initiatives intended to help reduce income inequality and build prosperity for Newark residents:
Helping Employees to Purchase Businesses
“We are encouraging employee ownership, and residential- and worker-owned cooperatives. As a beginning, the Council just passed an ordinance that’s the first of its kind. It encourages employee ownership for Newark based businesses. Company owners that are looking to sell or retire from their businesses will have an option of applying to the city for a loan or loan guarantee when transferring ownership to employees. We have begun to engage businesses about this idea, where workers can collectively buy the business with no personal investment but receive ownership as a part of their employee benefit package. Businesses of this kind around the country currently employ 13 million workers.”
Exploring a Pilot Program of Universal Basic Income
“One-third of our city still lives in poverty. The city is currently exploring a pilot for Universal Basic Income. We have already received national recognition and technical assistance from the Economic Security Project and the Jain institute to launch an exploratory taskforce to assess the feasibility of a program in Newark. We believe in Universal Basic Income, especially in a time where studies have shown that families that have a crisis of just 400 dollars in a month may experience a setback that may be difficult even impossible to recover from.”
Establishing a Co-Op Company Owned by Reentry Employees
“We have also worked to create Freedom Paper, an African-American owned paper company as part of a community wealth-building strategy. We are helping to build a co-op paper company with reentry employees. This coop will be both owned by black and brown people, but will also be employee-owned. And we are looking to do a ribbon-cutting very soon!”
The Mayor outlined other city initiatives he created to ensure that all Newark residents and neighborhoods can benefit from the city’s surge in investment and development.
“We have an inclusionary zoning ordinance. We create an equitable growth commission and an office to manage affordability, and make sure local brown and black residents are included in the economic growth, to address the wealth gap that stains this state. We strengthen rent control and begin forcing landlords and developers to register their properties. We establish a right to counsel ordinance to protect our residents from illegal evictions and frivolous attacks by unscrupulous landlords – but at the same time, we encourage home ownership and train our local developers to get and develop property of their own. We encourage them to build, and use monies from inclusionary zoning, if necessary, to fill some of the gaps in local projects. We create home foreclosure assistance programs, and help renters become owners by getting local developers to develop at lower costs and selling properties at lower rates. After the state legislature passes the land bank ordinance, we create a local land bank to manage and dispose of abandoned and vacant properties.”
And he asserted that Newark was a winner in the Amazon HQ competition as one of the final cities under consideration, although not ultimately chosen.
“No one imagined we would make it to the last 20, then the last 10 then, the final cities that Amazon considered. When they came here with their team, they witnessed something most of us miss everyday: Extraordinary collaboration, a clear vision, instruments in place for change and growth, an incredible arts scene, a growing college community, transportation infrastructure, diversity as strength, and beautiful people with a will to win. When they left here, we knew we had already won! The minute they showed up here, we won. The minute every paper began to print why Newark wasn’t ready, we had already won. And so when they ask me how I felt when they chose New York or Virginia, I said, and still say, we made it to the game, and we still playing…I say we are not courting Amazon. We are courting the world through the vehicle of Amazon. We are courting even a measure of those 50,000 direct jobs, or the 70 to 110,000 indirect jobs. We were courting investment in employee owned businesses, in infrastructure and direct services to our community, from homelessness to scholarships for our children. We say this is not about how powerful Amazon was, but how creative and clear we were in our objectives.”
PHOTOS BY @stevedonaldsonphotography
