October 23, 2025 • 42 mins
A stroller at a crosswalk shouldn’t feel like a dare. That simple truth sparks a deeper conversation with Ward E council candidate and lifelong educator Ryan Baylock about how to make downtown Jersey City work for families, shop owners, and commuters without the empty promises.
We dig into a tangible safety plan that swaps vague pledges for specifics: a dedicated traffic enforcement unit with motorcycle officers, concrete curb extensions to slow turns, raised crosswalks, and leading pedestrian intervals that make crossings humane on fast corridors like Christopher Columbus. Ryan outlines how to curb Holland Tunnel cut-throughs with peak-hour turn bans and license plate readers, and why consistency—clear rules enforced daily—beats sporadic blitzes every time.
Downtown’s Newark Avenue plaza becomes a test case for compassion and standards. Ryan pairs more supportive housing and mental health step-down units with coordinated outreach, while drawing firm lines on public drug use, drinking, and sleeping in business vestibules. For small businesses, he pushes faster, predictable permits and smart parking: low-cost first-hour meters that climb to force turnover, easy signage to long-term lots, and residents-first parking on neighborhood blocks.
On affordability and taxes, Ryan avoids fairy tales. He argues for zero-based budgeting, department-level transparency, and a dedicated grant writing team to pull in state and federal funds—so if taxes can’t go down, services go up. We also talk growth that gives back: inclusionary housing targets, green infrastructure, and real community benefits like parks and school capacity tied to new development.
If you care about safer streets, a functioning plaza, thriving local shops, and getting real value for the taxes you pay, this conversation offers a clear playbook grounded in data and daily follow-through. Like what you hear? Follow the show, share this episode with a neighbor, and leave a review with the one city fix you want to see next.
Your hosts: @lynnhazan_ and @tonydoesknow
follow us on social @ltkpod!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:01):
Hey, welcome to the Lynn and Tony Know podcast.
I'm your host Lynn.
SPEAKER_01 (00:04):
And I'm Tony.
We are both wellness coaches andmarried with kids.
SPEAKER_02 (00:07):
Join us as we talk about all things health,
wellness, relationships, lifehacks, parenting, and everything
in between unfiltered.
Thanks for listening and let'sget into it.
Welcome to the show.
Welcome back.
I feel like we've been recordinga lot.
SPEAKER_01 (00:20):
We have been.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (00:21):
Feels like it.
SPEAKER_01 (00:21):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (00:22):
Hopefully Ari stays put this time.
We'll see.
SPEAKER_01 (00:26):
Yeah, she's she's a ticking time bomb.
She's a ticking time bomb.
Uh, but yes, we are continuingour candidate series.
And uh basically when somebodysays do your research, this is
us doing our research.
Yeah.
We get we get a lot out of theseconversations, and hopefully the
people listening to as well.
SPEAKER_02 (00:42):
Now I know I'm not supposed to be like, this is who
I'm voting for, you know?
Like I'm not supposed to likeendorse specific candidates,
although I have, but but I don'tgive a fuck.
Like I make the rules.
This is my podcast.
SPEAKER_01 (00:52):
Yeah, I was gonna say, who told you?
SPEAKER_02 (00:54):
If I live downtown, I would be voting for this next
candidate who are we talk we'retalking to.
Now, I live in the heights, welive in the heights now, but
when I moved to Jersey City, Imoved to the downtown.
And I've been uh living downtownfor 10 plus years up until we
moved to the heights, right?
So I've been in Jersey City 15years.
I was in downtown about 12years, and I've seen it change
(01:16):
tremendously.
Some change is really great,some changes not so not so good.
Um and I was definitelydispleased with the war,
specifically the downtown wardeuh council members.
And now that we're in theheights, we went to a meet and
greet.
What was the meet and greet thatoh, we met uh the Josh uh
(01:38):
governor, the governor meet andgreet?
SPEAKER_01 (01:41):
Yeah, the oh okay, gotcha.
Yes, yes, when Josh Gottenheimercame in for a meet and greet uh
when he was running forgovernor.
Yes.
SPEAKER_02 (01:47):
And we met Ryan Baylock there and he came, you
know, to show show support andlisten to his constituents, and
I was very impressed by him.
Just you know, when you meetsomebody and it's like just good
vibes, good energy and justauthenticity, which you don't
really get with a lot ofpoliticians.
Like I can see through people ifthey're being fake and they're
talking out of two sides oftheir mouths.
(02:08):
And he was just like, no, likehe cares about downtown Jersey
City and really wants to make achange.
And uh so I'm excited to chatwith him today.
SPEAKER_01 (02:16):
Yeah, great.
So tell us a little bit of.
SPEAKER_02 (02:18):
Let me read his bias.
SPEAKER_01 (02:19):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (02:20):
Sorry about that.
Okay.
Today we're joined by RyanBaylock, a lifelong educator,
coach, and community leaderwho's been living right here in
Jersey City since 2018.
Ryan spent over 20 years withthe KIPPNJ Charter School
Network in Newark, where he'sdone it all, from teaching sixth
grade, writing, and coachingchampionship basketball teams to
building an entire athleticdepartment from the ground up.
(02:41):
He's also the president of hiscondo association, where he's
known for improving operationsand keeping the community
strong.
Ryan lives in Ward E, downtownwith his wife and newborn son,
and he's bringing his can-doattitude and leadership
experience to every challenge hetakes on.
Well, you have a newborn too?
SPEAKER_00 (02:55):
Yeah, yeah.
How old?
He's uh five months.
SPEAKER_02 (02:59):
Wow.
So you're in the trenches.
SPEAKER_00 (03:01):
Yeah, but thank God he he's a good baby, and uh like
he he sleeps through the night.
Wow.
He only gets fussy when he's alittle tired, but he's doing
really well.
We we love him very much.
SPEAKER_02 (03:14):
Well, congratulations,
congratulations, Mazel Tove.
Congrats.
SPEAKER_01 (03:18):
I want to I I want to meet somebody someday where
they're like, yeah, I have ababy too.
And you're uh they're like, hesucks.
Like he's a terrible baby.
I can't stand him.
SPEAKER_02 (03:26):
The first baby, though, is a trick baby.
They're very easy, uh-uh,because you don't know what
you're doing, so they're prettyeasy.
And then you're like, oh, thisisn't so bad.
Like we can do this, so let'shave another one.
It's the second.
The second baby is diabolical,tyrannical, right?
Like Noah runs this household.
She's a savage, she's a savage.
SPEAKER_01 (03:47):
She's too bad.
SPEAKER_00 (03:48):
You're always gonna get like a reversion to the
mean, right?
If your first one's really likeawesome, like it's just it's
just probability, you know,nobody's perfect.
Yeah, 100%.
SPEAKER_02 (03:57):
And then the third is like a middle, like middle.
Like it's like not too easy, nottoo hard.
SPEAKER_01 (04:02):
It's a mix, yeah.
Mixed bag.
Mixed bag.
But at that point, you're justlike uh you're calm, you don't
care.
SPEAKER_02 (04:07):
You're like whatever.
SPEAKER_01 (04:08):
The little stuff that bothered you with the first
one.
SPEAKER_02 (04:11):
It's like chaos as it is, you know.
SPEAKER_01 (04:12):
You just make podcasts, you know.
Exactly.
Like, all right, now I havethree kids, one's eight weeks
old.
What else could we add to ourplate that we literally don't
have to do at all?
We could interview all thecandidates.
SPEAKER_00 (04:22):
That's awesome.
That's awesome that you're doingthat.
SPEAKER_01 (04:26):
We're having it, we're honestly we're having a
great time, and and theconversations have been
wonderful.
And uh, for anybody listening,we are open to literally any
candidate will not say no to acandidate, no matter what our
belief system is.
SPEAKER_02 (04:37):
But some candidates definitely won't that's fine.
SPEAKER_01 (04:39):
Listen, that's fine, but it's not gonna be on our
it's not gonna be on our endthat they don't get the
opportunity.
So with that being said, welet's jump into it.
There's a couple things that uhwe want to talk about.
And number one, right out of thegate, is why on earth would you
do this to yourself?
Why would you run for localoffice?
I mean, we've we've heard allsorts of answers so far.
(05:00):
Some some range from, you know,kind of they knew that this is
what they wanted to do beforethe election started, and other
people got a call from a from amayoral candidate and said, it's
time for you to serve, and theystepped up to the plate, all of
all of which I find you knowinspiring in one way or another.
But what what is your particularstory on how you came to this
ticket and this role?
SPEAKER_00 (05:18):
Yeah, that's a great question.
So, you know, when I when I wasyounger, my parents, they they
were both educators, lifelongeducators.
I my dad taught for 37 years, mymom taught for 34 years.
Um, but they were also greatparents, and they said, listen,
Ryan, you you know, you want todo something meaningful with
your life and you want to dosomething you're passionate
about.
And so um I I took that adviceand I followed in their
(05:40):
footsteps.
Originally, you know, I becamean educator both, you know, to
help communities and to have animpact on the world, but also it
was a road to be a basketballcoach.
You know, I was super passionateabout basketball when I was
younger.
And like most 13 and14-year-olds, I wanted to be in
the NBA, you know.
So once once I figured out,probably by 14, that that wasn't
(06:02):
gonna happen, I was like, well,you know what?
I could, I could pursue mypassion uh through being a
teacher and a coach.
And um, you know, over my timein education, I've uh been in a
bunch of leadership roles.
I was a big part of, you know,Kip New Jersey, which went from
one school when I was there toover 12 schools.
And um I've been able to be in abunch of different leadership
(06:24):
positions and have a huge impacton on the communities I've
served.
And so what what I've never hadthe opportunity to do though is
to to really work besides mycondo association work, is to
really have an impact where Ilived and to really have an
impact outside the walls of theschool.
And um, you know, I love JerseyCity, it's a great place, and uh
(06:44):
it's a place that uh I thinkneeds strong leadership.
And I think, you know, I I thinkright now we're we're at a place
where, you know, people arepaying a lot of money in taxes
and the services that they'regetting are not on par with
that.
And I and I that municipalgovernment needs to be
accountable for that.
And I'm someone who who takesaccountability and who takes on
(07:08):
the challenges that exist andhas a process for attacking
them.
And I want to apply that herewhere I live and where I'm
raising my my son and live withmy wife.
So um so it's it's ultimatelylike it just aligns with my
purpose, with my passions, and Iknow it's gonna be hard, but uh,
I've done a lot of hard thingsin my career, and and I this is
one of the things I'm I'mprepared to take on.
SPEAKER_02 (07:27):
So I wanna, as somebody who's again lived
downtown for many years, I wantto talk about like the specific
issues that I think are aproblem as somebody who's been
in Jersey City for a long time,but specifically downtown.
Because I feel like downtown isits own ecosystem, like there's
its own issues.
So first is obviously roadsafety.
Second is, you know, a lot ofsmall businesses are I've seen
(07:49):
so many small businesses comeand go in downtown because it's
just not well to pay the rent,you know, pay rent.
Like their rent is going up andit's just hard to sustain a
small business in downtownJersey City.
Newark, you know, the issue withhomelessness on Newark Avenue.
What else?
SPEAKER_01 (08:05):
I think those are the those are those are
certainly uh ones you hear quitea bit about.
Um lots of turnover in smallbusinesses for sure.
Newark does seem to get uh adisproportionate amount of of
that sort of traffic.
SPEAKER_02 (08:18):
And it's not affordable.
Like we were put we wereliterally put pushed out of
downtown Jersey City because itwas in it was too expensive.
SPEAKER_01 (08:26):
We we let's let's let's frame it appropriately, we
had we could have stayeddowntown.
We could have sacrificed spaceand and lived downtown for sure.
But for what our purposes wereand where we wanted to go in
terms of growing our family, itdidn't make a lot of sense.
But we we were too expensive.
We also priced ourselves out ofdowntown a little bit.
SPEAKER_02 (08:45):
Yes.
SPEAKER_01 (08:45):
Like some people are getting like legitimately pushed
out.
I don't want to put ourselves inthat camp.
We we had a choice.
We could have stayed downtownand made a water.
SPEAKER_02 (08:54):
I don't want to trigger people, but you're
you're right.
SPEAKER_01 (08:56):
But yeah, we made the choice.
But it is it is most the mostexpensive ward, probably by far.
And it it's probably in terms oflike what wards get the most
attention, just media-wise, it'sthe most high profile ward
because it's because it'sdowntown, so it makes sense.
But yes, go.
SPEAKER_02 (09:12):
I'm I'm still a little butthurt that I don't
live downtown anymore because Ido love living downtown.
But anyway, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (09:18):
Well, listen, we can talk about it depending on who
wins the race with that.
SPEAKER_00 (09:22):
Yeah, so I mean the the the concerns that that
you're describing, you know,you're not alone.
I don't know.
I've knocked on every singledoor in Wardy except for some of
the high rises that I can't getinto, even though I've snuck
into a few, but don't tellanybody that.
And and these concerns are theones that come up in those
conversations.
And let's start with trafficsafety.
Um, because one, it comes up innearly every conversation, two,
(09:44):
it touches everybody.
And three, I have close callsevery single day.
Right now, you know, that's oneof the things like day one
coming into the if I win office,there'll there'll be a clear
roadmap of X, Y, and Z, what weneed to do.
And so when it comes to trafficsafety, one, we need an
enforcement arm of the trafficdivision.
Because right now there's noenforcement arm whatsoever.
So that's what do you mean?
What do you mean by enforcementarm?
(10:04):
What what's so it would be atraffic bureau, it would be a
unit of around 20 to 25officers, and you know, this
would be citywide, but it wouldalso impact um Ward E that would
have motorcycles and they woulduh issue tickets, you know,
especially for things likerunning red lights, traffic
signs, I'm sorry, stop signs,um, but then also e-bikes.
So they would be also the thearm that enforces e-bikes
(10:27):
driving on the correct side ofthe road, also not blowing stop
signs, not riding on thesidewalk or down the pedestrian
plaza.
So that's that's one, right?
But then what we also need to dois close gaps in vision zero.
So there's certain environmentaladjustments that you can make
that calm traffic.
So one is I'm sure you guys haveseen flexi poles at a lot of
(10:47):
corners.
There's certain corners where weneed to install concrete curb
extenders to slow those turns umin order to keep pedestrians
safe and lessen the distance ofpeople crossing in the middle of
uh traffic.
The other big thing that I'mshocked that aren't that isn't
here, it's something I first sawin Princeton, New Jersey, is uh
intermittent pedestriancrossings.
(11:08):
So this is a traffic light thatit's regular traffic light, it
just stops, no traffic moves sothat pedestrians could cross for
10 to 15 seconds.
So Christopher Columbus Avenue,like you know, there's days
where I I I like taking my babyon a walk to the waterfront or
even across towards Van VorsPark sometimes.
Sometimes I'm like, I don't wantto cross Christopher Columbus or
(11:29):
I don't want to cross Marin,right?
Um, and so intermittentpedestrian crossings allow for
safe crossings, especially inhigh-speed corridors like
Christopher Columbus Avenue.
The other thing that we need todo is we need to regulate uh
truck routes so that largetrucks are routed around
residential areas, but also sothat deliveries aren't allowed
during school drop-off or pickuphours.
(11:51):
So I was at Cordero the otherday talking to parents, and you
have, you know, stick trafficbacked up because people are
dropping kids off, people aredriving to work, and then you
have these huge trucksdelivering to Cagianos.
And so, listen, I understandthat you you're a business and
you need to have deliveries,they just shouldn't be happening
during school drop-off hours orduring school pickup hours.
(12:14):
We also need raised crosswalks.
Um, I think that's something onMarin Boulevard, especially like
right by the art house.
I don't know if you have seenlike the yellow signs, the
pedestrian crossing signs.
There, if we have a raisedcrosswalk, it's a further
inhibitor of people rushingthrough those crosswalks.
So a combination of thesethings, and then one thing too,
that's a simple thing, thatquite frankly, if if I'm not
(12:36):
able to accomplish this, right?
Not that I'm planning to run formayor by any means, right?
But I'm definitely not going torun for mayor if I'm a
councilman and I can't getpeople to not park on the yellow
line.
But yeah, so like uh, you know,another thing is we have yellow
lines, you know, yellow linesthat say you can't park there.
A big part of that is if I'm apedestrian and I'm crossing from
one side of the street to theother, I if somebody's not
(12:59):
parked on the yellow line, Icould see if a car is coming and
a car could see if apedestrian's coming through,
right?
It's basic.
It also, you know, emergencyvehicles can make turns, etc.
In Ward E, everybody parks onthe yellow lines, right?
And so at the end of the day,that's a huge concern when it
comes to, you know, trafficsafety, pedestrian safety.
And so that's like another piecethat needs to change.
(13:21):
But it's also something that mepersonally, like, once again, I
don't have any ambitions to runfor mayor by any means.
But if I can't get that done,then I'm not suited to run for
mayor if I can't get that doneas a council person, right?
I think that's like you know,just something that that kind of
gets me going a little bit uhevery single time I have to
like, you know, move my babystroller to the side to look if
(13:42):
a car is coming.
But yeah, that's the that's thethe pedestrian traffic safety
piece.
So the homelessness piece, ifyou guys you guys just want me
to kind of run through it.
SPEAKER_01 (13:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Run through run through eachpoint, sure.
SPEAKER_00 (13:53):
But yeah, so so when it comes to uh the pedestrian
plaza, I think we need to do acombination of homeless
outreach.
So, you know, we we need to lookat the core of the issue here in
Jerry City and see how manymental health step-down units we
have, which are, you know,single units for folks who need
(14:14):
stable housing while they getthe services that they need,
while they get their feet on theground.
Um, so we so we need to makesure that that those types of
units exist here in Jury City atscale so that we could then
leverage nonprofits and othercity agencies to be part of an
effort to provide outreach inplaces like the pedestrian plaza
(14:34):
and offer those folks theservices that they need.
At the same time, we also needour police department to be zero
focused on laser focused on youcan't do drugs out there, you
can't drink, you can't bebelligerent, you can't sleep.
And listen, if if if you'resomeone who's unhoused, you have
every right to be walking on thepedestrian plaza, to sit down
(14:58):
and enjoy a nice day on thepedestrian plaza as anybody
else.
But those things uh, you know,are not um you know a functional
use of of that space.
And we see that that they leadto a lot of issues that impact
the quality of life and impact,you know, small businesses.
I mean, imagine if you're asmall business, and I've been on
emails with uh, you know, thecurrent administration where
(15:20):
small businesses say, hey,there's a person who's sleeping
in my vestibule.
They're there again today,they're there again today, and
nothing happens.
If you're a small business andthat's impacting your business,
that's that's that's not fair.
And so um we need to do acombination of those things in a
pedestrian plaza.
We need to work with the SID umin order to have a collective
effort um to get these thingsdone.
(15:42):
And that would be another uhpriority of mine.
That's something that I've heardfrom small business owners and
and residents of what needschanging.
Small businesses.
So I think one is our permittingprocess makes it really
difficult to open a smallbusiness.
So if you're opening a smallbusiness and you're waiting a
year for permits, then thatmeans you're having to pay a
(16:02):
year's rent without revenue.
And so we need to figure out howto expedite our permit system
for small businesses in orderfor them to not have such a
barrier to you know beprofitable and open.
So I think that's a big piece ofwhat we need to do.
I think we need to make surethat the environment is
conducive to a small business,much like what I've talked about
(16:22):
in the pedestrian plaza.
But I also think, you know,there's a lot of people that
visit from out of town that dodrive cars.
And yes, we would prefer masstransit to alleviate traffic,
but if people are coming in anddriving from out of town, there
should be parking systems thatmake it easy for them to park.
So uh what I want to do is nearthe pedestrian plaza, have
(16:43):
short-term parking, progressiveparking rates, which means if
you're coming for an hour,you're gonna pay, you know, 50
cents to a dollar for parkingand incentivize that.
If you're planning on staying inthat meter for four hours,
you're gonna pay upwards of youknow$15 for that for that
parking meter.
These aren't exact rates, butI'm just giving you an example
that incentivize you to actuallymove to a s a long-term lot so
(17:06):
that those spaces are becomingreadily available over the
course of the day so peoplecould frequent those businesses.
And then clear signage to ourlong-term lots.
There's a lot of long-term lotsin downtown Jerry City that
people who are coming and couldpark at.
But in our residential areas, weneed to make those resident-only
parking, much like Hoboken does,in order for people to be able
(17:27):
to find parking spaces easily,people who live there.
And then once again, you havethe metered, the rotated, the
temporary parking closer towhere small businesses are so
that people could frequent thosesmall businesses.
And then affordability.
Yeah.
You want me to hit on that onetoo?
Yes, please.
So, you know, let's separatethis into, you know, taxes
versus um, you know, rentingversus versus buying.
(17:49):
When it comes to to purchasingproperty, you know, that what we
could do is have an impact onproperty taxes.
And uh Team Agreive plans tostabilize property taxes by
going to zero-based budgeting,by having a dedicated grant
writing department toaggressively pursue funds, um,
and to have transparency in inall of our departments to make
sure that money is being spentwisely.
(18:10):
And I and I think the zero-basedbudgeting and the transparency
in all departments is reallyimportant, and I don't think
that exists.
As an athletic director, I havea tight budget and I have 10
varsity sports.
And what I do is is I understandmy priority is maximizing the
experience for kids.
So that means my money is goingto buses so they could travel to
games, referees so we could haveas many home games as possible,
(18:31):
and then to coaches.
And that's where the resourcesgo.
And I track every single dollar,I plan every single dollar.
And most importantly, when itcomes to the coaches who are
paid, I make sure that theyunderstand what doing great work
is and are held accountable fordoing great work.
In our departments across thecity, I would like to see who
could I who could clearlyarticulate what are the main
(18:54):
purposes of the funds that youreceive, right?
How is every dollar being spentthis upcoming fiscal year?
And how are you holding yourworkers accountable for great
work?
Because even if we can't lowertaxes, which I think is going to
be pretty hard, we could makesure that your tax dollars pay
for what you deserve.
And so that means excellent cityservices, excellent schools,
(19:15):
excellent recreationalopportunities and parks.
So, you know, from from a from abuying standpoint, you know, I
think if you purchase a home andyour taxes are, you know,
$15,000,$20,000, um, then if youcould say, but hey, Jersey City
provides great services, then atthe end of the day, I think
that's acceptable.
Now, from a rental standpoint,you know, the main way to impact
(19:38):
affordability is by increasingthe housing supply.
So I know that, you know, forfor a lot of people, they they
correlate high rises with higherprices.
And that's not always the case.
If if Jersey City hadn't builtas much, then we would actually
have a much larger affordabilitycrisis as we do across the
river.
Hoboken, you know, d hasn't doneas much when it comes to
(20:01):
building housing.
And so, you know, that does havean impact.
It's not necessarily going to itit does have an impact on
lowering prices in older unitswithin Ward E, but a lot of the
affordability you're gonna seeon other parts of the city, and
even, you know, I I know thisdoesn't help Jersey City as
much, but even areas outside ofuh Jersey City like Bayonne, and
(20:24):
um, you know, at the end of theday, like affordability is uh
it's a crisis across thecountry.
And so whatever we could do todo our part, we have to.
At the same time, though, wecan't we can't demolish any
existing affordable housingbecause if we do that, then
building that housing supplydoes nothing for affordability
if we're uh you know knockingdown affordable housing that
(20:46):
already exists.
So that's something that I'mgonna fight for, you know,
especially uh Vija Borinken,which is right down the street
from me.
You know, it's unfortunate inHolland Gardens.
I know that they are promising192 public housing units for the
folks who are being moved fromthere.
But we want to make sure, Imean, we want to make sure that
that they get those units whenwhen that development is done.
(21:07):
But it's gonna be a long timeuntil until that comes to
fruition.
You know, it it reduces theaffordable housing supply in the
meantime.
SPEAKER_01 (21:14):
We've we've gone through an incredibly large
amount of topics here just now,but there there's a couple
pieces that I wanted to callback to and I'll do my best to
have them indexed in my brain.
But the the first one I wantedto clarify is I know that your
team in general are advocatesfor this in terms of the traffic
(21:35):
traffic units, the motorcyclecops.
Now, is that because thatmotorcycle cops can pursue more
safely for traffic violations?
Is that the idea behind those?
Yeah.
Okay.
So it's simply to alleviate theconcern of a of a pursuit and
escalating the damage in that inthat pursuit.
Correct.
Yeah.
Okay.
Because I I know we've we we'vetalked offline about the
(21:57):
motorcycle cops before, but I'venever really heard it as to why
that would be better.
I just assume that's why it wasbetter, but that makes that
makes a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_00 (22:05):
And let me just clarify because pursuits could
be dangerous in themselves.
But if if I'm a motorcycle copand I am, you know, two cars,
three cars behind someone whojust blew through a stop sign,
right?
I could easily go around thosetwo cars, put on my lights to
get that person.
So not necessarily high speedchases like uh these action
(22:29):
movie, you know.
SPEAKER_01 (22:31):
Right, right.
And it's not Beverly Hills coparound here.
SPEAKER_00 (22:33):
Exactly.
SPEAKER_01 (22:34):
Right.
But but the idea of it.
And and honestly, I think uh alot of it, a lot of it can be
accomplished simply withmarketing in terms of of of the
just it existing is a deterrent,in my in my estimation.
Like just the fact that itexists, people know that it
exists.
Hey, these are gonna be way morethis is what these are being put
on the street for.
(22:55):
They're gonna be around, you'regonna start seeing them.
And I think that that will be alevel of deterrence that will
help alleviate even thepossibility of them having to
like actually do some pursuingin that way, although obviously
it will happen.
But I think just having it isgoing to be a level of
deterrence.
SPEAKER_00 (23:11):
Well, well, one thing I do I do wanna mention
though is all this is aboutconsistence, right?
So this includes the pedestrianplaza, right?
What you do is is you clearlymessage what the expectations
are, and then you consistentlyenforce it.
And you do that every singleday, right?
When you stop the actualenforcement, that's when people
start to forget what what theexpectations actually are.
(23:33):
And that's when you have, youknow, more issues as you
describe.
So everything needs to beconsistent.
It can't be uh, you know, to goback to the pedestrian plaza,
you see a walking patrol everyonce in a while.
It needs to be every single dayso that people understand what
we're enforcing.
And and that piece is reallyimportant.
SPEAKER_01 (23:50):
Yeah, I I completely agree.
And I think a lot, I think a lotof constituent services would be
uh more valuable to us if if theconsistency was there.
I I don't I don't know thatthere are a lot of things that
we have to throw a lot of moneyinto to make better because a
lot of the things just they justneed to happen.
They just literally need tohappen.
(24:10):
Another thing that we talked toCatherine about, she was the
first person I heard talk aboutit, which obviously I I can tell
it's a team thing, is thededicated grant writing
department.
That that is such a to me whenshe started talking about it, I
was like, this is what abrilliant thing to talk about.
Like, how do we we wouldn't knowthat as average citizens, we're
not gonna be like, well, hey,they're missing out on all the
(24:31):
grants here that we should begetting in.
I mean, maybe some people aretuned in well enough to
understand that, but I didn'tknow that.
But to say there's a lot ofthings we can get done with
other people's money, statemoney, federal money, like
that's that's music to my ears.
Because when I hear a candidatesay that we're gonna lower your
taxes, I'm like, no, you're not.
Like, I'm smart enough to knowthat there's not gonna be a city
(24:53):
council candidate or a mayoralcandidate that are gonna lower
my property taxes.
That simply is not gonna happen.
What I do think can happen, andwhat is the real possibility
that you alluded to, is that forexample, when we bought our
house in 2022 to today, ourproperty taxes have gone up
seven thousand dollars a yearfrom when we bought our house
three years ago.
Seven grand.
That's uh, I mean, that's that'sa year you said?
(25:17):
No, uh over the course of threeyears.
Three years.
But it happened at one time.
It wasn't a gradual shift, itwas a one-time hit on a drive-by
uh drive by drive-by appraisal.
Uh they they saw listing photosfrom from our previous the
previous owners' renovation of abathroom and said, Oh, they did
(25:37):
renovation work and slapped uswith an extra$7,000 a year in
property taxes.
So if I'm gonna get a propertytax bill that large, like you
said, I want to see somethingfor it.
I want to see I would like to,you know, drive up Summit, drive
down Summit Avenue withouthaving to feel like my axles are
gonna break in my car.
Right.
Like those, those are the thingsthat, like, okay, you're gonna
(25:59):
tax me like this, at least makesome part of my life a little
bit better in a tangible waythat I can go, like, all right,
well, we have high taxes, butyou know, this, this thing, this
thing, and this thing have allbeen fixed, and I feel good
about that.
And so that that that's a bigpart of it for me.
SPEAKER_00 (26:15):
Yeah.
And and just to go back to theconsistency piece, right?
So, so how do I, because youknow, you have all these
candidates talking about thesame things and they're all
talking about ideas, right?
Like the the big differencebetween me and other candidates
is I've actually done this typeof work successfully before
because I'm a systematic thinkerand I'm very persistent.
So, how does this work?
(26:36):
Motorcycle unit starts, right?
I wanna see data on how manytickets are issued for every
single offense, right?
And obviously in the beginning,you're gonna see this data.
And what I'm gonna do is I'mgonna track that data on a
weekly basis as a councilperson, and I'm gonna say, all
right, it looks like you're itlooks like you are consistently
assigning tickets, et cetera,right?
The minute that goes off the youknow consistent line, then at
(27:00):
that point, I'm gonna call upwhoever's in charge and be like,
hey, what's going on with this?
Right.
And that's the type of approachI would take to every single
quality of life issue that uhthat I'm gonna be accountable
for.
And so, you know, and obviouslyif you see an inconsistence,
what you do is you you say tothe folks like, hey, what are
the pain points?
What are what's getting in theway?
How can I support you as acouncil person?
(27:22):
But at the end of the day, we'rewe're gonna hold everybody
accountable for working,including myself.
SPEAKER_01 (27:27):
Yeah.
I mean, I I you're you'reliterally talking about making
all of the those thingsmeasurable and then tracking the
measurables.
Like that's that's you know,basic business, really.
Like, because that's what you'redoing.
You're you're running abusiness, especially when you
have, you know, budgetaryconcerns.
And like you said, and I it evenoccurred to me like you're
talking about, you know,budgeting financials for sports
(27:48):
teams.
Like you have experience on not,I mean, there's a lot of
parallels between what you do asan athletic director to what
would be done as a city councilmember.
You have a very, very comparablelevel of of um of experience
doing those types of things,which I think uh I think will
resonate with people becausethat's that's what we need.
(28:09):
We need we need some we needsome responsibility, we need
some honesty because you know,like it's easy to beat up on
we've we've turned an entireworking class of developers into
the boogeyman for this for thiselection cycle, while also
saying we need more affordablehousing, which is, you know,
that's a paradox to me in termsof like, okay, we want to, we
(28:30):
want more affordable housing,but we're gonna alienate
everybody capable of doing it.
Instead of working with these,with these groups or these
people, we're just gonna we'regonna demonize them to the point
where they're gonna go like,well, screw this.
I'll I'll go somewhere else.
I I can build anywhere.
This I don't have to build here.
Like if I'm gonna be treated assome sort of, you know, devil,
I'll I'll just take my I'll takemy business elsewhere.
(28:50):
So like that that's always beena curious angle for me as well,
because I don't think thatlisten, Jersey City rent, I
think in the past 10 years hasgone up around 40%.
And that is, you know, there's athere's a lot of reasons for
that.
There was a huge COVID shift uhof people that left the city
looking for a little bit morespace, a little more
affordability, and not have tolive right on top of each other
(29:12):
during that time.
I came over here during thattime mostly because I, you know,
I I met my future wife andwanted to get out of Bushwood
because it was a war zone duringCOVID.
SPEAKER_00 (29:23):
Um my wife and I were also sort of COVID.
She moved to Jersey City duringCOVID, and then, you know, we
had uh I had nothing else to do.
So I was like, maybe I'll justfall in love with her.
It worked out.
Thank God, you know?
SPEAKER_02 (29:36):
That's kind of our story, too.
SPEAKER_01 (29:38):
Kind of our story.
It's five years today, actually.
SPEAKER_02 (29:40):
The five year anniversary today.
Oh, congratulations.
SPEAKER_01 (29:42):
Yeah.
So um but but what I was what Iwas saying is like there are a
lot of factors that weigh intowhat a rent is going to be and
what the market can support.
And one variable can bedevelopers that possibly take
advantage of the systems thatare in place.
Now they're taking advantage ofsystems that are in place,
right?
(30:03):
They're not making up new rules.
They're being allowed to do XYZ.
And then, you know, of coursethey're going to do it, which is
fine.
Which is it's not fine, but it'slike the there's more people at
play than just like this onegroup of developers that's like
ruining it for everybody.
I think that's insane.
Absolutely.
So I I do believe that whatyou're talking about is like,
you know, we do have a popularpopulation density issue.
(30:26):
We are not going to legislateour way out of affordability or
into affordability.
We're not going to stop buildingand then magically lower rents.
Like that, that doesn't make anysense.
There's going to be a lot ofmarket factors that go into
this.
But what do you see?
Like, what are one or two thingsthat you can actually look at
and go, we can pull this leverand make an impact at at any
(30:48):
size because it's going to be,there's going to be a number of
things.
But I want to know from yourperspective, what you've seen on
the ground that you could thecouple things you could do to
maybe maneuver some moreaffordability for for Jersey
Citians.
SPEAKER_00 (31:01):
Yeah.
So I I think with with everyyou're right.
You have to you have to workwith developers, you have to
leverage developers.
And I think with with everyproject, right, you want to want
to try to get as close to 20%affordable housing as you can,
you know, with within within theunits that they're providing.
You want to make sure thatthey're following rigorous
(31:22):
standards for, you know, theinfrastructure that they're
going to build around theirdevelopment to make sure that
the sewers are going to be to beable to withhold uh you know
what what that development isgoing to kind of kind of um the
strains that it's going to puton the system.
You want things like uhstormwater detention systems uh
also in place.
(31:42):
Uh you want to leverage um greengreenery, you know, 70, 90
Columbus, they have like a tonof greenery in their in their
common space up there.
So you you want projects to dothat.
And then obviously you you wantto try to get as much uh revenue
out of it as you can as well.
Um and uh, you know, becausethey they need to pay taxes as
(32:02):
well.
Um and then and then another bigthing is community give backs.
So whether it be a park for thecommunity, I mean I would I
would love to see how we couldleverage a developer to renovate
Enos Jones Park or Mary BensonPark.
And the other thing that wedesperately need uh here in Ward
E is is another school.
And so, you know, that's a lotto ask of any single developer,
but if we could maximize what weget from every project, because
(32:26):
at the end of the day, the landis finite that that that we're
dealing with here.
If we could get a little bit asclose as we could get to those
ideals with each project, thenyou know we're we're making
Jersey City a better place likethat and making it more
affordable, especially if we getthose affordable housing units
in there.
Cool.
Any questions that popped up foryou recently?
SPEAKER_02 (32:44):
No, I think he went through all of them.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (32:47):
Then I have uh I have one that I've been asking,
and it's you spend four years oncity council, you're at the end
of your first four years, andmaybe you go more, maybe you
don't.
But what like at that point, youlook you're looking back on four
years of work.
What are you looking back ongoing, this is successful?
How does that look successfulfor you after four years?
SPEAKER_00 (33:06):
Yeah.
So I execute on all all thestrategic pieces of traffic
safety and pedestrian safety.
One that I forgot to mention isjust cutting off the Holland
Tunnel cut-through traffic,which we also have a plan for to
have auxiliary police onChristopher Columbus Avenue, to
not allow left turns during peakhours, to have automatic license
plate readers at that exit andin the entrance to the Holland
(33:28):
tunnel in order to ticketanybody who's cutting through in
a certain amount of time.
That's another big piece.
So all of those things areconsistently practiced and most
importantly, effective.
I want to see that our parkshere in Ward E are renovated.
I want to see recreationalopportunities for kids at these
parks so that all families coulduh put their kids in basketball,
(33:53):
baseball, soccer for free.
I want to see a pedestrianplaza.
You know, the other day I waswalking my son and it was time
for his feeding, and I'm likeright by the pedestrian plaza,
and I wanted to feed him outsidesomewhere.
And I was like, well, I'm notgonna feed him here.
And so I guess I got to walk toHamilton Park, right?
Like, I should be able to feedmy baby on the pedestrian plaza
(34:15):
without thinking twice.
I want to see an improvement inschools.
Um, and and I think uh we couldlook at our schools and and just
say, I mean, myself, I'm someonewho has worked in great schools
my whole career.
And it just comes down to thefact that I take responsibility
and I better my skills everysingle day.
And that comes from professionaldevelopment, that comes from
leadership, that comes beingfrom being around great
(34:36):
teachers.
This is this is something thatthat you know everybody's
getting paid, right?
Like this is something that thatpeople can do by just
leveraging, but by justadjusting what they're doing
during during their day everysingle day.
So I want to see, you know,really strong schools across the
board.
And then obviously I want to seeas many affordable units of
housing uh possible that wecould build here.
(34:57):
Um and I think if if if I couldaccomplish those things, then I
am answering to the concernsthat I hear from voters every
single day.
And then just like from a from apersonal note, like I need to
look back and say, you knowwhat?
I did everything I could, right?
I worked as hard as I could, Ileaned into those tough
(35:18):
conversations, I did the toughthings at every single turn.
Because, you know, it's onething I talked to when when I
first met Jim McGreevy, uh, wetalked about this where I just
kind of talked about my process,where it's like, you know, if
the first tactic that you try toachieve a certain goal doesn't
work, you go to the next one.
If that doesn't work, you go tothe next one.
(35:39):
And as long as you don't giveup, even if you don't get to
that end goal, things do getbetter.
So if I'm able to look back andsay, hey, I never gave up on any
of these initiatives, and theyall got better at the end of the
day, um, and then then I think II could uh I could say that I
did a pretty good job.
And all that's gonna be reallyhard, but uh, but I've done
really hard stuff throughout mylife, and uh, I think I'm I'm
(36:01):
the best person to get it done.
SPEAKER_01 (36:03):
Awesome.
I have one more that I've askedevery candidate because there
are there are criticisms ofevery the top of every ticket in
this race, and you're no uhyou're no exception to to maybe
even the the bulk of thecriticism for for Jim's past and
and what happened when he was inoffice.
And I w I ask every candidate,I'm like, how do you respond to
(36:25):
these sorts of things?
How do you respond to O'Ryan?
I love you.
I just can't stand your ticket.
What about this?
What about his past?
Like, help me understand, helpme make sense of it, help me,
you know, reconcile that thatpart of it.
SPEAKER_00 (36:38):
Yeah, I mean, I think I want to look look at
this in in a few different ways.
Number one, he obviously made abig mistake um when he was
governor.
And I think that, you know, ifthe biggest mistake I made was
as public, then, you know, thatwould really suck, right?
Um, but I really respect thefact that he has fought back and
(37:01):
worked incredibly hard over thistime to redeem himself and, you
know, dedicate his life tohelping people who who deserve
redemption.
And so I think like that aloneis something to respect.
As Americans, we love a comebackstory.
And uh And he's honest about it.
SPEAKER_02 (37:18):
You know, he's like not, he doesn't shy away from
people will like relentlesslyask him about his past.
And it's just like, come on,guys, we've all especially like
if you look at like Americanpolitics, like it's like it's
light what he's done, you knowwhat I mean?
SPEAKER_01 (37:33):
Yeah, but but but at the same time, like I will say
that if you yes, we we all knowwhat's happened, everybody can
can move past it to a degree,but like if you're gonna insert
yourself back into the publicspotlight, then of course you're
gonna you're gonna have toanswer to it no no matter what,
because people, you know, I Idon't know who Jim was before he
started running for for mayorhere.
(37:53):
Like I I wasn't around NewJersey during all that time,
like I didn't have anyfamiliarity with him at all.
So, like of course I want toknow too, but lucky we we we're
lucky to have had the chance toask him to his face a couple of
times about about things.
And as Ryan has alluded to, thethe accountability piece and
then just turning that sort ofpain into uh purpose really is
(38:13):
what it sounds like, you know,when you're when you're when
you're wanting a second chancefor yourself and it you're
unwilling to give other people asecond chance, that would be
quite hypocritical.
But when you're wanting a secondchance for yourself and then you
create an entire lane of servicein giving other people a second
chance, then I, you know, Ithink uh the karmic balance is
there and and you've you've donewhat you can to atone.
(38:36):
So I think that that's where youand I have been satisfied in
those answers.
And it sounds like Ryan isaligned in that as well.
SPEAKER_00 (38:43):
Yeah.
And and I mean, he he's uh, youknow, when we I met him a year
ago, right?
When when I guess it was lastSeptember, maybe.
And uh, you know, we met and weconnected on our passion for
public service, on puttingpeople first and being
accountable to the people thatwe serve.
And uh there's nothing that I'veseen since, you know, we we
(39:04):
first met a year ago that hasrun contrary to that in his
words or in his actions.
And I mean, the guy is like,listen, I've worked with a lot
of hardworking people.
This guy is like next level.
You know, some of the principalsI worked with, uh, you know,
super, super hard, hardworking.
He's like a next level of ofhard work.
And there's no other candidatethat comes close to his
(39:26):
competencies, to the abilitythat he has.
And I'm really confident thatall these things that I'm
telling you about here, um, withhim in office, we'll be able to
get done.
And so, you know, that that'sthat's kind of like uh I'm I'm
I'm I wouldn't want to be on anyother ticket for sure.
Awesome.
SPEAKER_02 (39:41):
What's your favorite downtown spot?
SPEAKER_00 (39:43):
Ooh, that's a good question.
Ooh, I mean it depends on onwhat we're looking for.
Okay.
SPEAKER_02 (39:49):
Like a staple, like where you go with your family.
SPEAKER_00 (39:52):
To eat?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (39:53):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (39:53):
To eat.
That's that's so hard.
So we got married at Raza.
Um I'm sorry, not Raza, atPorta.
So we've we've been back there afew times.
So, you know, there's there's alot of nostalgia there.
Obviously, love Raza for for thepizza.
Dullboy, we we really like aswell.
Uh my parents have they'reactually here for the month
helping with Bobby, and they'vebeen to Dullboy a couple times
and they love it.
(40:14):
Nice.
And then uh what a I mean, agood dive bar Lucky Sevens, you
know, got a little bit more.
SPEAKER_02 (40:20):
Yeah, I've been to I've had some some nights at
Lucky Sevens.
SPEAKER_00 (40:23):
Yeah.
Oh, and then very dingy.
If you're out with friends anduh you want to stay out past 10
p.m., then you gotta go to seenow.
SPEAKER_02 (40:33):
That's where Tony asked me to be his girlfriend.
SPEAKER_01 (40:35):
That's true.
It was five years ago.
It was well before 10 p.m.,though.
It was dinner time, normal time.
SPEAKER_02 (40:41):
We were sitting outside.
SPEAKER_00 (40:43):
And then I gotta give a shout out to Boots and
Bones.
Boots and Bones, I like a lot.
Uh you know, the the staff thereis great.
So that that's another spot thatI really like.
Awesome.
SPEAKER_02 (40:52):
Well, it was so nice talking to you.
Good luck.
SPEAKER_01 (40:54):
Yeah, we're gonna be.
We're rooting for you.
I I echo Lynn's sentiments fromthe beginning of the podcast
where it was when when I metyou, it was just like you
radiated uh very positiveenergy, very comfortable out of
the gate.
And now having had a chance tospeak a little longer to you, I
I feel the same way about yourability to affect change in that
(41:14):
ward in a way that um it needsvery badly.
So we look forward to to seeingthe rest of the campaign, which
is not that not that much uhhome stretched, uh, but we very
much looking looking forward toseeing a positive outcome for
you and and whatever whateverthat looks like, whether it's
city council or something else.
SPEAKER_00 (41:32):
Well, I really appreciate that.
And thanks for having me.
This was great.
And and I feel the same wayabout uh, you know, meeting the
both of you, you know, you'regreat people, and uh looking
forward to hanging out again inthe future.
Awesome.
Thank you, Ryan.
Thank you.
Hey, welcome to the Lynn and Tony Know podcast.
I'm your host Lynn.
SPEAKER_01 (00:04):
And I'm Tony.
We are both wellness coaches andmarried with kids.
SPEAKER_02 (00:07):
Join us as we talk about all things health,
wellness, relationships, lifehacks, parenting, and everything
in between unfiltered.
Thanks for listening and let'sget into it.
Welcome to the show.
Welcome back.
I feel like we've been recordinga lot.
SPEAKER_01 (00:20):
We have been.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (00:21):
Feels like it.
SPEAKER_01 (00:21):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (00:22):
Hopefully Ari stays put this time.
We'll see.
SPEAKER_01 (00:26):
Yeah, she's she's a ticking time bomb.
She's a ticking time bomb.
Uh, but yes, we are continuingour candidate series.
And uh basically when somebodysays do your research, this is
us doing our research.
Yeah.
We get we get a lot out of theseconversations, and hopefully the
people listening to as well.
SPEAKER_02 (00:42):
Now I know I'm not supposed to be like, this is who
I'm voting for, you know?
Like I'm not supposed to likeendorse specific candidates,
although I have, but but I don'tgive a fuck.
Like I make the rules.
This is my podcast.
SPEAKER_01 (00:52):
Yeah, I was gonna say, who told you?
SPEAKER_02 (00:54):
If I live downtown, I would be voting for this next
candidate who are we talk we'retalking to.
Now, I live in the heights, welive in the heights now, but
when I moved to Jersey City, Imoved to the downtown.
And I've been uh living downtownfor 10 plus years up until we
moved to the heights, right?
So I've been in Jersey City 15years.
I was in downtown about 12years, and I've seen it change
(01:16):
tremendously.
Some change is really great,some changes not so not so good.
Um and I was definitelydispleased with the war,
specifically the downtown wardeuh council members.
And now that we're in theheights, we went to a meet and
greet.
What was the meet and greet thatoh, we met uh the Josh uh
(01:38):
governor, the governor meet andgreet?
SPEAKER_01 (01:41):
Yeah, the oh okay, gotcha.
Yes, yes, when Josh Gottenheimercame in for a meet and greet uh
when he was running forgovernor.
Yes.
SPEAKER_02 (01:47):
And we met Ryan Baylock there and he came, you
know, to show show support andlisten to his constituents, and
I was very impressed by him.
Just you know, when you meetsomebody and it's like just good
vibes, good energy and justauthenticity, which you don't
really get with a lot ofpoliticians.
Like I can see through people ifthey're being fake and they're
talking out of two sides oftheir mouths.
(02:08):
And he was just like, no, likehe cares about downtown Jersey
City and really wants to make achange.
And uh so I'm excited to chatwith him today.
SPEAKER_01 (02:16):
Yeah, great.
So tell us a little bit of.
SPEAKER_02 (02:18):
Let me read his bias.
SPEAKER_01 (02:19):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (02:20):
Sorry about that.
Okay.
Today we're joined by RyanBaylock, a lifelong educator,
coach, and community leaderwho's been living right here in
Jersey City since 2018.
Ryan spent over 20 years withthe KIPPNJ Charter School
Network in Newark, where he'sdone it all, from teaching sixth
grade, writing, and coachingchampionship basketball teams to
building an entire athleticdepartment from the ground up.
(02:41):
He's also the president of hiscondo association, where he's
known for improving operationsand keeping the community
strong.
Ryan lives in Ward E, downtownwith his wife and newborn son,
and he's bringing his can-doattitude and leadership
experience to every challenge hetakes on.
Well, you have a newborn too?
SPEAKER_00 (02:55):
Yeah, yeah.
How old?
He's uh five months.
SPEAKER_02 (02:59):
Wow.
So you're in the trenches.
SPEAKER_00 (03:01):
Yeah, but thank God he he's a good baby, and uh like
he he sleeps through the night.
Wow.
He only gets fussy when he's alittle tired, but he's doing
really well.
We we love him very much.
SPEAKER_02 (03:14):
Well, congratulations,
congratulations, Mazel Tove.
Congrats.
SPEAKER_01 (03:18):
I want to I I want to meet somebody someday where
they're like, yeah, I have ababy too.
And you're uh they're like, hesucks.
Like he's a terrible baby.
I can't stand him.
SPEAKER_02 (03:26):
The first baby, though, is a trick baby.
They're very easy, uh-uh,because you don't know what
you're doing, so they're prettyeasy.
And then you're like, oh, thisisn't so bad.
Like we can do this, so let'shave another one.
It's the second.
The second baby is diabolical,tyrannical, right?
Like Noah runs this household.
She's a savage, she's a savage.
SPEAKER_01 (03:47):
She's too bad.
SPEAKER_00 (03:48):
You're always gonna get like a reversion to the
mean, right?
If your first one's really likeawesome, like it's just it's
just probability, you know,nobody's perfect.
Yeah, 100%.
SPEAKER_02 (03:57):
And then the third is like a middle, like middle.
Like it's like not too easy, nottoo hard.
SPEAKER_01 (04:02):
It's a mix, yeah.
Mixed bag.
Mixed bag.
But at that point, you're justlike uh you're calm, you don't
care.
SPEAKER_02 (04:07):
You're like whatever.
SPEAKER_01 (04:08):
The little stuff that bothered you with the first
one.
SPEAKER_02 (04:11):
It's like chaos as it is, you know.
SPEAKER_01 (04:12):
You just make podcasts, you know.
Exactly.
Like, all right, now I havethree kids, one's eight weeks
old.
What else could we add to ourplate that we literally don't
have to do at all?
We could interview all thecandidates.
SPEAKER_00 (04:22):
That's awesome.
That's awesome that you're doingthat.
SPEAKER_01 (04:26):
We're having it, we're honestly we're having a
great time, and and theconversations have been
wonderful.
And uh, for anybody listening,we are open to literally any
candidate will not say no to acandidate, no matter what our
belief system is.
SPEAKER_02 (04:37):
But some candidates definitely won't that's fine.
SPEAKER_01 (04:39):
Listen, that's fine, but it's not gonna be on our
it's not gonna be on our endthat they don't get the
opportunity.
So with that being said, welet's jump into it.
There's a couple things that uhwe want to talk about.
And number one, right out of thegate, is why on earth would you
do this to yourself?
Why would you run for localoffice?
I mean, we've we've heard allsorts of answers so far.
(05:00):
Some some range from, you know,kind of they knew that this is
what they wanted to do beforethe election started, and other
people got a call from a from amayoral candidate and said, it's
time for you to serve, and theystepped up to the plate, all of
all of which I find you knowinspiring in one way or another.
But what what is your particularstory on how you came to this
ticket and this role?
SPEAKER_00 (05:18):
Yeah, that's a great question.
So, you know, when I when I wasyounger, my parents, they they
were both educators, lifelongeducators.
I my dad taught for 37 years, mymom taught for 34 years.
Um, but they were also greatparents, and they said, listen,
Ryan, you you know, you want todo something meaningful with
your life and you want to dosomething you're passionate
about.
And so um I I took that adviceand I followed in their
(05:40):
footsteps.
Originally, you know, I becamean educator both, you know, to
help communities and to have animpact on the world, but also it
was a road to be a basketballcoach.
You know, I was super passionateabout basketball when I was
younger.
And like most 13 and14-year-olds, I wanted to be in
the NBA, you know.
So once once I figured out,probably by 14, that that wasn't
(06:02):
gonna happen, I was like, well,you know what?
I could, I could pursue mypassion uh through being a
teacher and a coach.
And um, you know, over my timein education, I've uh been in a
bunch of leadership roles.
I was a big part of, you know,Kip New Jersey, which went from
one school when I was there toover 12 schools.
And um I've been able to be in abunch of different leadership
(06:24):
positions and have a huge impacton on the communities I've
served.
And so what what I've never hadthe opportunity to do though is
to to really work besides mycondo association work, is to
really have an impact where Ilived and to really have an
impact outside the walls of theschool.
And um, you know, I love JerseyCity, it's a great place, and uh
(06:44):
it's a place that uh I thinkneeds strong leadership.
And I think, you know, I I thinkright now we're we're at a place
where, you know, people arepaying a lot of money in taxes
and the services that they'regetting are not on par with
that.
And I and I that municipalgovernment needs to be
accountable for that.
And I'm someone who who takesaccountability and who takes on
(07:08):
the challenges that exist andhas a process for attacking
them.
And I want to apply that herewhere I live and where I'm
raising my my son and live withmy wife.
So um so it's it's ultimatelylike it just aligns with my
purpose, with my passions, and Iknow it's gonna be hard, but uh,
I've done a lot of hard thingsin my career, and and I this is
one of the things I'm I'mprepared to take on.
SPEAKER_02 (07:27):
So I wanna, as somebody who's again lived
downtown for many years, I wantto talk about like the specific
issues that I think are aproblem as somebody who's been
in Jersey City for a long time,but specifically downtown.
Because I feel like downtown isits own ecosystem, like there's
its own issues.
So first is obviously roadsafety.
Second is, you know, a lot ofsmall businesses are I've seen
(07:49):
so many small businesses comeand go in downtown because it's
just not well to pay the rent,you know, pay rent.
Like their rent is going up andit's just hard to sustain a
small business in downtownJersey City.
Newark, you know, the issue withhomelessness on Newark Avenue.
What else?
SPEAKER_01 (08:05):
I think those are the those are those are
certainly uh ones you hear quitea bit about.
Um lots of turnover in smallbusinesses for sure.
Newark does seem to get uh adisproportionate amount of of
that sort of traffic.
SPEAKER_02 (08:18):
And it's not affordable.
Like we were put we wereliterally put pushed out of
downtown Jersey City because itwas in it was too expensive.
SPEAKER_01 (08:26):
We we let's let's let's frame it appropriately, we
had we could have stayeddowntown.
We could have sacrificed spaceand and lived downtown for sure.
But for what our purposes wereand where we wanted to go in
terms of growing our family, itdidn't make a lot of sense.
But we we were too expensive.
We also priced ourselves out ofdowntown a little bit.
SPEAKER_02 (08:45):
Yes.
SPEAKER_01 (08:45):
Like some people are getting like legitimately pushed
out.
I don't want to put ourselves inthat camp.
We we had a choice.
We could have stayed downtownand made a water.
SPEAKER_02 (08:54):
I don't want to trigger people, but you're
you're right.
SPEAKER_01 (08:56):
But yeah, we made the choice.
But it is it is most the mostexpensive ward, probably by far.
And it it's probably in terms oflike what wards get the most
attention, just media-wise, it'sthe most high profile ward
because it's because it'sdowntown, so it makes sense.
But yes, go.
SPEAKER_02 (09:12):
I'm I'm still a little butthurt that I don't
live downtown anymore because Ido love living downtown.
But anyway, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (09:18):
Well, listen, we can talk about it depending on who
wins the race with that.
SPEAKER_00 (09:22):
Yeah, so I mean the the the concerns that that
you're describing, you know,you're not alone.
I don't know.
I've knocked on every singledoor in Wardy except for some of
the high rises that I can't getinto, even though I've snuck
into a few, but don't tellanybody that.
And and these concerns are theones that come up in those
conversations.
And let's start with trafficsafety.
Um, because one, it comes up innearly every conversation, two,
(09:44):
it touches everybody.
And three, I have close callsevery single day.
Right now, you know, that's oneof the things like day one
coming into the if I win office,there'll there'll be a clear
roadmap of X, Y, and Z, what weneed to do.
And so when it comes to trafficsafety, one, we need an
enforcement arm of the trafficdivision.
Because right now there's noenforcement arm whatsoever.
So that's what do you mean?
What do you mean by enforcementarm?
(10:04):
What what's so it would be atraffic bureau, it would be a
unit of around 20 to 25officers, and you know, this
would be citywide, but it wouldalso impact um Ward E that would
have motorcycles and they woulduh issue tickets, you know,
especially for things likerunning red lights, traffic
signs, I'm sorry, stop signs,um, but then also e-bikes.
So they would be also the thearm that enforces e-bikes
(10:27):
driving on the correct side ofthe road, also not blowing stop
signs, not riding on thesidewalk or down the pedestrian
plaza.
So that's that's one, right?
But then what we also need to dois close gaps in vision zero.
So there's certain environmentaladjustments that you can make
that calm traffic.
So one is I'm sure you guys haveseen flexi poles at a lot of
(10:47):
corners.
There's certain corners where weneed to install concrete curb
extenders to slow those turns umin order to keep pedestrians
safe and lessen the distance ofpeople crossing in the middle of
uh traffic.
The other big thing that I'mshocked that aren't that isn't
here, it's something I first sawin Princeton, New Jersey, is uh
intermittent pedestriancrossings.
(11:08):
So this is a traffic light thatit's regular traffic light, it
just stops, no traffic moves sothat pedestrians could cross for
10 to 15 seconds.
So Christopher Columbus Avenue,like you know, there's days
where I I I like taking my babyon a walk to the waterfront or
even across towards Van VorsPark sometimes.
Sometimes I'm like, I don't wantto cross Christopher Columbus or
(11:29):
I don't want to cross Marin,right?
Um, and so intermittentpedestrian crossings allow for
safe crossings, especially inhigh-speed corridors like
Christopher Columbus Avenue.
The other thing that we need todo is we need to regulate uh
truck routes so that largetrucks are routed around
residential areas, but also sothat deliveries aren't allowed
during school drop-off or pickuphours.
(11:51):
So I was at Cordero the otherday talking to parents, and you
have, you know, stick trafficbacked up because people are
dropping kids off, people aredriving to work, and then you
have these huge trucksdelivering to Cagianos.
And so, listen, I understandthat you you're a business and
you need to have deliveries,they just shouldn't be happening
during school drop-off hours orduring school pickup hours.
(12:14):
We also need raised crosswalks.
Um, I think that's something onMarin Boulevard, especially like
right by the art house.
I don't know if you have seenlike the yellow signs, the
pedestrian crossing signs.
There, if we have a raisedcrosswalk, it's a further
inhibitor of people rushingthrough those crosswalks.
So a combination of thesethings, and then one thing too,
that's a simple thing, thatquite frankly, if if I'm not
(12:36):
able to accomplish this, right?
Not that I'm planning to run formayor by any means, right?
But I'm definitely not going torun for mayor if I'm a
councilman and I can't getpeople to not park on the yellow
line.
But yeah, so like uh, you know,another thing is we have yellow
lines, you know, yellow linesthat say you can't park there.
A big part of that is if I'm apedestrian and I'm crossing from
one side of the street to theother, I if somebody's not
(12:59):
parked on the yellow line, Icould see if a car is coming and
a car could see if apedestrian's coming through,
right?
It's basic.
It also, you know, emergencyvehicles can make turns, etc.
In Ward E, everybody parks onthe yellow lines, right?
And so at the end of the day,that's a huge concern when it
comes to, you know, trafficsafety, pedestrian safety.
And so that's like another piecethat needs to change.
(13:21):
But it's also something that mepersonally, like, once again, I
don't have any ambitions to runfor mayor by any means.
But if I can't get that done,then I'm not suited to run for
mayor if I can't get that doneas a council person, right?
I think that's like you know,just something that that kind of
gets me going a little bit uhevery single time I have to
like, you know, move my babystroller to the side to look if
(13:42):
a car is coming.
But yeah, that's the that's thethe pedestrian traffic safety
piece.
So the homelessness piece, ifyou guys you guys just want me
to kind of run through it.
SPEAKER_01 (13:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Run through run through eachpoint, sure.
SPEAKER_00 (13:53):
But yeah, so so when it comes to uh the pedestrian
plaza, I think we need to do acombination of homeless
outreach.
So, you know, we we need to lookat the core of the issue here in
Jerry City and see how manymental health step-down units we
have, which are, you know,single units for folks who need
(14:14):
stable housing while they getthe services that they need,
while they get their feet on theground.
Um, so we so we need to makesure that that those types of
units exist here in Jury City atscale so that we could then
leverage nonprofits and othercity agencies to be part of an
effort to provide outreach inplaces like the pedestrian plaza
(14:34):
and offer those folks theservices that they need.
At the same time, we also needour police department to be zero
focused on laser focused on youcan't do drugs out there, you
can't drink, you can't bebelligerent, you can't sleep.
And listen, if if if you'resomeone who's unhoused, you have
every right to be walking on thepedestrian plaza, to sit down
(14:58):
and enjoy a nice day on thepedestrian plaza as anybody
else.
But those things uh, you know,are not um you know a functional
use of of that space.
And we see that that they leadto a lot of issues that impact
the quality of life and impact,you know, small businesses.
I mean, imagine if you're asmall business, and I've been on
emails with uh, you know, thecurrent administration where
(15:20):
small businesses say, hey,there's a person who's sleeping
in my vestibule.
They're there again today,they're there again today, and
nothing happens.
If you're a small business andthat's impacting your business,
that's that's that's not fair.
And so um we need to do acombination of those things in a
pedestrian plaza.
We need to work with the SID umin order to have a collective
effort um to get these thingsdone.
(15:42):
And that would be another uhpriority of mine.
That's something that I've heardfrom small business owners and
and residents of what needschanging.
Small businesses.
So I think one is our permittingprocess makes it really
difficult to open a smallbusiness.
So if you're opening a smallbusiness and you're waiting a
year for permits, then thatmeans you're having to pay a
(16:02):
year's rent without revenue.
And so we need to figure out howto expedite our permit system
for small businesses in orderfor them to not have such a
barrier to you know beprofitable and open.
So I think that's a big piece ofwhat we need to do.
I think we need to make surethat the environment is
conducive to a small business,much like what I've talked about
(16:22):
in the pedestrian plaza.
But I also think, you know,there's a lot of people that
visit from out of town that dodrive cars.
And yes, we would prefer masstransit to alleviate traffic,
but if people are coming in anddriving from out of town, there
should be parking systems thatmake it easy for them to park.
So uh what I want to do is nearthe pedestrian plaza, have
(16:43):
short-term parking, progressiveparking rates, which means if
you're coming for an hour,you're gonna pay, you know, 50
cents to a dollar for parkingand incentivize that.
If you're planning on staying inthat meter for four hours,
you're gonna pay upwards of youknow$15 for that for that
parking meter.
These aren't exact rates, butI'm just giving you an example
that incentivize you to actuallymove to a s a long-term lot so
(17:06):
that those spaces are becomingreadily available over the
course of the day so peoplecould frequent those businesses.
And then clear signage to ourlong-term lots.
There's a lot of long-term lotsin downtown Jerry City that
people who are coming and couldpark at.
But in our residential areas, weneed to make those resident-only
parking, much like Hoboken does,in order for people to be able
(17:27):
to find parking spaces easily,people who live there.
And then once again, you havethe metered, the rotated, the
temporary parking closer towhere small businesses are so
that people could frequent thosesmall businesses.
And then affordability.
Yeah.
You want me to hit on that onetoo?
Yes, please.
So, you know, let's separatethis into, you know, taxes
versus um, you know, rentingversus versus buying.
(17:49):
When it comes to to purchasingproperty, you know, that what we
could do is have an impact onproperty taxes.
And uh Team Agreive plans tostabilize property taxes by
going to zero-based budgeting,by having a dedicated grant
writing department toaggressively pursue funds, um,
and to have transparency in inall of our departments to make
sure that money is being spentwisely.
(18:10):
And I and I think the zero-basedbudgeting and the transparency
in all departments is reallyimportant, and I don't think
that exists.
As an athletic director, I havea tight budget and I have 10
varsity sports.
And what I do is is I understandmy priority is maximizing the
experience for kids.
So that means my money is goingto buses so they could travel to
games, referees so we could haveas many home games as possible,
(18:31):
and then to coaches.
And that's where the resourcesgo.
And I track every single dollar,I plan every single dollar.
And most importantly, when itcomes to the coaches who are
paid, I make sure that theyunderstand what doing great work
is and are held accountable fordoing great work.
In our departments across thecity, I would like to see who
could I who could clearlyarticulate what are the main
(18:54):
purposes of the funds that youreceive, right?
How is every dollar being spentthis upcoming fiscal year?
And how are you holding yourworkers accountable for great
work?
Because even if we can't lowertaxes, which I think is going to
be pretty hard, we could makesure that your tax dollars pay
for what you deserve.
And so that means excellent cityservices, excellent schools,
(19:15):
excellent recreationalopportunities and parks.
So, you know, from from a from abuying standpoint, you know, I
think if you purchase a home andyour taxes are, you know,
$15,000,$20,000, um, then if youcould say, but hey, Jersey City
provides great services, then atthe end of the day, I think
that's acceptable.
Now, from a rental standpoint,you know, the main way to impact
(19:38):
affordability is by increasingthe housing supply.
So I know that, you know, forfor a lot of people, they they
correlate high rises with higherprices.
And that's not always the case.
If if Jersey City hadn't builtas much, then we would actually
have a much larger affordabilitycrisis as we do across the
river.
Hoboken, you know, d hasn't doneas much when it comes to
(20:01):
building housing.
And so, you know, that does havean impact.
It's not necessarily going to itit does have an impact on
lowering prices in older unitswithin Ward E, but a lot of the
affordability you're gonna seeon other parts of the city, and
even, you know, I I know thisdoesn't help Jersey City as
much, but even areas outside ofuh Jersey City like Bayonne, and
(20:24):
um, you know, at the end of theday, like affordability is uh
it's a crisis across thecountry.
And so whatever we could do todo our part, we have to.
At the same time, though, wecan't we can't demolish any
existing affordable housingbecause if we do that, then
building that housing supplydoes nothing for affordability
if we're uh you know knockingdown affordable housing that
(20:46):
already exists.
So that's something that I'mgonna fight for, you know,
especially uh Vija Borinken,which is right down the street
from me.
You know, it's unfortunate inHolland Gardens.
I know that they are promising192 public housing units for the
folks who are being moved fromthere.
But we want to make sure, Imean, we want to make sure that
that they get those units whenwhen that development is done.
(21:07):
But it's gonna be a long timeuntil until that comes to
fruition.
You know, it it reduces theaffordable housing supply in the
meantime.
SPEAKER_01 (21:14):
We've we've gone through an incredibly large
amount of topics here just now,but there there's a couple
pieces that I wanted to callback to and I'll do my best to
have them indexed in my brain.
But the the first one I wantedto clarify is I know that your
team in general are advocatesfor this in terms of the traffic
(21:35):
traffic units, the motorcyclecops.
Now, is that because thatmotorcycle cops can pursue more
safely for traffic violations?
Is that the idea behind those?
Yeah.
Okay.
So it's simply to alleviate theconcern of a of a pursuit and
escalating the damage in that inthat pursuit.
Correct.
Yeah.
Okay.
Because I I know we've we we'vetalked offline about the
(21:57):
motorcycle cops before, but I'venever really heard it as to why
that would be better.
I just assume that's why it wasbetter, but that makes that
makes a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_00 (22:05):
And let me just clarify because pursuits could
be dangerous in themselves.
But if if I'm a motorcycle copand I am, you know, two cars,
three cars behind someone whojust blew through a stop sign,
right?
I could easily go around thosetwo cars, put on my lights to
get that person.
So not necessarily high speedchases like uh these action
(22:29):
movie, you know.
SPEAKER_01 (22:31):
Right, right.
And it's not Beverly Hills coparound here.
SPEAKER_00 (22:33):
Exactly.
SPEAKER_01 (22:34):
Right.
But but the idea of it.
And and honestly, I think uh alot of it, a lot of it can be
accomplished simply withmarketing in terms of of of the
just it existing is a deterrent,in my in my estimation.
Like just the fact that itexists, people know that it
exists.
Hey, these are gonna be way morethis is what these are being put
on the street for.
(22:55):
They're gonna be around, you'regonna start seeing them.
And I think that that will be alevel of deterrence that will
help alleviate even thepossibility of them having to
like actually do some pursuingin that way, although obviously
it will happen.
But I think just having it isgoing to be a level of
deterrence.
SPEAKER_00 (23:11):
Well, well, one thing I do I do wanna mention
though is all this is aboutconsistence, right?
So this includes the pedestrianplaza, right?
What you do is is you clearlymessage what the expectations
are, and then you consistentlyenforce it.
And you do that every singleday, right?
When you stop the actualenforcement, that's when people
start to forget what what theexpectations actually are.
(23:33):
And that's when you have, youknow, more issues as you
describe.
So everything needs to beconsistent.
It can't be uh, you know, to goback to the pedestrian plaza,
you see a walking patrol everyonce in a while.
It needs to be every single dayso that people understand what
we're enforcing.
And and that piece is reallyimportant.
SPEAKER_01 (23:50):
Yeah, I I completely agree.
And I think a lot, I think a lotof constituent services would be
uh more valuable to us if if theconsistency was there.
I I don't I don't know thatthere are a lot of things that
we have to throw a lot of moneyinto to make better because a
lot of the things just they justneed to happen.
They just literally need tohappen.
(24:10):
Another thing that we talked toCatherine about, she was the
first person I heard talk aboutit, which obviously I I can tell
it's a team thing, is thededicated grant writing
department.
That that is such a to me whenshe started talking about it, I
was like, this is what abrilliant thing to talk about.
Like, how do we we wouldn't knowthat as average citizens, we're
not gonna be like, well, hey,they're missing out on all the
(24:31):
grants here that we should begetting in.
I mean, maybe some people aretuned in well enough to
understand that, but I didn'tknow that.
But to say there's a lot ofthings we can get done with
other people's money, statemoney, federal money, like
that's that's music to my ears.
Because when I hear a candidatesay that we're gonna lower your
taxes, I'm like, no, you're not.
Like, I'm smart enough to knowthat there's not gonna be a city
(24:53):
council candidate or a mayoralcandidate that are gonna lower
my property taxes.
That simply is not gonna happen.
What I do think can happen, andwhat is the real possibility
that you alluded to, is that forexample, when we bought our
house in 2022 to today, ourproperty taxes have gone up
seven thousand dollars a yearfrom when we bought our house
three years ago.
Seven grand.
That's uh, I mean, that's that'sa year you said?
(25:17):
No, uh over the course of threeyears.
Three years.
But it happened at one time.
It wasn't a gradual shift, itwas a one-time hit on a drive-by
uh drive by drive-by appraisal.
Uh they they saw listing photosfrom from our previous the
previous owners' renovation of abathroom and said, Oh, they did
(25:37):
renovation work and slapped uswith an extra$7,000 a year in
property taxes.
So if I'm gonna get a propertytax bill that large, like you
said, I want to see somethingfor it.
I want to see I would like to,you know, drive up Summit, drive
down Summit Avenue withouthaving to feel like my axles are
gonna break in my car.
Right.
Like those, those are the thingsthat, like, okay, you're gonna
(25:59):
tax me like this, at least makesome part of my life a little
bit better in a tangible waythat I can go, like, all right,
well, we have high taxes, butyou know, this, this thing, this
thing, and this thing have allbeen fixed, and I feel good
about that.
And so that that that's a bigpart of it for me.
SPEAKER_00 (26:15):
Yeah.
And and just to go back to theconsistency piece, right?
So, so how do I, because youknow, you have all these
candidates talking about thesame things and they're all
talking about ideas, right?
Like the the big differencebetween me and other candidates
is I've actually done this typeof work successfully before
because I'm a systematic thinkerand I'm very persistent.
So, how does this work?
(26:36):
Motorcycle unit starts, right?
I wanna see data on how manytickets are issued for every
single offense, right?
And obviously in the beginning,you're gonna see this data.
And what I'm gonna do is I'mgonna track that data on a
weekly basis as a councilperson, and I'm gonna say, all
right, it looks like you're itlooks like you are consistently
assigning tickets, et cetera,right?
The minute that goes off the youknow consistent line, then at
(27:00):
that point, I'm gonna call upwhoever's in charge and be like,
hey, what's going on with this?
Right.
And that's the type of approachI would take to every single
quality of life issue that uhthat I'm gonna be accountable
for.
And so, you know, and obviouslyif you see an inconsistence,
what you do is you you say tothe folks like, hey, what are
the pain points?
What are what's getting in theway?
How can I support you as acouncil person?
(27:22):
But at the end of the day, we'rewe're gonna hold everybody
accountable for working,including myself.
SPEAKER_01 (27:27):
Yeah.
I mean, I I you're you'reliterally talking about making
all of the those thingsmeasurable and then tracking the
measurables.
Like that's that's you know,basic business, really.
Like, because that's what you'redoing.
You're you're running abusiness, especially when you
have, you know, budgetaryconcerns.
And like you said, and I it evenoccurred to me like you're
talking about, you know,budgeting financials for sports
(27:48):
teams.
Like you have experience on not,I mean, there's a lot of
parallels between what you do asan athletic director to what
would be done as a city councilmember.
You have a very, very comparablelevel of of um of experience
doing those types of things,which I think uh I think will
resonate with people becausethat's that's what we need.
(28:09):
We need we need some we needsome responsibility, we need
some honesty because you know,like it's easy to beat up on
we've we've turned an entireworking class of developers into
the boogeyman for this for thiselection cycle, while also
saying we need more affordablehousing, which is, you know,
that's a paradox to me in termsof like, okay, we want to, we
(28:30):
want more affordable housing,but we're gonna alienate
everybody capable of doing it.
Instead of working with these,with these groups or these
people, we're just gonna we'regonna demonize them to the point
where they're gonna go like,well, screw this.
I'll I'll go somewhere else.
I I can build anywhere.
This I don't have to build here.
Like if I'm gonna be treated assome sort of, you know, devil,
I'll I'll just take my I'll takemy business elsewhere.
(28:50):
So like that that's always beena curious angle for me as well,
because I don't think thatlisten, Jersey City rent, I
think in the past 10 years hasgone up around 40%.
And that is, you know, there's athere's a lot of reasons for
that.
There was a huge COVID shift uhof people that left the city
looking for a little bit morespace, a little more
affordability, and not have tolive right on top of each other
(29:12):
during that time.
I came over here during thattime mostly because I, you know,
I I met my future wife andwanted to get out of Bushwood
because it was a war zone duringCOVID.
SPEAKER_00 (29:23):
Um my wife and I were also sort of COVID.
She moved to Jersey City duringCOVID, and then, you know, we
had uh I had nothing else to do.
So I was like, maybe I'll justfall in love with her.
It worked out.
Thank God, you know?
SPEAKER_02 (29:36):
That's kind of our story, too.
SPEAKER_01 (29:38):
Kind of our story.
It's five years today, actually.
SPEAKER_02 (29:40):
The five year anniversary today.
Oh, congratulations.
SPEAKER_01 (29:42):
Yeah.
So um but but what I was what Iwas saying is like there are a
lot of factors that weigh intowhat a rent is going to be and
what the market can support.
And one variable can bedevelopers that possibly take
advantage of the systems thatare in place.
Now they're taking advantage ofsystems that are in place,
right?
(30:03):
They're not making up new rules.
They're being allowed to do XYZ.
And then, you know, of coursethey're going to do it, which is
fine.
Which is it's not fine, but it'slike the there's more people at
play than just like this onegroup of developers that's like
ruining it for everybody.
I think that's insane.
Absolutely.
So I I do believe that whatyou're talking about is like,
you know, we do have a popularpopulation density issue.
(30:26):
We are not going to legislateour way out of affordability or
into affordability.
We're not going to stop buildingand then magically lower rents.
Like that, that doesn't make anysense.
There's going to be a lot ofmarket factors that go into
this.
But what do you see?
Like, what are one or two thingsthat you can actually look at
and go, we can pull this leverand make an impact at at any
(30:48):
size because it's going to be,there's going to be a number of
things.
But I want to know from yourperspective, what you've seen on
the ground that you could thecouple things you could do to
maybe maneuver some moreaffordability for for Jersey
Citians.
SPEAKER_00 (31:01):
Yeah.
So I I think with with everyyou're right.
You have to you have to workwith developers, you have to
leverage developers.
And I think with with everyproject, right, you want to want
to try to get as close to 20%affordable housing as you can,
you know, with within within theunits that they're providing.
You want to make sure thatthey're following rigorous
(31:22):
standards for, you know, theinfrastructure that they're
going to build around theirdevelopment to make sure that
the sewers are going to be to beable to withhold uh you know
what what that development isgoing to kind of kind of um the
strains that it's going to puton the system.
You want things like uhstormwater detention systems uh
also in place.
(31:42):
Uh you want to leverage um greengreenery, you know, 70, 90
Columbus, they have like a tonof greenery in their in their
common space up there.
So you you want projects to dothat.
And then obviously you you wantto try to get as much uh revenue
out of it as you can as well.
Um and uh, you know, becausethey they need to pay taxes as
(32:02):
well.
Um and then and then another bigthing is community give backs.
So whether it be a park for thecommunity, I mean I would I
would love to see how we couldleverage a developer to renovate
Enos Jones Park or Mary BensonPark.
And the other thing that wedesperately need uh here in Ward
E is is another school.
And so, you know, that's a lotto ask of any single developer,
but if we could maximize what weget from every project, because
(32:26):
at the end of the day, the landis finite that that that we're
dealing with here.
If we could get a little bit asclose as we could get to those
ideals with each project, thenyou know we're we're making
Jersey City a better place likethat and making it more
affordable, especially if we getthose affordable housing units
in there.
Cool.
Any questions that popped up foryou recently?
SPEAKER_02 (32:44):
No, I think he went through all of them.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (32:47):
Then I have uh I have one that I've been asking,
and it's you spend four years oncity council, you're at the end
of your first four years, andmaybe you go more, maybe you
don't.
But what like at that point, youlook you're looking back on four
years of work.
What are you looking back ongoing, this is successful?
How does that look successfulfor you after four years?
SPEAKER_00 (33:06):
Yeah.
So I execute on all all thestrategic pieces of traffic
safety and pedestrian safety.
One that I forgot to mention isjust cutting off the Holland
Tunnel cut-through traffic,which we also have a plan for to
have auxiliary police onChristopher Columbus Avenue, to
not allow left turns during peakhours, to have automatic license
plate readers at that exit andin the entrance to the Holland
(33:28):
tunnel in order to ticketanybody who's cutting through in
a certain amount of time.
That's another big piece.
So all of those things areconsistently practiced and most
importantly, effective.
I want to see that our parkshere in Ward E are renovated.
I want to see recreationalopportunities for kids at these
parks so that all families coulduh put their kids in basketball,
(33:53):
baseball, soccer for free.
I want to see a pedestrianplaza.
You know, the other day I waswalking my son and it was time
for his feeding, and I'm likeright by the pedestrian plaza,
and I wanted to feed him outsidesomewhere.
And I was like, well, I'm notgonna feed him here.
And so I guess I got to walk toHamilton Park, right?
Like, I should be able to feedmy baby on the pedestrian plaza
(34:15):
without thinking twice.
I want to see an improvement inschools.
Um, and and I think uh we couldlook at our schools and and just
say, I mean, myself, I'm someonewho has worked in great schools
my whole career.
And it just comes down to thefact that I take responsibility
and I better my skills everysingle day.
And that comes from professionaldevelopment, that comes from
leadership, that comes beingfrom being around great
(34:36):
teachers.
This is this is something thatthat you know everybody's
getting paid, right?
Like this is something that thatpeople can do by just
leveraging, but by justadjusting what they're doing
during during their day everysingle day.
So I want to see, you know,really strong schools across the
board.
And then obviously I want to seeas many affordable units of
housing uh possible that wecould build here.
(34:57):
Um and I think if if if I couldaccomplish those things, then I
am answering to the concernsthat I hear from voters every
single day.
And then just like from a from apersonal note, like I need to
look back and say, you knowwhat?
I did everything I could, right?
I worked as hard as I could, Ileaned into those tough
(35:18):
conversations, I did the toughthings at every single turn.
Because, you know, it's onething I talked to when when I
first met Jim McGreevy, uh, wetalked about this where I just
kind of talked about my process,where it's like, you know, if
the first tactic that you try toachieve a certain goal doesn't
work, you go to the next one.
If that doesn't work, you go tothe next one.
(35:39):
And as long as you don't giveup, even if you don't get to
that end goal, things do getbetter.
So if I'm able to look back andsay, hey, I never gave up on any
of these initiatives, and theyall got better at the end of the
day, um, and then then I think II could uh I could say that I
did a pretty good job.
And all that's gonna be reallyhard, but uh, but I've done
really hard stuff throughout mylife, and uh, I think I'm I'm
(36:01):
the best person to get it done.
SPEAKER_01 (36:03):
Awesome.
I have one more that I've askedevery candidate because there
are there are criticisms ofevery the top of every ticket in
this race, and you're no uhyou're no exception to to maybe
even the the bulk of thecriticism for for Jim's past and
and what happened when he was inoffice.
And I w I ask every candidate,I'm like, how do you respond to
(36:25):
these sorts of things?
How do you respond to O'Ryan?
I love you.
I just can't stand your ticket.
What about this?
What about his past?
Like, help me understand, helpme make sense of it, help me,
you know, reconcile that thatpart of it.
SPEAKER_00 (36:38):
Yeah, I mean, I think I want to look look at
this in in a few different ways.
Number one, he obviously made abig mistake um when he was
governor.
And I think that, you know, ifthe biggest mistake I made was
as public, then, you know, thatwould really suck, right?
Um, but I really respect thefact that he has fought back and
(37:01):
worked incredibly hard over thistime to redeem himself and, you
know, dedicate his life tohelping people who who deserve
redemption.
And so I think like that aloneis something to respect.
As Americans, we love a comebackstory.
And uh And he's honest about it.
SPEAKER_02 (37:18):
You know, he's like not, he doesn't shy away from
people will like relentlesslyask him about his past.
And it's just like, come on,guys, we've all especially like
if you look at like Americanpolitics, like it's like it's
light what he's done, you knowwhat I mean?
SPEAKER_01 (37:33):
Yeah, but but but at the same time, like I will say
that if you yes, we we all knowwhat's happened, everybody can
can move past it to a degree,but like if you're gonna insert
yourself back into the publicspotlight, then of course you're
gonna you're gonna have toanswer to it no no matter what,
because people, you know, I Idon't know who Jim was before he
started running for for mayorhere.
(37:53):
Like I I wasn't around NewJersey during all that time,
like I didn't have anyfamiliarity with him at all.
So, like of course I want toknow too, but lucky we we we're
lucky to have had the chance toask him to his face a couple of
times about about things.
And as Ryan has alluded to, thethe accountability piece and
then just turning that sort ofpain into uh purpose really is
(38:13):
what it sounds like, you know,when you're when you're when
you're wanting a second chancefor yourself and it you're
unwilling to give other people asecond chance, that would be
quite hypocritical.
But when you're wanting a secondchance for yourself and then you
create an entire lane of servicein giving other people a second
chance, then I, you know, Ithink uh the karmic balance is
there and and you've you've donewhat you can to atone.
(38:36):
So I think that that's where youand I have been satisfied in
those answers.
And it sounds like Ryan isaligned in that as well.
SPEAKER_00 (38:43):
Yeah.
And and I mean, he he's uh, youknow, when we I met him a year
ago, right?
When when I guess it was lastSeptember, maybe.
And uh, you know, we met and weconnected on our passion for
public service, on puttingpeople first and being
accountable to the people thatwe serve.
And uh there's nothing that I'veseen since, you know, we we
(39:04):
first met a year ago that hasrun contrary to that in his
words or in his actions.
And I mean, the guy is like,listen, I've worked with a lot
of hardworking people.
This guy is like next level.
You know, some of the principalsI worked with, uh, you know,
super, super hard, hardworking.
He's like a next level of ofhard work.
And there's no other candidatethat comes close to his
(39:26):
competencies, to the abilitythat he has.
And I'm really confident thatall these things that I'm
telling you about here, um, withhim in office, we'll be able to
get done.
And so, you know, that that'sthat's kind of like uh I'm I'm
I'm I wouldn't want to be on anyother ticket for sure.
Awesome.
SPEAKER_02 (39:41):
What's your favorite downtown spot?
SPEAKER_00 (39:43):
Ooh, that's a good question.
Ooh, I mean it depends on onwhat we're looking for.
Okay.
SPEAKER_02 (39:49):
Like a staple, like where you go with your family.
SPEAKER_00 (39:52):
To eat?
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (39:53):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (39:53):
To eat.
That's that's so hard.
So we got married at Raza.
Um I'm sorry, not Raza, atPorta.
So we've we've been back there afew times.
So, you know, there's there's alot of nostalgia there.
Obviously, love Raza for for thepizza.
Dullboy, we we really like aswell.
Uh my parents have they'reactually here for the month
helping with Bobby, and they'vebeen to Dullboy a couple times
and they love it.
(40:14):
Nice.
And then uh what a I mean, agood dive bar Lucky Sevens, you
know, got a little bit more.
SPEAKER_02 (40:20):
Yeah, I've been to I've had some some nights at
Lucky Sevens.
SPEAKER_00 (40:23):
Yeah.
Oh, and then very dingy.
If you're out with friends anduh you want to stay out past 10
p.m., then you gotta go to seenow.
SPEAKER_02 (40:33):
That's where Tony asked me to be his girlfriend.
SPEAKER_01 (40:35):
That's true.
It was five years ago.
It was well before 10 p.m.,though.
It was dinner time, normal time.
SPEAKER_02 (40:41):
We were sitting outside.
SPEAKER_00 (40:43):
And then I gotta give a shout out to Boots and
Bones.
Boots and Bones, I like a lot.
Uh you know, the the staff thereis great.
So that that's another spot thatI really like.
Awesome.
SPEAKER_02 (40:52):
Well, it was so nice talking to you.
Good luck.
SPEAKER_01 (40:54):
Yeah, we're gonna be.
We're rooting for you.
I I echo Lynn's sentiments fromthe beginning of the podcast
where it was when when I metyou, it was just like you
radiated uh very positiveenergy, very comfortable out of
the gate.
And now having had a chance tospeak a little longer to you, I
I feel the same way about yourability to affect change in that
(41:14):
ward in a way that um it needsvery badly.
So we look forward to to seeingthe rest of the campaign, which
is not that not that much uhhome stretched, uh, but we very
much looking looking forward toseeing a positive outcome for
you and and whatever whateverthat looks like, whether it's
city council or something else.
SPEAKER_00 (41:32):
Well, I really appreciate that.
And thanks for having me.
This was great.
And and I feel the same wayabout uh, you know, meeting the
both of you, you know, you'regreat people, and uh looking
forward to hanging out again inthe future.
Awesome.
Thank you, Ryan.
Thank you.
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