Lynn & Tony Know
Lynn & Tony Know
Cleaner, Safer Streets For Ward D with Catherine Healy
When taxes keep climbing and services keep slipping, everyday life gets harder—broken ankles from potholes, locked parks that sideline kids, and 16-minute waits for 911 during a break-in. We invited Ward D city council candidate Catherine Healy, a lifelong Jersey City resident, attorney, and mom of three, to talk about a path forward that doesn’t start by charging residents more. The through line is execution: build a real grants department, fix what’s visible, and restore trust in public safety.
Catherine breaks down why parks matter to family life and community health, from reopening Leonard Gordon Park with restored bathrooms to installing water refill stations that cut plastic waste. She connects small, practical upgrades to larger systems—funded by state and federal grants that Jersey City simply hasn’t been applying for. We get specific about road paving, potholes, and how missed applications translate into daily frustration, then outline how a centralized team of grant professionals could bring in millions for infrastructure, green space, and public safety without raising the tax burden.
Public safety takes center stage as we unpack a recent 16-minute police response in the Heights and what it reveals about staffing, dispatch, and morale. Catherine makes the case for community policing—officers who know the neighborhood and are known by it—and for leadership that encourages decisive, measured responses. The goal is pragmatic: streets that feel safe to cross, parks that actually work for families and seniors, and a city that runs with Union City’s level of cleanliness, lighting, and responsiveness.
If you want a blueprint built on competence, accountability, and external funding, this conversation delivers specifics you can hold leaders to. Subscribe for more candid, local-first conversations, and share this episode with a neighbor who’s ready for cleaner, safer streets.
Your hosts: @lynnhazan_ and @tonydoesknow
follow us on social @ltkpod!
Hey, welcome to the Lynn and Tony Know podcast. I'm your host, Lynn.
SPEAKER_00:And I'm Tony. We are both wellness coaches and married with kids.
SPEAKER_02:Join us as we talk about all things health, wellness, relationships, life hacks, parenting, and everything in between unfiltered. Thanks for listening and let's get into it. Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome back.
SPEAKER_02:So we're continuing our conversation with wardy candidates for the Jersey City elections.
SPEAKER_00:Correct.
SPEAKER_02:Go out and vote. It's really important. We're having all these discussions to help you make an informed decision.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. We are we just simply want to get to know the candidates and allow other people to do the same because, especially in local elections, I was looking up I was looking up statistics on vote count for like the past three uh last three city council elections or two city council elections and mayoral elections, and the percentage of people that vote is really low.
SPEAKER_02:Um and the percentage of people who go on the internet and complain is very high.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So there's go on Reddit. Bit of a disconnect.
SPEAKER_02:Social media, Facebook. It's wild to me.
SPEAKER_00:It's also wild to me, and and I'll just say this before we get into our guest here, uh, and this does not include her. Even some of the count candidates at this point really, I just want to be like, uh, what do you actually like about Jersey City? Because every piece of content I see is a complaint about Jersey City. And that that I find a little bit grating.
SPEAKER_02:And it's the best when it's somebody that's been in in on city council for like eight plus years and they're complaining. And I'm like, uh excuse me, you had eight years to do something about these situations and you haven't. Like that could be anybody.
SPEAKER_00:That could be anybody.
SPEAKER_02:Useless.
SPEAKER_00:That could be anybody.
SPEAKER_02:Uh anyway, I am a huge fan of women running for office, especially moms, because we get shit done. We're multitaskers. We don't, you know, the ego is like a dude thing. Sorry, no offense. And I always say that women um just I think if if all our leaders were women, we'd be in a much better situation. We lead with empathy and care. And yeah, so I'm very excited to meet Katherine Healy. She's a lifelong Jersey City resident, attorney, and advocate for working families who's running for city council in War D. Public service runs in her family. Her father, former mayor Jeremiah Healy, inspired her lifelong commitment to justice and civic leadership. With over 15 years of experience in criminal law, labor relations, and social services, Catherine has dedicated her career to making government work for the people it serves. She currently serves as Deputy Director of the Hudson County Department of Family Services, managing vital programs to support residents across the county, a Jersey City woman of action, an Irish woman of the year. Catherine is also a proud mom of three and an active member of St. Nicholas Church. Governor Jim McGreevy calls her, former Governor Jim McGreevy calls her a critical force for good, and today we'll hear why. Catherine Healy, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome, welcome.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. Thank you, Lynn. Thank you, Tony. We're excited to get to know you. So I want to know how was it growing up with your dad, who was a mayor of Jersey City?
SPEAKER_01:Um, it was intense. We had a we grew up in a standard Jersey City two-family home. So we lived on the first floor. I'm one of four siblings. So I'm the third of four. I have an older brother, an older sister, it's me, and then a younger brother, Patrick. We all live here. We all work here. My brothers are both Jersey City firemen. My sister's a Jersey City teacher out of class 28. You're an OG. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:So you've seen Jersey City change so much, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. You would see the Mormons in the white shirts, and and then it was us and the Shamley who stole Queen Latifa's car in the 80s. Hilarious.
SPEAKER_00:Well, say more about that.
SPEAKER_02:You must have so many stories about the heights. Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_00:I wanna I want to hear about the Queen Latifah. What's the what's the two-minute version of that?
SPEAKER_01:So one of our neighbors on Ferry Street, when Clean Queen Latifa was living in Jersey City, he stole her car. He also uh On purpose?
SPEAKER_00:Or he just stole a car and it happened to be Queen Latifa. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, back when car theft was a thing, we don't have that issue so much anymore.
SPEAKER_00:Not as much. Not not as much. Although if you go on next door, you'll every now and then you'll see a uh car theft uh post, I've noticed, but not specific to the heights, but um and it's not Queen Lativa either. So I guess I guess my first question would be why do you want to run? Or why did you decide to get into the race? If I'm not mistaken, you were the last candidate for this Ward D race, maybe just the last one I saw, but you were you were a little bit later to the party than some of the other candidates. So why did you decide to run and why for city council?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, Tony, I had no intention of ever running for office. I'm too busy. I'm thinking I'm way too busy for this. Um I'm a full-time lawyer. I at family services, as you mentioned. I also have a side practice that does pro bono work. I have a pro bono case on Friday for a domestic violence victim. I just am nonstop. I've been coaching in Washington Park Little League for the last 10 years. I run a 501c3 nonprofit to educate inner city girls at St. Dominic Academy, the girls who fall through the cracks, who are excellent students, um, and they want a better opportunity for a high school. And I also have three children. As I just mentioned, they're 13, 11, and Lewis just turned four. So I really have my hands full, and it just reached the point where uh the governor had asked me to join the ticket. I said, Gov, I don't have time. I'm way too busy for this. He said, Well, please go speak to your family, think about it, and get back to me. So I did. My family gave me uh uh an apprehensive yes. And so I called the Gov back the next day and said, Okay, Gov, I'll do it. My my children consented, my husband consented, my father consented, because it is a team effort. And essentially, my husband's my poor husband is a saint. He uh has been like a single dad, and he feels like I've divorced him because I'm out every single night, every single day. And he's taking the kids to volleyball, to softball. I feel like a bad uh softball coach now. I've just like really fallen by the wayside when it comes to the family unit, but I like to think it's temporary. This, however, is an asset because I don't have time to waste. So I have to do things right the first time. And that's a big part of the reason why I'm running is the city's dysfunction. You look around, our property taxes have tripled, the cost of sanitation has gone up. We're now paying extra for water and sewerage. So where is our quality of life has gone down? Our roads are a mess. A mom who I went to high school with, who lives on my block here on Charles Street, was nine months pregnant, walking to go pick up her three-year-old from daycare on the corner of our block here, and broke her ankle in a pothole on the street. So now she's just delivered her second baby and has the three-year-olds running around the house while she has this broken ankle and is nursing a newborn because of the pothole on the street. Now, this is not the first case of people breaking their ankles in potholes, but that's the state of our city. Our park, Mosquito Park, also known as Leonard Gordon Park, was locked up for almost two years, so we could not use it. I have a four-year-old son that really debilitated us, especially as you guys know. Boys, you have a boy, right? A girl.
SPEAKER_00:All girls.
SPEAKER_01:All girls, all girls. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:All girls, but our middle one has some serious boy energy.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So the boys are just so different. They have to get out, they have to get that energy out. And we had no park for almost two years. Finally, when they do open up the park, we discover that they remove trees, they remove park benches, they removed handrails to the staircases. So now it's more difficult for the seniors. In addition, um, sure you guys have seen the generational sledding hill in Mosquito Park. Have you guys utilized that? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:What what the I know I know where it is. I'm not I'm not as uh uh up on on maybe all the Jersey City stuff as as longtime residents, but I've I've been to the park. I know the hill. That's that's uh what what happened?
SPEAKER_01:What do you so people bring out their sleds? Well, they used to bring out their sleds, their snowboards, my cousin Joel snowboards on the hill, and the city replaced the grass that was at the bottom of the hill with a layer of concrete, and then they place these monstrous light poles at the bottom of the hill, so you can't go sledding there anymore. I mean, this was a generational activity for children, adults, and it's gone. And this is what happens when you have people who don't, I'm sorry, don't have children making decisions.
SPEAKER_00:Interesting. Interesting. Now, with with that said, you you mentioned several several aspects of the life that that drew you into forcing your hand essentially to run, right? Um, what if you were able to pick one, and of course you can you can expand on a couple if you'd like, what what is the first thing that you would like to tackle as the city council person for Ward D?
SPEAKER_01:I'd love to restore the historic bathrooms in Leonard Gordon Park.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And install clean drinking water, water refill stations. We have to get off the plastic bottles. And the only way to do that is to have clean water refill stations in every city building. The public library needs a water refill station. Our schools already have it. The Jersey City Public Schools already have the refill stations. We don't have them in our city parks, and we don't have them in most of our other city buildings. So if we could install that in our parks, I think that would be a step in the right direction. Um, and together with that, if we could teach our children in our public schools reduce, reuse, recycle, stop the drop, I think that would be very helpful too. They could come home and teach the parents on what is recyclable, what isn't. I mean, these are simple things we can do as a society to really help save the world.
SPEAKER_00:So that one seems to me, as just a regular average citizen, that seems easy. Like how, what, what are the hangups? Why hasn't that been done? What is what are the obstacles that keep us from just going, oh, we want refillable water stations? These cost X dolls we just install them and have it done. Like what keeps us from doing that right now?
SPEAKER_01:I think it's lack of initiative. There's all kinds of grants out there, so it's not a cost issue. This is clean drinking water. These are some of these buildings, uh, get federal assistance. So we could get all kinds of grants for these public green spaces, clean drinking water act. We can get the grants. It's not a matter of finances. It's it's a matter of initiative. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about the filth on the street, nobody cares about the our roads, our schools. It's like everybody's just checked out.
SPEAKER_00:So as far as the roads go, obviously that, especially I think in the heights, is more of an issue than, let's say, downtown, for example. I'm sure there are other wards where it's also a large problem. What does that require? What can a city council member do when it comes to advocating effectively for getting potholes filled or getting roads paved? Like what does that look like from a city council level?
SPEAKER_01:Honestly, it's just having a great relationship with uh your um city public works department, which I already have. So once I get into office, I'm gonna call my friends in public works and ask them kindly to please uh pave certain roads, fill certain potholes. You know, it's it really is about playing well in the sandbox.
SPEAKER_00:Got it. So it's it's more of a this is more of a relationship-based problem or relationship-based fix than than say red tape or or financial or anything like that.
SPEAKER_01:100%. I mean, a lot of the paving of roads is federally and state funded. It's just a matter of the city actually applying for those grants. Like last winter, I found out from a certain senator that the city should have applied for like a few million dollar grant to pave the roads. And uh, we were told to just apply for that grant and the money's ours. And uh, we never applied for it. So our team is going to start a grants department, a department that's totally dedicated to applying for grants that we have not applied for in the past. There's so much money out there that we have just not asked for. It's just a matter of submitting the right paperwork and jumping through the hoops before we get that money. Because frankly, our taxes are through the roof, the rent is through the roof. We just can't afford to raise taxes at this point. So every initiative that we're gonna do from January 1st on is gonna have to be through grants or whatever the current tax base is right now. We just can't afford it. I'm sure you guys feel that pain too.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, our our taxes since we we bought our home up in the heights to today have gone up almost 50%. So what I what I'm hearing and what I'm what I like about what I'm hearing is that everything that you're mentioning right now does not require me to pay more to get it done, which is something that quite frankly, I think is how you pay for your initiatives should be front and center for your for your policy, because there are a lot of promises being made from a lot of candidates that if pressed on how they were going to pay for it, I would imagine we get a bit of a shoulder shoulder shrug or or or we're going to pay more for it. And the grant thing I haven't heard anybody talk about. So that is some messaging that I think needs to be a bit wider, and I'm glad you're on here to do just that, because uh that wouldn't have been something I would have thought about. So you're saying that there are there's money on the table, and you all are, and when I say you all, T McGreevy, I'm imagining, is saying we are going to dedicate a personnel to securing that money that is just sitting there waiting for Jersey City to take it.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Governor McGreevy, I believe, has mentioned that before in his other interviews, but that is that is one of his first initiatives is getting the grants department up and running, and he's gonna get the best people possible into that department. Right now, Jersey City does not have a grants department. I believe they have random lay people in certain departments who do the grant writing, but we do not have any grants experts in Jersey City right now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that that seems like a massive hold that would pay for itself a thousand times over, essentially. Um that's a very interesting thing. As somebody that pays very close attention to everyone that is running, every article that is written. And I've heard Jim speak probably four or five times now at length. I don't recall hearing about this. So this is something that I would, if I was everybody wants everybody wants to know how people are gonna pay for their stuff, right? And everybody's concerned that we're gonna that the taxpayers are gonna end up footing the bill for a lot of what's being uh positioned. So the fact that you have a you have a mechanism that we aren't seeing to pay for all of this, I think is very valuable for people to hear. Do you have anything you wanted to do?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, as a uh, you know, I love that you're a mom, like I mentioned, I love that you're a mom and you get it, you know, uh raising a family in Jersey City. What are you what is the the the the biggest in terms of fa you know raising families, the biggest issues in your in your uh eyes right now?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell I am a little uncomfortable with my kids walking the streets. I'm nervous about them crossing the streets. The lack of police enforcement is terrifying. We had uh an attempted burglary on Palisadea, not this past Monday, but the Monday before, of what is the name of the hair salon that was? Oh, the hair room. Thank you, the hair room. Yeah. And um the owner happened to be present at that time, and she had, I believe, two stylists with her. And some man was trying to break in through their front door. So she called 911. Wow. One of her stylists called 911 and it took JCPD 16 minutes to arrive to um the scene. And they didn't even arrive at the scene. They they drove by. And now I know this because I went to these victims and needed to get more information from them because we are the public safety ticket. So we have to find out where these problems are to be able to fix them. And um, so it in fact it took more than 16 minutes for JCPD to respond to a female victim calling of a breaking and entering in progress. You can hear her screaming and banging. You can hear the banging on the door from from her hair salon's video cameras, but I would like to Oprah those 911 calls to find out where we went wrong. How are we failing? Why are we failing our citizens? Like to me, this the number one most vital, essential service that the city needs to provide to its citizens. When we have a victim calling 911 of a of a breaking an entry in progress, we should be there within a minute and 30 seconds, not 16 minutes later. Then I come to find out um that JCPD took this long to arrive at the scene because all units in the heights in the North District had been sent to Journal Square for a call, a pr a more priority call for an emotionally disturbed person or something to that effect. So we had no cars in the North District to respond to Palisade Ev. I mean, something is is seriously wrong with the system. And this was just last Monday, not this past Monday. Yeah, a week from uh yesterday.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So okay, so that that police department is literally like two blocks away from us, right? And you say they got they got sent for a call in Journal Square. Is there no other police department closer to Journal Square? Or is this their that's their territory also?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. The North District, they also cover Journal Square. And let me just say this we really used to have the best police force in the country. We we've been doing community policing here forever. So it's your neighbor who's the police officer. It's your teammate from softball or baseball or soccer who is the police officer. It's the kid who went to PS 8, PS28. Like we have real community policing here.
SPEAKER_00:Let me just expand on that for people that might not understand community policing because until I heard Jim talk about it, I did not know what that meant. And and correct any part of this if I'm if I'm not relaying it right, but it's when you have officers that have the same beat, they walk the same streets, you recognize them because it's the same men or women that are always in front of you and they don't rotate out of your area, essentially. So you you become familiar with, you know, officer Officer Smith's always the one that's in Pershing field, and we know him, we feel good, like he's our guy. Like that's essentially what I I got from what community policing is. Is that is that more or less what we're talking about?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yes. 100% Jersey City, you have to actually live here to get the job.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:In addition. Um, so so we never had those issues of police brutality. I mean, Jersey City police showed tremendous restraint. Um, and I think there is a a ripple effect of what was happening out in the Midwest, all the way here in Jersey City, New Jersey, where we never had that police brutality problem. But now they're just sitting on the sidelines, they're not responding to the scenes. And this past Monday showed us how severe the problem is. This isn't just not enforcing Title 39 traffic violations. This is this is very serious.
SPEAKER_00:This is next level. So when when you talk about when you talk about police officers sitting on the sidelines as as a reaction to what? As a reaction to the the blowback that they could get for handling a call wrong? Like what what is because I'm not sitting here going, I think police officers aren't doing their jobs because they don't want to. What why I do you why do you think that the the policing is not up to where it needs to be?
SPEAKER_01:I think JCPD was, as I said, top level, top in the country, very professional. But I think with the whole defund the police movement and I saw a pattern of Jersey City police all of a sudden started getting indicted for accidents, for mistakes. And you know, that's what civil law is for. That's what the civil courts are for. Um when there's an accident on the job, you don't indict the police officer um when they're simply responding to a scene. So I think that has had a chilling effect on how they police. And we need to stop doing that. We need to um, you know, bring bring lift the morale of the Jersey City police so that they can go back to doing their jobs like they did uh 10, 15 years ago. But we're only gonna have more and more families leaving Jersey City if we have incidents like last Monday night. I mean, the number one complaint from everybody in Ward D is safe streets, safe streets, police response, police response. We call they don't show up, we call they take too long. And then this past Monday just really exposed the problem for how bad it really is.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, I'm just thinking about like being at work and my wife's at home and you know that she gets a 16-minute wait time for a B and E. I am I am probably beside myself with with anger over that type of response time. And and like I said, I I would be hard pressed to just outright blame the police for that, which it doesn't sound like you're doing. It sounds like you're you're talking about a more systemic issue here, and probably what I would describe as an overcorrection to the demonization of police during 2020 time period that we aren't back from yet. And like you said, this is not, I don't think this is Jersey City specific. I don't think it's unique to our our city. I think there's a lot of cities that are are feeling that still. I'll be straight up, like, you know, back in 2020, I was probably I probably have some def on the police posts, and I probably contributed to that narrative, and I've and I've grown up a lot since then. Um and and Lynn and I have had a lot of conversations around, you know, like like what were we even talking about? Like we just broadstroked an entire group of people over this this moment in history that was really bad, but not not indicative of an entire profession. So, you know, as as as members of the Jewish community, we know now very well what it like what it feels like to be broadstroked as a community, and and we've since you know, we've since come to appreciate law enforcement in a different way. And I guess we really would like to understand how we get it, how we get how we get the public opinion on law enforcement to turn in a way that allows them to feel comfortable to do the job that they were hired to do. Because I I feel like that is a big hurdle for them when they when they look at a public that feels very adversarial to them in a lot of ways. How do we regain the trust of the public and how do we fix the systemic issues that are plaguing our police department right now?
SPEAKER_01:Um and I'm not minimizing at all what happened in the Midwest. George Floyd, that was clearly a murder. That was a first-degree murder. That police officer was bad and that he deserved to go to jail and be convicted of that. But what happens in the Midwest doesn't happen here. And um I mean, I think Governor McGreevy, we ha actually never spoke about it, but I feel like he's uh cognizant of this because he does have three police officers on his ticket. Um, and I think if we have like we have Izzy Nieves on on our ticket, he's a former Marine and a retired Jersey City police lieutenant. So if we want to lift lift the morale and make Jersey City police feel comfortable doing their job, you know, having someone like Izzy Nieves represent the city will make our police force feel more comfortable. We also have a detective from the Hudson County Sheriff's Department on our ticket, Hennessy Sarmiento, who volunteers with the community. She has her own C3 that works closely with the seventh and eighth grade girls at PS number seven. She does like a mentorship program with them. She's been doing this for years, not just to run for office, but just because she's a good person. Like these are our community police officers. Hennessy Sarmiento, Izzy Nieves, who are born and raised right here in Jersey City. So to exactly to paint JCPD with uh that brush of pull of police brutality is totally unfair. And I think it, yeah, it has the chilling effect that it has today. We also have um Rich Boggiano in Ward C, who's a retired Jersey City police officer. So I think I'm a former prosecutor. I was a prosecutor for seven and a half years. So I think this would make the police feel a little more comfortable to do their job, knowing that we're not gonna come after them, you know?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, I think that I I think that that, yes, Izzy, first of all, I I haven't had a long conversation with him. I've met him a couple times, but he seems like a guy that if you want a public-facing person for law enforcement, he would absolutely be somebody that could could really really put a different kind of shine on what it means to be a police officer in this day and age, especially. So I like that. I like that a lot. But what else when you got?
SPEAKER_02:How do you balance it all? I want to know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, that's a great question.
SPEAKER_01:As a mother of three. I'm just like numb and I just go through the day and make decisions.
SPEAKER_00:Just quick decisions.
SPEAKER_01:And everyone just like I hate to say it. I know nobody wants to hear this, but you just have to make the right decision the first time. You have to do it right the first time because you don't have time to make errors because you're never gonna have time to go back and correct those errors, if that makes sense. So, like what happens in Mosquito Park over the last three years, we don't have time for any more errors. We got to do it right the first time. We have to get those grants for um historic green space. As soon as we get that money, we have to renovate those bathrooms. Uh, we have to install the drinking fountains. Like we have we're gonna hit the ground running.
SPEAKER_00:Um, something that we've been asking all of the candidates that we have on is we we'll ask about the top of the ticket. We'll ask, obviously, we heard how you got engaged with Jim. I would like to know, and we asked Meredith this the other day, is is how do you how do you respond to people that are critical of of his past, critical of what has happened when he was governor? And and how do you reconcile those types of missteps as as they would present when you choose to align with him?
SPEAKER_01:So Governor McGreevy has been very transparent when it comes to his past. I would say you can read his book. He published a book, just look at his past record to see how far he's come. He's now 67 years old. He's not doing this as a stepping stone to run for Congress, Senate, governor. He's just doing this because he wants to make his community better, which is why he started the re entry program, which has been working in conjunction with Hudson County. And we are the The first county in the entire country to release or graduate county inmates with a two-year associate's degree. So not only are these former inmates, prisoners, getting released with a degree, we also afford them wraparound services. So they're getting released with Medicaid, Obamacare. So they have the medications that they need. We're also releasing them with housing. Everyone has housing. We're not throwing people out onto the street anymore. So you want to talk about reducing recidivism and essentially ultimately preventing homelessness? McGreevy already has a plan for that. I mean, and he doesn't just talk about it, he's doing it. He really puts his money where his mouth is. So I would just say look at his resume, let his statistics speak for itself. And this is the clear candidate who we need for Jersey City.
SPEAKER_02:Especially we're big fans. Yeah, we're big fans of him.
SPEAKER_01:We have so much work to do from the police to the building department, tax, parks, streets, clean streets. I mean, every every department needs serious reform.
SPEAKER_00:When you and I I think uh I think this this will probably be the last question. When you walk away from four years of Ward D City Council, what does success look like? What would you be most proud of accomplishing in four years from now?
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Um I my goal is to make the heights or Ward D, because we have that now we have a downtown section of Ward D, is to make Ward D as clean and efficient as Union City is. Union City has very clean streets. Their parks are outstanding.
SPEAKER_00:Immaculate.
SPEAKER_01:Their lighting, their streets are so well lit. You call the police, they respond. They have wonderful schools. I will say in Ward D, we have great grammar schools here as well. But our children are districted for Dickinson High School, which is not so appealing.
SPEAKER_00:Last place, right? Last place in Hudson County for for high schools at the moment.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, unfortunately. Yep.
SPEAKER_00:No, it's I mean, it's it's it's you gotta identify where we're starting from to know where we can get to. So I mean, that's that's an issue. That's for sure an issue.
SPEAKER_01:So if we could just be as efficient as Union City, that's that is my goal. That is uh that would be a huge win. We're gonna line our garbage cans with liners. We're gonna change them every day. The public garbage cans on the street, which is what they do in Union City. We're gonna hire part-time retired staff to like neighborhood improvement district cleaners to clean our streets daily. That's what they do in Union City. We have to do that here. Again, rebuild the morale of our police department the same way they have in Union City, so that they're responding to calls. They're they're happy to assist the citizens as opposed to apprehensive to show up to a scene because who knows what?
SPEAKER_00:So let me ask you, real quick before you wrap it up, when you reference Union City as sort of a blueprint for how you would like to see our part of the city operate, why are they better at it? Are they are they paying more for services? What is going on in Union City that that we're not doing?
SPEAKER_01:So um I think it's the grants issue. Their property taxes are comparable to ours now. I think it's they're applying for every grant that's out there. We have not been doing that, which is why he'll have Union City will have a that beautiful new high school. That's all grant funding. But it takes a lot of work to apply for a grant. You're your heart, head, you have to be devoted.
SPEAKER_00:You have to be in what it reminds me of, sorry to interrupt, is it reminds me of when I was in in 11th or 12th grade, and there's all of these, all of these uh scholarships that you can apply for. And I would have to come home every day and fill out these scholarship applications. And they're they're small, right? They're for a couple thousand dollars here, a couple thousand dollars here. And I hated it. I didn't I wanted to do anything but fill out these applications for for whatever scholarship was available, but I had to, and it kind of sounds like you know, you need some you need somebody with a better attitude towards it than me for sure, but you need somebody that's just willing to roll up their sleeves and do all the boring, the boring work that that can impact the most.
SPEAKER_01:100%. We need a professional, dedicated grants department.
SPEAKER_00:Nice, Catherine. Thank you so much for your time.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much. So nice meeting you.
SPEAKER_00:It's very nice.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much, Tony. Thank you so much, Lynn. What is your baby's name? Arielle. Arielle.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. She was a big part of the interview. She behaved very nicely. Thank you so much. Again, we're we're wishing you the best of luck and look forward to uh seeing what happens over the next month or so.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much, guys. Take care. See you soon.