The City Hall of Jersey City is located on 280 Grove Street, Jersey City, N.J.. On March 8, 2017, I attended the Regular Meeting of the Municipal Council which started at 6 p.m.. According the the Public Meeting calendar (http://cityofjerseycity.com/meetings-calendar.aspx), it should start at 6 and end at 7 p.m.. However, it lasted for much longer time than the it was stated on the website.
Entering the Anna and Anthony R. Cucci Memorial Council Chambers, I had the first impression of classicism and segregation, in that the council governors and citizens were clearly separated by a circular short wood handrail (fence). Only the one public requester who was going to be heard could step into the circle. When I came into the hall (a big and nice hall though), seats were about half-filled.
I had not really understood the procedure of how the whole thing worked. Roll calling, proposing, clarifying, voting… Especially the voting part, a guy seemed to be the secretary sat in the middle of the circle (stage), calling nine councilor sitting behind him one by one and they would respond. I figured out what it meant after a few rounds.
I brought a video camera to the meeting, initially standing at the back of the hall and shooting some footage carefully not blocking people’s sights and not disturbing anyone. After almost fifteen minutes, I literally did not care any more and went straight to the front, thus approaching the center. Some details about councilor’s facial expressions turned to be more interesting.
We (I pondered on the subject in this sentence and so on. We or they? I guess I did feel like one of them) discussed (argued) on various topics and points. Most of them were expected to be brought up, such as the funding for public schools, drug addiction, gun overusing, etc.. Nevertheless, this man in the video showed us something different. Since he thought the words (the left in the video) that indicated the time period of no parking on the no-parking warning sign were too small for drivers to read inside the cars, specially in nights and on rainy days, he redesigned the words (the right in the video) with the same amount of information but much bigger and easier for reading. Printing out many copies, he gave each councilor a copy to compare. “The big red title NOPARKING is not the most important, but the time is. As a driver, when you see these signs, you just wanna know when. So, why don’t we make them bigger? They fit into the same size of the page. I printed them out even with my own low-ink printer, and it works perfectly in nights and on rainy days.”
Since most footage is tremendously large and info-condensed, I have not really had a chance to review and edit them carefully. Local residents protested with hand-making signs, argued their points with laws, proved their thesis with documents. I was really astonished by how powerful and well-organized the citizens were. Each of them were so prepared to be heard and to persuade everyone in the hall.
I will keep updating when I review my footage. The next scheduled regular meeting of Council is on Wednesday, March 22.