5 Questions With A Jersey City Official: Joyce Watterman

JERSEY CITY, NJ — Jersey City is the second-largest city in New Jersey and has a municipal government to match its size. The City Council consists of nine members who are meant to be the voice of the people of Jersey City and is led by a council president.

Joyce Watterman serves as the council president and has served on the council for eight years. Joyce and her husband are the founders and Pastors of Continuous Flow Christian Center, and she serves on several municipal committees and boards for housing, planning and diversity.

Watterman chatted with Patch over the phone about some key topics hitting Jersey City, including the council's new relationship with the school board, policing and more.

Here are five questions and responses with Jersey City Council President Joyce Watterman:

1. What is your biggest focus as president of the council?

"My biggest focus was affordable housing, and now I am focusing on employment for young African American males who are looking for employment to get up off the streets with all this gun violence going on."

2. Gun violence and homicides in Jersey City are increasing as the year progresses — What do you think the council could focus on as a potential solution?

"As a council, you have to get out and speak to the people and see what the people need."

"Based on the conversation I'm having with them is that they want jobs, they want employment. We as a council official are reaching out to different organizations to see how we can train them when it comes to probably getting G.E.D.'s, how to get their I.D. and partner with companies that can employ them because some of them have been incarcerated, so everybody deserves a second chance. We want to make sure that they have that opportunity."

3. How would you characterize the Council's relationship now with the Board of Education, and where would you like to see that relationship go?

"In order to really loosen the tension, we have to sit at the table and listen to one another. And I will put emphasis on listening to one another, because sometimes we are so at odds, we are not listening at each other to see how we feel and what we think the problem is."

"We need some conversation. We need dialog to go back and forth, so we can understand each other. That to me, that's the only thing that breaks down tension is when you come to the table and everybody has the freedom to speak and listen. I need to hear from the community, so the community can say to me, 'This is what I think protect and serve should look like.' And then police officers can say, 'Well, this is how we were trained, how protect and serve should look like.' We need that dialog because we might be looking in a different eye at a situation.

5. How can the council help make Jersey City more affordable and keep it affordable while still encouraging that growth?

"We did the inclusionary zoning, that's one step, to keep the city affordable. We have to get the rent on a level where people can afford. Affordable housing is such a key."

"I always say that's why when you really deal with affordable housing, you need everybody at the table. You need the landlord, you need the developer, you need the businessman, you need the tenant. And the reason why I say that is because one thing affects the other. In order to really keep the city going, to keep your city continually growing and continue to keep it affordable, everybody needs to be at the table because we need to come up with ideas on how to keep people here."

"People need income to keep their family going. If employees give people the cost of living raise every year, to be perfectly honest, a lot of this we wouldn't be an issue, because people didn't have a cost of living raise. It's hard for them, it's a struggle."

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