In a letter to the editor, Jersey City Heights resident Erika B. Lewy gives her take on how fully funding the City Council offices is a benefit to everyone.

Dear Editor,

I’m writing today in response to the recent letters against fully funding City Council offices in Jersey City.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself outside a few nights in the bitter cold with a shovel, pick-axe and fellow Heights residents digging out sidewalks and bus stops around the Muhlenberg Gardens senior housing.

This crew of volunteer neighbors — organized by our Ward D City Councilperson Jake Ephros– stepped up to help our trapped neighbors when the city, county, and state was unprepared to respond adequately to the storm.

I volunteered to shovel for the same reason I volunteered for Jake’s campaign: I care about my neighbors in Ward D, and I believe we deserve better city services.

And I’m proud to be part of the volunteers that are working to help make our neighborhood a better place to live, but I could only do so much with borrowed shovels and a couple of unpaid shovelers.

It’s been a few weeks, and I’ve got persistent pain in my shoulder, a reminder that we were doing the best job we could with a small team and sub-par equipment.

Take the snowstorm as a parable for the immense issues that our city faces: unaffordable rents, unaffordable childcare, clearly dysfunctional municipal services, and our massive city budget deficit.

If we want to look back in four years and call this City Council a failure, sure, don’t fully staff our City Council staff. You’ll be able to call Jake’s office a failure because the office won’t have the resources necessary to serve Ward D.

You also won’t see much improvement in municipal services, but that might not matter if you’re just looking to call democratic socialism a failure. If we want anything to improve, we need to adequately staff our city council offices to tackle these challenges.

I take umbrage with the idea that this is work (be it snow removal, policymaking, tenant protections, or community representation) that should continue being taken up for free by our neighbors.

To be clear, what we and our community did for each other is called “constituent services,” and it should be fully funded by the city. The debate about whether or not the City Council should be fully staffed has real-life consequences.

At best, it means community members have to shoulder the burden (literally, I have a rotator cuff injury) — at worst, it means that thousands of people across the ward can’t be reached at all.

You don’t run a city on free labor.

Erika B. Lewy
Jersey City Heights Resident