After decades of drawing in tens of thousands of new residents as gleaming apartment towers rose near the Hudson River waterfront across from Manhattan, Jersey City has suddenly found itself teetering on the financial brink.
The city's revival hasn't stopped. But during its run of breakneck growth, budget deficits have piled up, year after year, because spending kept climbing faster than its tax revenue.
It plugged the holes by selling city property, running up debt and drawing on the aid cranked out by Washington during the pandemic. Now, just six months into his tenure, Mayor James Solomon says the local government has finally run out of string, plunging New Jersey's second-largest city into what he said is the worst fiscal crisis in its history.
Officials have been contending with a $255 million shortfall, equivalent to roughly a quarter of its operating budget. New Jersey stepped in with a $120 million rescue package, which included the biggest loan the state has ever extended to a city, and Solomon's administration has made about $55 million of cuts. Even after that, the mayor is weighing a plan to increase property taxes sharply, threatening to add thousands of dollars to higher-end homeowners' annual bills and hammer lower-income residents who were there before waves of well-heeled New York City professionals started flooding in.
"The effects we are seeing here are decisions that were driven by political forces that were not in the best long-term financial interest of the city," said Marc Pfeiffer, associate director of Rutgers University's Bloustein Local unit of the Center for Urban Policy Research, who also serves as chair of the city's budget advisory committee. "Now they're coming due."
The financial crunch is tarnishing what has been one of New Jersey's most successful urban turnarounds, one that stands in stark contrast to cities like Trenton or Atlantic City that have struggled ever since economic shifts undermined once-dominant industries.
Jersey City's renaissance was decades in the making. In the 1980s and 1990s, the waterfront, once home to warehouses and factories, gave way to office buildings that became a major hub for financial firms, earning it the nickname Wall Street West. New Yorkers were also lured by lower rents or the chance to remodel historic properties, allowing it to reverse the declines that hit other Rust Belt cities. Since 1990, its population has swelled by roughly 33% to about 300,000.
The development was hastened by tax breaks handed out to developers. In 2010, a state comptroller
After Steven Fulop took over as mayor in 2013, he
Solomon served on the city council since 2018 before winning election as mayor in December. He has since lashed out at his predecessor — who declined to seek reelection so he could mount a run for governor — by saying his budget decisions since the pandemic put the city on an unsustainable path.
Solomon's office
"The abatement that those towers got was so generous that they basically pay zero city tax — and there is no affordable housing, no community benefits," Solomon said at a town hall meeting with residents late last month. "Those are the types of sweetheart deals we have to now work out of and get through."
Fulop dismissed the new mayor's alarms, saying he would have been able to balance the budget without raising taxes if he were still in office.
He said the city's credit rating, even after a downgrade by Moody's Ratings in December, is at the same level as when he took office, despite the toll of the pandemic. He said his administration gradually phased out the use of tax-abatement agreements, though he maintained they ultimately resulted in more revenue for the city by redirecting money that otherwise would have gone to the school district or the county.
"James served on the City Council for eight years with full budget responsibilities," Fulop said. "This is James playing politics."
A spokesperson for Solomon said he voted
Susanne Murray, who follows Jersey City's finances for Moody's, said rising wages, health care costs and the lack of sufficient tax increases steadily worsened the city's finances over the past six years. In December, Moody's cut its rating to A2 — still squarely in investment grade — following a cut in 2023. It cited overspending and use of short-term borrowing to cover its budget gaps.
"Covid — I think that was the inflection point," she said.
Fulop defended the use of such one-time measures, like selling city property. "You can either find alternative revenues, which may not be recurring, to plug the budget gap, or you can raise taxes every single year," Fulop said. "My choice was not to raise taxes."
In June, Solomon took the opposite approach by proposing a 20% property-tax hike.
After a public outcry, he directed city officials to look for ways to cut spending. A new plan, put forward at the end of last month, reduced the hike to 15% and included additional cuts to city services like park maintenance. While it was unanimously rejected by the city council, Solomon plans to include the increase as part of a broader budget proposal released later this month.
The increase to the city's levy would come on top of separate increases for Jersey City residents for school and county taxes. Overall, the hikes would translate to about $1,600 annually for a home with an assessed value of $487,000 to a total estimated tax bill of $13,012, according to the city's
"I've heard from residents across the city who are worried about their ability to stay in their homes through this and I wouldn't diminish it for a second," Solomon said in an interview. "It's going to be deeply painful for us as a city, but we'll be able to maintain our city services."
Rolando Lavarro, city councilman at large, said he is concerned by Solomon's approach. For now, he'd like the city to consider alternatives like using reserves, or borrowing, before hitting lower and middle income residents with a tax increase.
"I don't think Jersey City residents can bear the weight of cleaning up this mess," he said.