The Newark Municipal Council held its regular meeting on February 18, 2026, beginning at 6:32 PM in the Council Chamber at City Hall. The meeting addressed a wide range of fiscal, development, and public safety matters, including the adoption of a $30.1 million refunding bond ordinance, a cap ordinance allowing a 3.5% appropriation increase, a 17-year tax abatement extension for an affordable housing project, and a five-year lease with Newark Beth Israel Medical Center to establish a food pharmacy. Public comment was extensive and impassioned, with residents raising concerns about snow removal, budget deficits, tax abatements, police conduct, homeless shelter conditions, child care funding, and senior services.
I owe you some information and I'm gonna get it to you. But thank you. But I do want to say prepared readiness. For years we have came up in here and said, where is the prepared readiness program for the city? And you showed that you had none. People said to me, Oh, it's John James. John couldn't even be there for the Southworth. So we know OEM, he wasn't there through COVID. He hasn't, he hasn't made a statement for COVID. He hasn't made a statement about anything. Why did we expect anything different in these streets? We had what, an inch? And y'all had salt piled up in the street. People was like, dang, I got all this stuff here in my car. Y'all had a whole week. We had how many inches? We ain't getting 33 this time, Pat, but you know what I'm saying. 10 years exact to the day. 10 years exact to the day. Come on, Pat, help me out. We had 33 inches in 2016. We had 11 and you still couldn't do it. 10 years later, and you still couldn't be moving. We had 22 inches later, so I apologize, Pat. Because we didn't get better. Yet, y'all still want to sit here and act like we're the stupid ones. We're the ones that's speaking nonsense. 10 years later, you didn't have a prepared readiness program. That makes me really question where's your fire alarms in the school? Are they working? Where's your escape plans? If something was to happen to our residents, the seniors, Georgia King Village, where's your prepared readiness? If something was to happen in these buildings, we couldn't even clean streets. But yet in Khalif Thomas Town, we had eight brand new trucks with shovels on the front to come out here and say, Oh, we're in the lawsuit case and we're gonna um get those trucks to move. And yet, people said things about DPW, but it wasn't DPW, it was the lack of equipment that y'all that y'all had. And that one minute man, that didn't impress me. That did not impress me. Because if you had the staff that they needed in DPW, any equipment they had, and that like all hands on deck in 2016 when everybody wanted to take the jobs from the union and everybody in this place wanted to come shovel, that's all hands on deck. You wouldn't have had no problem. Or make a contract with Joey D, like y'all dumped the snow in the park. Come on, Pat, help me. You could have got trucks and put it in there and dumped them in the parks. Or, or you could have opened the school lots up to Roger Leon. Where is your partnerships? But that's what we asked from you. All we asked for you is the partnership with us, and we can get it done. Because we know the people here can't get it done. Y'all don't have the money because we're in a deficit. Y'all borrowing already, probably from 2027 to put the budget into this year. And I don't need everyone to come up here and say nothing to me about false advertisement lines and stuff.