November 4, 2025 is election day. Jersey City voters will go to the polls to elect a new governor, mayor, city council, and members for the Board of Education. The Better Blocks voter guide is split into two posts. This second post focuses on the city council race and evaluates candidates on their support for housing, transit, safe streets, and public parks and plazas. Our first post on the mayoral voter guide was published last week, where we endorsed Bill O’Dea for mayor due to his knowledge and expertise on housing policy.
If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote on November 4, then a run-off election will be held in December. To that end, Better Blocks NJ has a mix of outright endorsements of candidates we would like to see win a majority of votes, candidates we want to see in a run-off election, and a few candidates whom we believe voters should actively vote against even if Better Blocks has no particular recommended candidate to vote for instead.
City Hall has a lot of power to shape public policy in Jersey City but there are many things that are under state or county control and require collaboration with those entities. The area where Jersey City’s city council can be most helpful or harmful is on land use policy and improving street safety. To that end, you will read that we have put a lot of emphasis on that in making our recommendations.
We started Better Blocks because we are Jersey City residents who love this city. We want to see Jersey City continue to be a welcoming, growing, and dynamic place where everyone who wants to live here can find a place to call home. We elected to endorse the following candidates:
Ward A: Denise Ridley
Ward B: No endorsement
Ward C: Tom Zuppa
Ward D: Patrick Ambrossi
Ward E: Eleana Little
Ward F: No endorsement
At-large: Kristen Zadroga-Hart and Daniel Rivera
We are proud to present our reasoning in our voter guide for the Jersey City council candidates below.
Ward A
The Ward A councilwoman has been a consistent and reliable vote on the city council in support of housing where it really matters. Councilwoman Denise Ridley has a mixed record on Bayfront, initially voting against the redevelopment, but has emerged as a leader and champion of the project, which is one of the largest housing initiatives on Jersey City’s west side that will set aside 35% of its homes as income-restricted affordable.
Councilwoman Ridley was also one of two candidate responses from Team Solomon who broke with their slate to endorse the plan to up-zone a parking lot in downtown Jersey City to build more mixed-income housing, a public school, and space for an outdoor plaza.
The biggest issues with her candidacy are a large focus on parking and a reluctance to take the lead on local public transit initiatives. On the parking issue, she was one of the few candidates who advocated for more parking and was also opposed to making it more expensive to park in transit-rich areas like downtown. This summer, she has opposed a mixed-income housing project at 311 Ocean Ave for not having enough parking. While Ridley showed support for the conversion of Summit/Baldwin into one-way pairs with bus lanes, she was reluctant to advocate for a similarly beneficial plan for her constituents and neighbors south of Montgomery. Despite this, she was also strong in her support for Vision Zero. We hope to see her not only support but advocate for street safety improvements like the proposed Johnston Avenue bike lane to continue the expansion of the city’s protected bike network.
While she has a mixed record on issues related to parking in her ward, she seems open to supporting reforms elsewhere other than Ward A. While she is supportive of keeping Barrow Street closed to traffic, we were concerned that the councilwoman would not vote to invest resources to help make the Newark pedestrian plaza more family-friendly. Yet, at the same time, she showed a willingness to advance similar initiatives elsewhere in the city and offered up concrete suggestions for new public plazas and parks.
We believe Denise Ridley has generally served the city well during her time on the city council. We endorse Councilwoman Ridley for reelection.
Ward B
No city council candidates completed their own response to the Better Blocks candidates questionnaire so we will be issuing no endorsement in the Ward B race. Failure to respond to a Better Blocks questionnaire does not make candidates immune to evaluation based on the statements and campaign materials they have circulated in public, however. The Ward B race has been a continual disappointment as candidates often do not show up to scheduled events like public debates.
Joel Brooks stood out to us as having solid answers on public transit and street safety based on information he has provided elsewhere. Our concerns with his candidacy come from his differences on housing issues from the O’Dea slate members who answered our questionnaire, which largely has a measured, reasonable and workable approach to development and producing affordable housing. Universal rent control, particularly when applied to newly built housing, has been shown time and again, over 112 empirical studies[1] to: worsen housing supply problems and hollow out rental stock, driving up rents for those who need to move due to changes in family status, job circumstances, or migration, even if it reduces displacement of incumbent renters in the short run [2]. A study in St Paul, MN found that the benefits of universal rent control mostly accrue to wealthier tenants [3]. Fortunately, New Jersey state law would preempt much of Brooks’ universal rent control plan. Economists universally agree that increased housing supply is the best way to improve overall affordability, especially in older housing stock [4, 5, 6, 7, 8].
While we don’t know Brooks’s current positions on increasing housing supply, we note that in 2021 he opposed mixed-income housing on Communipaw Avenue that provided over 14 moderate-income homes for being “90% unaffordable.” We hope his views have evolved since then.
Lorena Loayza also has some curious positions in her campaign literature paid for by Team Solomon. Puzzlingly, under “safe streets” she explicitly calls for increased parking options, while making no mention of street safety redesigns. Moreover, we worry she would default to Team Solomon’s other policy positions on housing like a universal affordable housing mandate that could either hamper housing production while producing little affordable housing, or raise property taxes by over 20%.
Efrain Orleans has no policy positions listed on the McGreevey campaign website and governor McGreevey’s response was a stand-in for the entire slate so we have no way to assess his candidacy for the council seat.
Ward C
Tom Zuppa is a long-time fixture of Journal Square’s political life, having served in the neighborhood association as president. He previously ran for city council in 2021. We are supporting Zuppa’s bid for city council because he indicates that he will continue adding much-needed supply to Jersey City’s housing market but recognizes that long-term goals of greater affordability must be balanced against short-term realities of families who are worried about high costs today.
Zuppa also impressed us with his answers around transit and Vision Zero, expressing support for a Summit/Baldwin one-way pair conversion to create a city-operated bus lane as well as support for working with the county on a bus rapid transit route on JFK. We also appreciated Zuppa’s willingness to consider changes to how parking is priced near transit, although we would have appreciated a stronger commitment and some more ideas that he would be willing to explore. Finally, Zuppa has been a strong advocate for bringing more park and public plaza space to Journal Square, fighting for amenities to serve an increasingly densely populated part of the city.
We decided to endorse Tom Zuppa over Dawn Giambalvo and Rich Boggiano because he strikes the best balance between the two candidates. Dawn is a leader on Vision Zero and uses micromobility solutions to get around the city, but her housing policy is too tied to Team Solomon’s impracticable and costly agenda. Boggiano, despite his reputation as a “NIMBY,” has voted for up-zonings that will produce not only tens of thousands of market-rate housing units, but also thousands of affordable housing units in Ward C in coming years. Yet his preference for automobile supremacy, frequent disregard for the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists in opposing bike lanes, often divisive and unconstructive rhetoric, and resistance to any changes in some parts of Ward C make it impossible for us to support his bid for reelection.
We offer Zuppa our endorsement for council in Ward C.
Ward D
In Ward D, we received full responses from Patrick Ambrossi, Elvin Dominici, and Jake Ephros, and a partial response from Catherine Healy.
Of the crowded field, Patrick Ambrossi has won our support by balancing support for more housing with strong and vocal leadership for transit alternatives and Vision Zero street safety reforms. He has also been a long-time champion of renovating local parks in Ward D.
On housing, Ambrossi committed to increasing housing supply as the primary means to helping to lower rents by meeting the demand that people have to live in Jersey City. He also strongly supported making it easier to encourage people to live near mass transit, giving residents alternatives to go about their daily lives without needing to be dependent on a car, which is the surest way to fight congestion in one of the country’s most densely populated regions. This is tempered by his unfortunate support for freezing in amber one of the wealthiest and most exclusionary neighborhoods in Ward D, Sherman Place.
We were also encouraged to see Ambrossi stake out a position as supportive of improving bus transit by transforming city-owned roads. The city needs leaders who are willing to take visionary positions on transit and street safety and fight for them, even if it means converting some roads to one-way pairs. Ambrossi is also willing to lead the discussion on how the city uses subsidized alternative public transit like Via. While he is more critical of the Via program, there might be a happy medium to improve the service for everyone as we noted in the mayoral guide that Via is fairly cost effective at serving relative transit deserts in Jersey City. That said, his focus on improving public transit on city streets makes him one of the best candidates on transit on any slate.
Finally, in addition to safe streets and broad Vision Zero infrastructure improvements, Ambrossi has been an active and vocal member of the community in fighting for better parks for his neighbors. One idea that caught our attention was converting a space that is currently an underused parking lot into a pedestrian plaza to support surrounding businesses by giving residents more space to congregate off of Central Ave. That particular parcel has been the site of previous proposals doomed by NIMBY opposition.
While other candidates, like Jake Ephros, were very strong on streets-related issues ranging from investment in mass transit to Vision Zero and simple quality of life things, Patrick Ambrossi had the best answers across categories, especially besting the others on issues related to housing and development. Ambrossi’s housing plans are workable and generally pro-growth and would create broader housing affordability for all residents in Jersey City where other proposals would worsen the affordability crisis by reducing rental supply and access to new housing for the majority of residents.
We offer Patrick Ambrossi our endorsement in Ward D.
Ward E
Some voters downtown may struggle at the ballot box for different reasons. Those in Ward F suffer from a lack of good options; those in Ward E have too many. And everyone except for Alexander Hamilton participated in our candidate questionnaire.
Though any of the Ward E candidates would have warranted strong consideration for an at-large endorsement, we can only choose one for Ward E, and our pick is Eleana Little. While we are skeptical of many Team Solomon candidates for reasons detailed elsewhere, Little has a strong track record of independence and thinking deeply and creatively about the issues facing Jersey City by “not making perfect the enemy of good.”
Little was one of the first candidates to office to propose bus rapid transit on JFK Blvd, a policy position recently adopted by Craig Guy, her erstwhile opponent for the position of Hudson County Executive.
Little’s responses included two key differences with most of Team Solomon as a whole: Little supports more housing downtown with 150 Bay and believes in pursuing affordable housing incentives over unworkable mandates. We were particularly impressed with her willingness to examine and update redevelopment plans for downtown Jersey City to increase transit-oriented development opportunities; such a comprehensive overview would go a long way to reducing some of the pushback that comes with spot up-zoning proposals. Put simply, Little is a credible and pragmatic progressive who strikes a reasonable balance between trying to make government work for the little guy while still acknowledging current economic realities. She is sharp and knowledgeable about policy, willing and able to discuss just about any issue with just about any voter. Importantly, she has avoided making overly-gimmicky promises while consistently fighting for more housing supply – even when it means breaking with much of her slate to do so.
Given her track record in the community, she is also a strong advocate for mass transit and parks. While we don’t anticipate agreeing with everything she does in office, we trust that she will do what she thinks is right and not just what the top of her ticket tells her to do. Whether you’re looking for the most pro-housing candidate in this race or just a strong, independent progressive, we are proud to recommend Eleana Little.
Just as other politicians and office seekers have cribbed ideas from Eleana Little in the past, we hope she takes some of the best ideas proposed by her opponents.
We favorably noted Daniel Israel’s vision for expanding the Newark pedestrian plaza, his willingness to advocate for the whole city, support for bus lanes, passionate and courageous advocacy for mixed-income housing at 150 Bay St, and his specific goal of finding ways to build 3,700 affordable housing units for Jersey City. Israel has also been a strong voice in calling for a hotel to anchor the western end of the pedestrian plaza. He overall ranked as our second choice in Ward E.
We were also impressed with Ryan Baylock’s focus on implementing dynamic pricing to regulate parking supply and demand. He was one of the few candidates in the race to have a workable parking plan. His support for connecting the protected bikelane network citywide is a notable and laudable goal. We were also impressed by his willingness to find his own answers and stake out his own vision for Ward E. Outside of the Better Blocks questionnaire, we have heard Ryan Baylock tell audiences downtown that “increasing supply should be our north star.” From what we have seen, Baylock is probably the best candidate running on Team McGreevey.
And Stacey Lawrence has tied dedicated bus lanes to encouraging more transit-oriented development and has also been a strong advocate for expanding workforce housing.
We note, again, it is a shame some of the various mayoral slates’ best candidates in the race are all pitted against one another in one ward race rather than running for an at-large seat but Little stood the tallest among her peers. She is not the strongest debater or extemporaneous speaker – Israel and Lawrence both performed very well, there – but Little’s answers to the Better Blocks questionnaire showed a thoroughness and rigor that we deeply appreciated.
We endorse Eleana Little for Ward E but hope all the candidates who submitted continue to be engaged in the city’s civic life and encourage them to continue to seek public service – elected or otherwise.
Ward F
No Ward F candidates submitted an individual response to the Better Blocks questionnaire so we will note issue any endorsements. However, we encourage voters to vote for any candidate in Ward F other than Frank Gilmore. The Reverend Keith Howell, who is running against Gilmore in Ward F, put out a video on social media that highlights some of the concerns expressed by many who are skeptical of Frank Gilmore’s approach to governance.
This past summer, following the death of a six-year-old boy and demands for more street safety from various groups (including ours), Mayor Fulop announced over social media that he would send the city council a plan to improve bus transit and make high-risk roads safer for pedestrians and bikers by eliminating conflicted lane turns through one-way conversion. Many criticized Fulop for how he announced the plan but Frank Gilmore put particular time and energy into whipping up opposition to the tentative proposal.
Before city officials were able to release more details on the benefits of one-way road conversions – which included safer streets, more on-street parking, and space for dedicated bus lanes – Frank Gilmore put out heavily misleading fliers hostile to the idea of road conversions. Street safety advocates reached out multiple times to correct the misleading narrative that GIlmore was advancing. Despite these efforts to correct Gilmore’s misinformation, the Ward F councilman still went ahead with a community meeting for participants to rail against their idea of the city’s plan rather than the preliminary plans the Department of Infrastructure had prepared. Gilmore fomented such a hostile environment that the Q&A session quickly turned into personal attacks on the city’s civil servants.
Our fear is that the city’s excellent infrastructure team may be contemplating leaving their posts in the coming years due to the backlash. Following that meeting, no further plans for large-scale street safety and public transit improvements anywhere in the city have been proposed, which is a shame because 30% of the city’s commuters rely on the bus as their primary means of transit. Bus lanes would have helped get them more reliable service.
Gilmore also frequently works to increase parking requirements even in areas with easy transit access. This adds to congestion and encourages car ownership while shifting costs of parking to tenants without cars. At a neighborhood meeting over the summer for a mixed-income building with no parking next to the Garfield Ave light rail station, for instance, Gilmore’s aides mentioned that Gilmore will work to restore 1-to-1 parking minimums in Jersey City’s low-density districts. Gilmore also consistently works to downsize proposals for more housing, which reduces housing supply and raises the cost of housing. He is a routine fixture at Planning Board meetings where he shows up to oppose by-right development even outside of Ward F. He is also one of the few council members who wants to reopen the Barrow Street portion of the Newark Ave pedestrian plaza to car traffic, increasing potentially dangerous conflicts between people and cars.
Despite all this, Gilmore is likely to be reelected to the city council as his competitors are running virtually non-existent campaigns. There is no doubt that he has the capacity for leadership given his strong engagement and powerful platform. Gilmore could have changed the conversation on street safety in a more productive and positive direction but he squandered it on settling petty political grievances against people like Mayor Fulop. Unfortunately, he has failed to rise to the occasion and it has been disappointing to see climate advocacy groups and other local politicians like Katie Brennan and Ravi Bhalla, running for Assembly in LD-32, endorse Gilmore’s counter-productive populism. We note with some irony that County Executive Craig Guy – the quintessential machine insider and stalwart – now holds more progressive views on bus lanes and bus rapid transit than the insurgent “progressives” of Jersey City.
For the above reasons, we do not wish to see Frank Gilmore reelected to office and encourage voters in Ward F to vote for any other candidate.
At-large
Most at-large candidates elected not to complete the Better Blocks questionnaire, as at-large candidates largely win or lose based on the performance of the mayoral candidate at the top of the ticket. Any candidate who did not submit is ineligible for a Better Blocks endorsement.
That said, we have some preferences on which candidates we would like to make a run-off election after November, and that includes the two at-large candidates who did submit an individual response to the questionnaire.
Kristen Zadroga-Hart was a surprise candidate for us. She has taken some positions in the past that we would describe as skeptical of development but her responses to our questionnaire were thorough and thoughtful. She was also one of the first candidates to submit a response and her answers to questions around housing and street safety in sources outside of the Better Blocks questionnaire have echoed what she told us.
Her answers on housing seemed to understand the extent of the crisis and the need for more supply, especially near transit. And we also appreciated her support for one-way conversions to eventually support bus lanes and other safe street improvements. We also deeply appreciated her statement that it would take better communication to move the conversation forward and generate community buy-in. The best leaders do just that.
While we disagreed with her opposition to transforming a closed-off segment of Barrow Street into space for a playground to make the Newark Ave pedestrian plaza more family friendly, she was one of the few candidates to propose alternative locations and think about access to public play areas in other parts of the city.
Kristen Zadroga-Hart has our support for an at-large council seat.
Daniel Rivera is a current at-large councilman. He has been supportive of the growth of this city and using development to create more opportunities for life-long residents and newcomers alike. His answers to the questionnaire reflected that and we are conditionally supportive of his reelection for that reason.
Directionally, he says the right things on street safety and Vision Zero. And we believe him when he says, “I’ve seen how better street design can save lives and make neighborhoods work better for everyone.” But, unfortunately, he often pays more heed to the concerns that “long term residents have in not wanting to disrupt their community with drastic changes,” which we saw during the fight over the Manhattan/Franklin bike lane project. We have similar problems with his reasons for refusing to invest in improvements to a closed-off portion of Barrow Street. While supportive of keeping Barrow Street closed to through traffic, he cites emergency vehicle access as a reason to oppose investment in the space. We do not see how the two are in conflict.
We would like to see Councilman Rivera be bolder on Vision Zero, support for parks and pedestrian plazas, and redesigning city streets if he is elected to a new term in office. In a crowded field, Councilman Rivera is better than many of the alternatives and we support him returning to the council for another term.
Tina Nalls and Ira Guilford (Team Ali):
You might expect Mussab Ali’s at-large council slate to feature candidates with policy views similar to his own, but both Tina Nalls and Ira Guilford have made public statements in stark contrast to Ali’s views that we find troubling enough to call out here.
Tina Nalls argued at a city council meeting earlier this year that the city should stop all market-rate housing development and Ira Guilford has made comments hostile toward housing development on the fear that development displaces long-term residents. Empirical research shows the opposite – new development tends to lower surrounding rents and desirable areas that lack development see higher rents[9]. While anti-development rhetoric may appeal to some voters, it is directly at odds with the best available evidence on housing affordability. Perversely, were their ideal policies to be put in place, it would likely increase the kinds of displacement that they say they are worried about. We recommend you do not cast your vote for these members of Team Ali.
Rolando Lavarro and Michael Griffin (Team Solomon):
Two other candidates deserve a special mention as to why not to vote for them.
Rolando Lavarro, a former at-large councilman, laid out reasons why he is seeking office again in a recent op-ed. In it, he decries the housing affordability crisis – an issue we agree is a problem – but when Lavarro was last on the council, he voted against housing developments, including ones with affordable housing. Most notable was his failure to support affordable housing and a school in downtown Jersey City at Laurel-Saddlewood Court. Even with the benefit of hindsight, he still touts his opposition to this development, stating it did not have enough affordable housing givebacks. Yet the development failed to happen due to having too many givebacks,which made it financially unviable; a higher affordable percentage, out of zero units, would still have been zero. People cannot live in theoretical affordable housing set-asides. Meanwhile, on 150 Bay St, which proposes three times as much affordable housing as Laurel-Saddlewood would have had, and a school space three times as large, Lavarro has reservations because it is too dense. We believe this encapsulates the “the perfect is the enemy of the good” attitude that permeates the positions of many Team Solomon candidates when it comes to housing. His housing policies would dramatically worsen the cost of living in Jersey City and eventually lead to a shortage of new housing.
Michael Griffin holds similar views on housing that are dispositive on their own. But Griffin also spoke out against bus lanes and street safety improvements during Councilman Gilmore’s community meeting. This, along with his history as Gilmore’s campaign manager in 2021, his close association with Gilmore concerns us deeply; we worry he would vote in lockstep with Gilmore on the council. The presence of such a close Gilmore ally on the Team Solomon slate, especially in an at-large position where he is likely to be elected or not based on Solomon’s fortunes in the mayor’s race, is troubling. Electing Griffin to the council would be a big step back in Jersey City’s efforts to improve transportation options for the 44% of households that don’t own a car.
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