Mayor John Labrosse: Leadership, Service & the Realities of Local Government

Transcript

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How does a local mayor make things happen and what drives somebody to take on that responsibility?

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We'll explore the answers to those questions and beyond during this episode of no Wrong Choices.

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Thank you so much for joining us.

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I'm Larry Samuels, soon to be joined by Tushar Saxena and Larry Shea.

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Before they step in, please be sure to like and follow our show.

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Where you're listening right now.

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Your support enables us to keep bringing these great journey stories to life.

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Now let's get started.

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This episode features the mayor of Hackensack, New Jersey, John LaBrasse Tushar.

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As a native, a resident and citizen of Hackensack, you are undoubtedly the right person to set up this conversation, so take it away, Thank you very much there, larry, sam.

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So yeah, full disclosure.

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I have been living in the city of Hackensack for 15 years.

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I have seen this place kind of grow from, grow from where the main street was a one road, was a one way street, to now where it is a two-way street and there's been a huge amount of urban renewal in this city, so to speak.

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So part of this town is very suburban, a lot of family homes, and then part of it, as I like to say, a lot of big buildings, a lot of urban space.

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So this town really has kind of two personalities to it and, to be quite honest, I never really took a lot of interest in what that meant in terms of Hackensack City.

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So who runs it?

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Now, the odd thing is is that even though John LaBrasse is the mayor, he really isn't the guy in charge, which is really really cool, and you get to kind of see that journey as what it means to be a mayor on the very, very basic level of running a city Right.

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So running a city basically is it runs the gamut, for whether you run a city like New York or you run a small city like like a Hackensack, new Jersey, everybody has different, different challenges, and some of the challenges are very much the same.

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Yeah, speaking of full disclosure, I was not on this episode, but I'm sorry.

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No wonder it was so good, I knew you were going to say that.

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No, I'm sorry.

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I was not there, though, because it sounds like you guys had a good time.

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I don't know what a mayor does.

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I mean, let's be perfectly frank about it, and I do think there is a difference between Hackensack, new Jersey, and, like a New York City mayor or Los Angeles, but you're the face of the community just the same.

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And I think he really spells out what it is that his job is and kind of gets to the crux of the biscuit about hey, here's what I do every day and this is how we get things done, and it sounded like you guys had a lot of fun, so a really good listen and I learned a lot, absolutely.

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And I will tease everybody with this.

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He spent some time in Little Italy in New York, where he learned how to be a politician, so stay tuned for that.

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So, with no further ado, here is Mayor John LaBrasse.

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Now joining no Wrong Choices is Mayor John Labrosse of Hackensack, new Jersey.

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Mayor Labrosse has been in office since 2013 and recently announced that he'll be seeking a fourth term later this year.

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Mayor Labrosse, thank you so much for joining us.

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Oh, you're welcome.

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It's great to be here, guys.

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All right.

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So, mayor Labrosse, I am Tushar Saxena.

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I actually live in new jersey, full disclosure.

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I live in Hackensack, New Jersey.

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This is the guy who runs my town.

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He's doing a great job.

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So, mayor, first question, before we ask you what you do for a living is would you prefer to be referred to as mr mayor, mayor john Labrosse or just john?

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john works for me.

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Guys, let's go with perfect, perfect, all right.

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So, john, first question right off the bat is what exactly is it that you do?

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Well, I actually have two jobs.

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One, obviously, is the mayor of Hackensack and I am also a safety specialist at Hackensack University Medical Center here in Hackensack, which is quite a large place 8,000 employees.

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So it keeps me busy.

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That keeps you pretty busy.

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Absolutely so, Mayor.

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Before we go back to the beginning, just to paint a picture, what is the role of a mayor in a town like Hackensack, New Jersey?

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Well, it's funny because there's all different types of government throughout the land, especially in cities.

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We have what's called a council manager form of government.

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So we have a city council which consists of five.

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It's actually called a council manager form of government.

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So we have a city council which consists of five.

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It's actually called a week form of mayor.

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It's like a part-time position, I guess you would call it.

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The city is basically run by a city manager, but we make all the laws and you know we make the rules and the laws that govern Hackensack and we're involved with a lot of different things redevelopment, stuff like that.

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We, you know that's all on the council.

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That former government's been around, I think, since 1923.

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There's only about six or seven municipalities in the state of New Jersey that use it.

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But I like it because it's nonpartisan, which means you don't run as a Democrat or Republican or an independent.

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Oh, interesting, yeah, we all run.

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However, you know, you just run.

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It doesn't matter what you are.

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Your job Exactly.

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And the mayor is actually not voted on by the public.

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The mayor is voted on by the council once the election is over, and actually I was elected at first in 2009 as the councilman.

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I sat there with four years, I was the only one to get in.

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And then 2013, we, 2013, I, I, we ran a new ticket slate of people and, uh, we swept that year and I've been going ever since.

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Yeah, you've been sweeping ever since the guys what 15 and 0, I believe.

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Um.

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So, john, uh, I guess I'll, I'll, I'll ask this before I actually ask you.

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You know, what kind of what did you want to do, as you know, when you were younger?

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I guess the question is, you know, does it matter whether you're a Republican or a Democrat on the mayoral level?

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I?

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don't think so.

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I mean I would like to see all local governments be nonpartisan, because it forces people to work together.

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Nothing's better than having Democrats and Republicans on the same council working together.

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You know you get different points of views and even whether you're all Republicans or Democrats, you're not going to get along on everything.

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So I just think it suits the public better.

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I think the public, it's fair to the public to have people from each side of the aisle on your council.

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Think about it the House, or the Senate, was all one.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Oh it'd be great, perfect example.

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We'd be living in much simpler times.

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There's no question about that, right, right.

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So, john, take us back to the beginning.

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Who was a young John LaBrasse, and I guess my follow-up to that would be the people that you grew up with.

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Would they be surprised that there's a mayor in front of your name today?

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Yeah, it's funny because I actually I was born in Jersey, raised in Jersey, moved.

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My mother was divorced when I was eight or nine Well, actually when I was four, but when I was eight or nine she remarried and I lived here in Hackensack at that time and we moved to Scottsdale, arizona, which back in the day was, like you know, here I am a nine-year-old little boy moving to the westmost western town with cowboys and horses.

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It must have felt like being on another planet right oh it was great, it was a trip.

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I mean literally when I moved to Scottsdale the horses still had to ride away on the road and that makes me sound like I'm 150 years old, but that was back in the 60s or maybe early, yeah, early sixties.

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So yeah, it was a trip and uh spent my time out there and went to high school out there, graduated high school, was supposed to go to Arizona state, but I decided I had a brother who lived here still and uh, instead of going to college back there, I uh out there, I packed my bags, packed my car and drove cross-country and moved back to New Jersey.

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I've pretty much been here ever since.

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So, after you come back to the East Coast, saying essentially that you did not bother going to college, what was the next step for you, john?

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So then, what did you then get into at that point?

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Well, my brother's wife's family was in the seafood business and ended up working in the seafood business for years, had my own seafood place for a while.

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I've worn a lot of different hats and I think that helps me as a mayor, I've been a chef, I've worked in the seafood business, I've been in trades in construction, so I've done a lot of different things in my life and I really have learned from, you know, was able to take a little bit of everything from all those different trades to help me along the way.

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What did you when you were a chef?

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What were you making?

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What's your expertise?

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I was the saute chef at a place called the Finn and Claw, which is now Seasons Restaurant up in Washington Township, New Jersey.

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Worked at a couple other smaller places.

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My brother-in-law had a place in New Milford, but the best place to ever work was this little clam bar in downtown Little Italy called Little Charlie's.

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It was famous at the time and was a lot of characters, if you know what I mean.

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Moving in and out of that place.

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I can't imagine.

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I can't imagine.

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Yeah, it was good.

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The famous line I got from Charlie, who was my boss, was you don't hear anything, you don't say anything.

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You don't know nothing.

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Exactly.

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When was that?

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Was that 80s, early 80s, 70s?

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Early 80s.

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Early 80s.

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What a great time in New.

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York and I actually have two kids.

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What an interesting time in New.

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York.

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You guys are familiar with San Gennaro Feast.

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I'm sure, of course.

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Absolutely.

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I had a clam stand, a seafood stand, in San Gennaro for eight years and that was a trip, another learning experience along the way, I'm sure you weren't seeing anything or hearing anything there either.

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No, no, no no, yeah, I could offline, I could tell you some really good stories about that.

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That was crazy.

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Yeah, you probably learned a lot about politics at that time too.

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That was probably how you started to get your street smarts about you, if that is the right way to put it.

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Fine line between what goes on back then, over there, and politics in general, fine line between the two.

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So what prompted you to want to go into politics?

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To be more of a bigger part of the community.

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To be more of a bigger part of the community.

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So it was back.

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You know I work at the hospital, but the hospital was building a new cancer center and there was a developer's agreement.

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A lot of my friends were firemen at the time.

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There was a developer's agreement that included getting rid of eight of our firemen who were EMT trained firemen.

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Basically, they were the ambulance service for the city.

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There were a lot of people against it in the city and when I say a lot, I mean a lot.

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There were lawn signs everywhere called Save the Eight because they didn't want these eight guys fired.

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But they ended up getting rid of them and taking over the ambulance service.

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But while doing that, going to all these meetings, people were nudging me oh, you should run for city council.

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I didn't have a political bone in my body, really, but I get nudged and nudged.

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And I talked to my wife and said you know what, maybe I should do this.

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And we put a ticket together.

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There were five of us and, like I said before, I was the only one to get on.

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So I sat there with my four opponents for four years.

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But I had a lot of support from the public because they liked what I did during the Save the Eight campaign.

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So I did my four years there.

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We put another ticket together in 2013, and that's when I was elected as mayor and that was the start of it.

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So you've been around, you're working, you've been in the area for a long time, you know the people.

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But is there a process you go through to, to prepare yourself to, to run an election, to to develop the chop, so to speak, to to win?

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Yeah, it was.

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Yeah.

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When you first start I mean, we certainly weren't seasoned veterans at this, but there's a lot of work.

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There's a lot of.

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In order to run, you have to get petitions signed, which is about 400.

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You have to go out and get literally get 400 people to sign for you just to be able to run, which is, you know, it's a little bit of a task.

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When you're first starting, that's a lot easier now because we have a base, but when you're starting out it's not.

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It's not that easy, but we were able to do it.

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And uh, you know, thank God for that, save the eight campaign, cause that really, really I think uh was the thing that got me in on that first run.

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Is there beyond that, like knowing that you're going to be doing a lot of public speaking, assuming that you're going to be doing debates and things of that nature, like is that, can you learn that stuff?

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Or or was it all second nature and natural?

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Yeah Well, you kind of thrown it to the fire.

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You know it's uh, I was never a public speaker before but I found I felt pretty comfortable doing it in most places.

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I uh I don't have an issue of speaking in public and uh, it's, you kind of get to have fun with it, Like you guys I'm sure with with you know, when you're interviewing people, you know it becomes enjoyable after a while and you know when you're dealing with the public.

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You can have a lot of fun with it.

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So when you say your first time around you had to get 400 signatures, what does that mean?

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You're knocking on doors.

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You're talking to folks.

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What's that process like?

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Yeah, back then it was.

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You know a lot of phone calls hey, I'm running for office.

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We just signed our petitions.

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You know there was five phone calls that you have to make before you got signature number one.

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Uh was, it wasn't that many.

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You know I, I spent a lot of.

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I was a youth coach in town for 15 plus years, three different sports, so it was very visible in the name in the community Right.

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Um, that was also a big plus for getting elected the first time.

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I mean half the people you know I've coached hundreds and hundreds of kids in this town through the years and was a huge help.

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So I coached football, I coached baseball and I coached wrestling, especially wrestling.

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Both my boys were wrestlers.

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So, and in each sport you guys, I know you guys are involved with sports.

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I know you guys, I think you work for one of the sports networks, don't you?

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Yeah, Well, I'm over at CBS and for many years we Larry Larry Samuels and I, one of our co-hosts, who's not here with us today we actually hosted a sports show at Sirius radio for many years.

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So yeah we're, we're pretty, we're pretty much ingrained in the, in the sports culture, for sure.

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Yeah, so you pretty much ingrained in the in the sports culture, for sure.

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Yeah, so you know how passionate parents are about sports.

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Oh, my god, way too passionate sometimes, whether it's whether it's kindergarten or in college, if your kids in the sport, uh, you know you're, you're in, uh neck deep with them.

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So, uh, yeah, that was a big help for me, um, but it's a lot of work.

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There's a lot of door-to-door.

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The campaigning is a lot of work.

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I mean you wear out your door to door.

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The campaigning is a lot of work.

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I mean you wear out your shoes.

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I mean Hackensack's not that big of a town as far as walking goes.

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We try to walk the whole city and you know there's a good month or two of campaigning where you just every night walking, every weekend walking, knocking on doors, introducing yourself to people, you know, asking them what their issues are, and that really is the best way to do it.

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You got to get out there and meet the people.

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So, John, when you're first beginning this journey into now, you know, being into politics, you mentioned a moment ago that you know you were a youth coach.

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You coached a number of different teams and got to know the community that way.

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How important was it for you to have not only that, your own profile amongst the community, but for you to get to know the community.

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How important was it for you to have that kind of experience, that life experience, before you really entered this venue?

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Well, I can honestly say, of all the things I really, really enjoyed the most in my life, it was coaching kids and, of course, being competitive.

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We had some architects put out, some great athletes, some great teams for sure, especially especially football, wrestling baseball as well.

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but high school's right down the street from me.

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Absolutely, yeah yeah, and you know you're, I've always lived by the rule your high school is only as good as your junior sports teams.

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Um, it's, it's a great feeling to uh get kids to a another level, bring them, you know, bring up their, how good they are.

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And another thing is you don't write it.

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You know one thing I learned is never write off a kid.

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A lot of coaches do that and you never know what they're.

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You know what they're going to grow up to be and how good they're going to be, and I've seen kids that I thought would not be that good end up being the, you know, the star of the high school football team.

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So you know you never write anybody off and you treat everybody fairly and, uh, you know everybody gets their shot and, uh, I really enjoyed coaching.

00:16:11.107 --> 00:16:12.711
If I could do it all over again, I would.

00:16:13.559 --> 00:16:30.894
So you get into office and you know, as we're coming out of a political season, I'm thinking about, uh, the letter that Joe Biden left for Donald Trump at his desk afterwards, Like, is there a passing of the baton from one administration to the next?

00:16:30.894 --> 00:16:34.000
You know what happens in mayor land, so what?

00:16:34.020 --> 00:16:42.128
happened in my mayor land is the day our first day in we basically opened up the cash drawer for the city and found out.

00:16:42.207 --> 00:16:42.749
It was empty.

00:16:43.511 --> 00:16:45.216
No, I wish it was just empty.

00:16:45.216 --> 00:16:51.130
And we were $33 million in debt which I didn't know about, and I was a councilman for four years.

00:16:51.130 --> 00:16:57.993
So you know, I was never never, you know given privy to the information and it was quite a shock.

00:16:57.993 --> 00:17:00.144
So we we had to do some quick scrambling.

00:17:00.144 --> 00:17:06.324
But I have a deputy mayor who was a brilliant lady, very smart, very good with numbers.

00:17:06.324 --> 00:17:18.152
She was actually an aerospace engineer back in the day when there were very few women in that field probably a handful and, yeah, very smart, and we put together a program on how to pay this off.

00:17:18.152 --> 00:17:22.704
But we also knew we were going to have to bring revenue into the city somehow.

00:17:22.765 --> 00:17:31.433
Now Hackensack, back in the day let's go back to the 50s, 60s and 70s was where the county seat.

00:17:31.433 --> 00:17:33.859
We were the shopping mecca of Bergen County.

00:17:33.859 --> 00:17:34.883
There were no malls.

00:17:34.883 --> 00:17:36.365
Malls didn't exist.

00:17:36.365 --> 00:17:57.262
Malls came in in the mid-70s and right here we had the Bergen Mall, right outside of Hackensack and Paramus, and when the malls came it really hurt not just Hackensack but almost all the downtowns in Bergen County and most of them recovered pretty quickly, but we didn't.

00:17:57.383 --> 00:17:57.983
There were some things.

00:17:57.983 --> 00:18:06.021
I don't know if you're familiar with Main Street, but Main Street was made into a one-way street which is not conducive to shopping.

00:18:06.021 --> 00:18:09.127
It's not conducive to anything except getting out of town really.

00:18:09.127 --> 00:18:16.061
And we knew we had to change all that and we put a program together.

00:18:16.061 --> 00:18:22.566
We made it a two-way again, we redid the streetscape sidewalks, we separated the sewers.

00:18:22.566 --> 00:18:47.772
All this took a lot of money and a lot of it was based on redevelopment A lot of these apartment buildings, you see, you see River Road, down that area and down by Fashini Park, and we put about 3,000 new citizens in the downtown area already.

00:18:47.772 --> 00:18:50.428
So that's a big plus for us.

00:18:51.480 --> 00:18:56.532
There's a program the state put out to help downtowns like Hackensack, who were struggling for years.

00:18:56.532 --> 00:19:02.367
I mean, I'll put it this way Twelve years ago Hackensack was not even safe to walk the downtown.

00:19:02.367 --> 00:19:06.625
Yeah, at five o'clock at night the businesses closed, the shades came down.

00:19:06.625 --> 00:19:10.541
Uh, you'd have anywhere from 50 to 100 homeless people on the street every night.

00:19:10.541 --> 00:19:15.511
You know camping out and you know just didn't not belonging there.

00:19:15.511 --> 00:19:21.289
We found that other towns, when they had a homeless person, would put them in a cop car and drop them off on Main Street.

00:19:21.289 --> 00:19:22.913
In Hackensack, oh, wow.

00:19:23.599 --> 00:19:24.521
That's how bad it was.

00:19:24.521 --> 00:19:26.445
And we put an end to all that.

00:19:26.445 --> 00:19:45.884
We came up with this initiative called the Quality of Life Initiative, working with the Bergen County Shelter, and we were able to get a lot of those people, some help off the streets, and it was a a blessing and it's, you know, haven't really seen that problem since, and now when I go down main street, even at six, seven in the morning, I see people jogging, walking their dogs.

00:19:45.884 --> 00:19:49.031
You know the coffee shops are open and business is brisk.

00:19:49.031 --> 00:19:50.041
So it's a.

00:19:50.041 --> 00:19:55.335
It's a totally different vibe from from a decade ago all right.

00:19:55.355 --> 00:20:06.933
So, mr mayor, um, and I will attest you know I have been, I've now lived in Hackensack for about almost 15 years at this point, so I have seen the tremendous, the tremendous change that's happened.

00:20:06.933 --> 00:20:08.284
And I got to admit I was not.

00:20:08.284 --> 00:20:11.551
I was not happy when we changed the main street to a two way street.

00:20:11.551 --> 00:20:13.546
I've just been so used to it going one way.

00:20:13.546 --> 00:20:14.569
It was easier for me that way.

00:20:14.569 --> 00:20:17.329
But I agree, now it makes so much more sense the other way.

00:20:17.329 --> 00:20:26.084
It makes sense having Main Street be a two-way street.

00:20:26.084 --> 00:20:26.826
It makes 100% sense.

00:20:26.846 --> 00:20:35.152
My question to you, I guess, is this when you now put together and now as a mayor, you obviously have to put together a team, as you said, the town's not run by a mayor, the city's not run by a mayor, it's run by a city council.

00:20:35.152 --> 00:20:43.535
So, when you put together a team, are you looking for as you mentioned a moment ago, one of the members of your team is, you know, is great with numbers.

00:20:43.535 --> 00:20:59.731
So, if you're putting together that type of account, that type of a group, are you looking for people who are able to do one thing very well they do, this person does one thing very well something to kind of augment so that where the the sum of the parts make the whole that much better.

00:21:00.941 --> 00:21:02.166
Yeah, that's a great question We've had.

00:21:02.166 --> 00:21:13.030
We've had some different players on the council through the through the last four councils and the one thing I've learned is everybody has their place.

00:21:13.030 --> 00:21:15.243
You know, a couple of guys were like me.

00:21:15.243 --> 00:21:16.446
There were coaches for years.

00:21:16.446 --> 00:21:19.085
Right now there's there's two on the council.

00:21:19.085 --> 00:21:31.473
One was a soccer guy, the other one was an athletic director in high school, so he's got a lot of sports experience, the financing part and all that.

00:21:31.473 --> 00:21:32.000
You know.

00:21:32.300 --> 00:21:33.462
I mentioned the deputy mayor.

00:21:33.462 --> 00:21:38.413
That's hers and she really is like the kingpin and driving force with the redevelopment.

00:21:38.413 --> 00:21:49.942
But yeah, you want to have a mix of people and we all do different things and I almost laugh because being a mayor for me is almost like, you know, I'm like the lead singer in a rock band, right, right.

00:21:49.942 --> 00:21:55.506
So that's you know, I'm like the front guy, but I think it's more.

00:21:55.506 --> 00:21:59.453
It's a personality thing and just being able to get after've got to have thick skin.

00:21:59.453 --> 00:22:16.965
I'll tell you that much because you put up with a lot of stuff sometimes, but you've got to be able to listen to people and digest what they're actually saying to you and look at things from their point of view, because these are taxpayers and they have their rights and they have the right to express their feelings.

00:22:16.965 --> 00:22:20.429
When they come to a council meeting, we try to address everything we can.

00:22:21.259 --> 00:22:22.727
What's the hardest part of the job.

00:22:22.727 --> 00:22:31.570
There's a lot of name, especially, I'm going to say, since COVID and some of the nonsense that's gone on in the country for the last few years.

00:22:31.570 --> 00:22:35.087
Things have, people have changed.

00:22:35.087 --> 00:22:40.892
I've noticed people have changed a lot, especially with the social media as it is now.

00:22:40.892 --> 00:22:44.209
But yeah, it's been a crazy ride.

00:22:44.209 --> 00:22:52.433
I mean, it's something I never in my life, you know, I don't know if it's ever happened to you guys, but you end up in a position sometimes you're like, wow, how'd I get here?

00:22:52.433 --> 00:22:55.267
But I've enjoyed it, it's good.

00:22:55.267 --> 00:23:02.012
What I really enjoy is, you know, like I said, I said with the, with the kids, coaching the kids, and you see them as they grow and get better.

00:23:02.012 --> 00:23:03.453
I see that with the city as well.

00:23:03.453 --> 00:23:11.030
And, uh, of all the things, I think that's probably helped me the most to be the mayor is probably the coaching, cause you have to deal with a lot of different people.

00:23:11.720 --> 00:23:18.771
You've obviously seen Hackensack now as a I would say uh, uh, say the least, as a longtime resident.

00:23:18.771 --> 00:23:19.973
You've seen change.

00:23:19.973 --> 00:23:23.769
You've seen changes and you've obviously been part of that major change.

00:23:23.769 --> 00:23:26.808
What do you take the most pride in at this point?

00:23:26.808 --> 00:23:29.990
The change that has happened in the city that you've seen over these years.

00:23:31.400 --> 00:23:52.211
Well, the best part for me is you always want to be proud of where you live and knowing what Hackensack was like back in the day when it was a vibrant downtown, um, and then seeing it kind of fall by the wayside and being able to bring that back in today's world because the malls are still there, you know.

00:23:52.211 --> 00:23:53.461
So we were able to do this with.

00:23:53.461 --> 00:24:00.209
You know the malls people still go shopping all the time to the mall, but it's a different, different type of downtown now with a lot of people living on it.

00:24:00.209 --> 00:24:01.451
People walk the streets.

00:24:01.451 --> 00:24:05.210
They're not getting in their car and leaving to go get something.

00:24:05.210 --> 00:24:06.464
They can buy stuff right on.

00:24:06.464 --> 00:24:13.630
They can go out to eat or go to the pubs or whatever, and I really enjoy it.

00:24:13.630 --> 00:24:15.200
I enjoy going downtown myself.

00:24:15.200 --> 00:24:18.210
I wish more people would use downtown.

00:24:19.046 --> 00:24:20.500
Which is your favorite spot downtown?

00:24:21.583 --> 00:24:22.766
uh, my favorite restaurant.

00:24:22.766 --> 00:24:26.113
Uh, I don't want any hurt anybody's feelings, but that would go.

00:24:26.113 --> 00:24:29.747
That would go with casual bottom.

00:24:29.747 --> 00:24:30.829
My buddy benny owns it.

00:24:30.910 --> 00:24:31.971
Oh, I love that place.

00:24:31.971 --> 00:24:34.324
Yes, absolutely love that place a great little vibe.

00:24:34.724 --> 00:24:35.527
Uh, he has that place.

00:24:35.527 --> 00:24:39.688
He has a place in new milford, and there's also a vietnamese place called Pho Saigon, which I love.

00:24:39.688 --> 00:24:41.903
So but they're all good.

00:24:41.903 --> 00:24:42.866
We've got Churro Pot.

00:24:42.866 --> 00:24:49.271
We've got some great restaurants downtown and it's it's a lot different than it was.

00:24:49.271 --> 00:24:50.281
You could have the best sandwich.

00:24:50.323 --> 00:24:53.330
One of the best sandwich places in Bergen County is right here in Hackensack.

00:24:53.330 --> 00:24:56.263
Yes, absolutely.

00:24:56.304 --> 00:24:56.965
What are you talking about?

00:24:56.965 --> 00:24:58.951
Yeah, exactly, the number one.

00:24:58.951 --> 00:25:00.223
Yeah, absolutely.

00:25:01.167 --> 00:25:02.693
What are you talking about?

00:25:02.693 --> 00:25:03.980
Yeah, exactly the number one.

00:25:03.980 --> 00:25:07.481
What's it like when you walk into those places?

00:25:07.481 --> 00:25:21.873
You know, I live in a condo in New York City and I've been approached multiple times to run for the board and every single time I say thank you while running in the opposite direction, because the last thing I want is, when I come home at the end of the day, is for somebody to approach me and say hey, I'm having this problem.

00:25:21.873 --> 00:25:25.145
I really don't want to hear that, I just want to go home.

00:25:25.145 --> 00:25:35.848
So I imagine, being the mayor of a town, no matter where you go, you must always be on Like, are you able to disconnect from the job?

00:25:35.848 --> 00:25:39.069
And I guess, do you want to disconnect from the job ever?

00:25:40.343 --> 00:25:43.423
Yeah, well, you got to have some downtime and you know what'll happen You'll crash and burn.

00:25:43.423 --> 00:25:51.190
But uh, yeah, and it's, it's, it's even a little, you know, a little twist on working at the hospital with as many employees we have.

00:25:51.190 --> 00:25:52.760
You know, I get people.

00:25:52.760 --> 00:25:54.403
Can you hand me their parking ticket?

00:25:54.403 --> 00:25:55.246
Can you fix this?

00:25:55.246 --> 00:25:55.807
Can you do that?

00:25:55.807 --> 00:25:56.647
Can you do this?

00:25:56.647 --> 00:26:03.347
And you know, and, uh, you know, tell them, no, I can't fix it if you parked illegally.

00:26:03.347 --> 00:26:03.969
That's your problem.

00:26:04.009 --> 00:26:12.381
I get parking tickets, for god's sake, and I'm the mayor, so you know, pay pay your, pay your ticket type of deal, but uh, yeah, you get it.

00:26:12.381 --> 00:26:14.527
This morning I had an issue I have every morning.

00:26:14.527 --> 00:26:27.490
I have a safety meeting at 8 30 and somebody brought up that a manhole cover was off down on atlantic street and uh, you know, thank god they saw it, because I called the city manager, he called the dpw and I went replaced the the manhole cover.

00:26:27.490 --> 00:26:28.555
Somebody could have been injured.

00:26:28.555 --> 00:26:31.022
But uh, yeah, you get stuff like that all the time.

00:26:31.022 --> 00:26:31.303
You get.

00:26:31.303 --> 00:26:48.653
You know, we get uh nixle alerts as well, which all the citizens have access to let you know what's going on in the town, if there's a power outage or if there's street closures, whatever, and that helps a lot because it goes out and it stops a lot of calls from coming in.

00:26:49.622 --> 00:26:52.651
Obviously, you take a great deal of pride in civic service at this point.

00:26:52.651 --> 00:26:55.169
Obviously, you've been a mayor for so long You've been on the city council.

00:26:55.169 --> 00:26:56.865
You take a great deal.

00:26:56.865 --> 00:27:03.726
You have been a pillar of the community in terms of being a coach as well, so you take a great deal of pride in being civically involved.

00:27:03.726 --> 00:27:08.053
How do you see that in terms of the younger generation in Hackensack?

00:27:08.053 --> 00:27:08.934
Do you still see that?

00:27:11.580 --> 00:27:12.222
It's changed.

00:27:12.222 --> 00:27:15.330
I think the demographics changed in Hackensack a bit.

00:27:15.330 --> 00:27:18.726
You know we're a population of forty to 50 000.

00:27:18.726 --> 00:27:20.650
You know that fluctuates.

00:27:20.650 --> 00:27:31.527
Um, it's like I look at the sports programs today, a lot of the numbers are down, which concerns me when it's going back to sports like baseball, for instance.

00:27:31.527 --> 00:27:33.441
We just have five, six hundred kids in our program.

00:27:33.441 --> 00:27:34.905
Now you're in the 200s.

00:27:34.905 --> 00:27:42.086
But other sports have now come out that are, you know, a lot of kids are doing year-round stuff, club stuff, and they focus on one sport.

00:27:42.086 --> 00:27:43.932
Years ago everybody played two, three sports.

00:27:43.932 --> 00:27:46.223
So things have changed.

00:27:46.223 --> 00:27:49.753
But we still have some strong programs.

00:27:49.753 --> 00:27:53.362
But we could be doing better there, absolutely.

00:27:54.564 --> 00:28:02.076
What advice do you have, let's say, to someone who wants to get involved the way you have in their community and eventually kind of move up the ladder?

00:28:02.076 --> 00:28:09.193
I mean, is there a real blueprint for how to do this?

00:28:09.193 --> 00:28:11.347
Is there a real map to do this?

00:28:12.200 --> 00:28:12.741
Well, what we do.

00:28:12.741 --> 00:28:14.066
We have a lot of different boards in town.

00:28:14.066 --> 00:28:18.269
We have zoning board, we have planning board, we have environmental commissions.

00:28:18.269 --> 00:28:18.935
We have a lot of different.

00:28:18.935 --> 00:28:19.109
You know we have planning board.

00:28:19.109 --> 00:28:19.586
Um, we have environmental commissions.

00:28:19.586 --> 00:28:19.862
We have a lot of different.

00:28:19.862 --> 00:28:21.647
You know, we have shade tree commission.

00:28:21.647 --> 00:28:23.713
I mean numerous library boards.

00:28:23.713 --> 00:28:31.804
So we try to steer people who want to get involved and want to volunteer into those boards and get them on boards and and and.

00:28:31.804 --> 00:28:35.280
From there we kind of keep an eye on who's you know who's doing good and who's doing what.

00:28:35.280 --> 00:28:46.398
Um, you know, our, our election's coming this May and this is definitely my last one, because I'm getting up there and I'm pretty much you know.

00:28:47.422 --> 00:28:49.407
Yeah, but you know how everything runs at this point, come on.

00:28:50.109 --> 00:28:50.751
Yeah, yeah.

00:28:50.751 --> 00:28:54.069
Well, you always want to finish the job and we're just about done.

00:28:54.069 --> 00:28:58.505
So I know this next four years is crucial to get to the point.

00:28:58.505 --> 00:29:01.901
We need to get to the money coming.

00:29:01.901 --> 00:29:19.222
The revenue coming in from these new buildings is substantial, but we've also gone out and done close to $80 million worth of infrastructure work for the city, which nobody was doing it, yeah, and especially sewer work and sewer separation work especially sewer work and sewer separation work.

00:29:19.222 --> 00:29:20.663
So we built a new recreation center.

00:29:20.663 --> 00:29:36.349
We're in the middle of starting bids for the indoor sports facility, which would be the only one of its kind in Bergen County, more than a full football soccer field indoor facility, kind of like a bubble down by Johnson Park.

00:29:36.349 --> 00:29:45.733
We're putting the money to good use, let's put it that way, and this is all being paid for through redevelopment, through the money that's coming in.

00:29:46.634 --> 00:29:50.517
Are you happy with what your legacy will be, regardless of what happens in May?

00:29:50.517 --> 00:29:51.817
Are you happy what your legacy will be?

00:29:52.837 --> 00:30:00.574
Yeah, I could leave today and I'd be proud of what I've done absolutely.

00:30:01.901 --> 00:30:06.445
What do you consider to be your greatest achievement?

00:30:06.445 --> 00:30:07.207
Just the main street.

00:30:07.207 --> 00:30:20.608
I redeveloped my main street and the vibe we've created downtown, you know, probably would be my greatest achievement, Though for me personally, you know I'm still going to hang in with the coaching thing.

00:30:20.628 --> 00:30:22.640
Is that what's gonna be next after you, after you finally call it a career with this?

00:30:22.640 --> 00:30:26.615
You're gonna go back to coaching well, I have uh six grandkids.

00:30:26.855 --> 00:30:30.567
Three of them are wrestling right now, wow, coach them you got a whole team right there.

00:30:30.567 --> 00:30:34.442
Well, both both my sons are coaches now, so I'm gonna kind of take a back seat.

00:30:34.442 --> 00:30:34.942
I'll be.

00:30:34.942 --> 00:30:42.114
I'll be standing next to him during a wrestling match and yell something out, and my son will look at me like what are you doing?

00:30:42.114 --> 00:30:43.315
I say, hey, you learned from the best.

00:30:43.315 --> 00:30:44.903
Yeah, exactly.

00:30:45.243 --> 00:30:46.948
That's what you're supposed to be doing.

00:30:46.988 --> 00:30:51.424
That is exactly what your role is at this point we have we have a lot of fun with the sport.

00:30:51.746 --> 00:30:55.644
I have one last question for you, which which is sort of a random one.

00:30:55.644 --> 00:31:20.288
When, when I think about a mayor, I think about ribbon cutting ceremonies and I think about kissing babies and things of that nature, Is there a fun thing, a random memory that you have from being mayor that kind of falls into that fun, crazy thing you got to do because of the role that you were in.

00:31:20.308 --> 00:31:21.352

Mayor John Labrosse: Leadership, Service & the Realities of Local Government

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