New Brunswick has a population that fluctuates summer to winter and day to night, with interests as diverse as business, health care, residents and citizens. Many important decisions are made every month in the New Brunswick City Council that impact residents and the public at large. Without a voice for the public many of these decisions are made without their consideration. NJPIRG Student Chapters' City Watch campaign is active in the city council, monitoring the process, offering resources and shedding light on injustices. We are focused on Renters Rights, Clean Renewable Energy, Alternative and Public Transportation and Access to Polling Places.  Right now we’re working to get solar panels on municipal buildings in New Brunswick.

NJPIRG Student Chapters will be working within the New Brunswick City Council to improve the quality of life in New Brunswick for tomorrow.

Although New Brunswick brims with culture and activity in the presence of Rutgers University, corporate headquarters, and state hospitals, the city witnesses the following problems:

• Eviction and demolition of low income houses on George Street to pave the way for corporate revitalization.
• Rental of dilapidated houses at inflated costs by absentee landlords who are not forced to clean up their act.
• Huge traffic problem due to a lack of safe and accessible public transportation.
• Stalling the implementation of a passed bike lane proposal.
• Suppression of votes and changing of polling places, especially those of students and lower income folks.
• Growing disparity in average incomes of the daytime visitor and the nighttime city resident ($65,000 vs. $30,000).

The City of New Brunswick has more problems than it should tolerate and enough solutions at hand to fix them. New Brunswick is a unique city. It is the county seat, thus a hub of business activity during the day; it is the base of the State University of New Jersey, meaning a hub of student commuters as well as a point of influx for non-year-round students; and it is the headquarters of two of the state’s largest institutions: Robert Wood Johnson and Johnson and Johnson. This creates opportunities as well as divisions: Students vs. year round residents, Day commuters vs. nighttime inhabitants, businesses vs. citizens.

These factions create different types of problems here in the city as well. Traffic from the commuting daytime population and commuter students puts a strain on the roads in the city. Parking challenges, which seem non-existent in the summer, skyrocket when 20,000+ students enter the city. Rebuilding the business district certainly benefits the day time residents as well as the merchants and may in fact entice better and more students to enroll in Rutgers. However, this district then displaces lower income families.

There will always be competing sides and voices, but we must ensure that all sides have a voice and that the public interest is upheld.

Most residents of New Brunswick have jobs, go to school, or care for a family, and therefore have minimal time to be active citizens in the local government. Some may not even know what the city council does and how it can affect their daily lives. The council makes very important decisions on a weekly basis that citizens should know about and in which they should be involved.

Voices such as Rutgers, Johnson and Johnson and Robert Wood Johnson are heard very easily by the city council through their community relations or public relations offices. There needs to be a voice for the public interest at large, not solely for individual special interests.

Our City Watch Campaign
Our solution is to integrate the community into the decision making processes of the city and pass meaningful public interest solutions to the city’s problems.

NJPIRG Student Chapters will shed light on issues that will affect the community as a whole. We will push for more mass transportation in the city. We will work with the city to ensure polling places are convenient for all residents. We will work to make sure landlords properly maintain their properties and don't overcharge tenants. We will offer and advocate for intelligent solutions to the city's problems, be a resource for the city council on public interest issues, and a resource for other organizations which wish to win reforms that will improve the lives of New Brunswick residents.

Clean Renewable Energy in New Brunswick
In response to a national energy crisis, the City Watch campaign has been working to identify and implement clean energy solutions for the city of New Brunswick. City Watch is working with the Environmental Commission of New Brunswick and the City Council to adopt a city-wide policy to get solar panels installed in municipal buildings.

Safe, Clean and Affordable Housing
Many Rutgers students looking for a place to live in the fall find only dilapidated houses with absentee landlords charging inflated rents.

City Watch, working with the Rutgers College Governing Association, successfully advocated a city ordinance that would enforce tri-annual housing inspections on all rental units in the city of New Brunswick. The previous ordinance only mandated inspections when the house was constructed and when an addition was built, allowing some landlords to rent ill-maintained and sometimes even unsafe houses and apartments. As more than half of New Brunswick's housing consists of rental properties, this was huge victory for New Brunswick students and other residents alike.

Alternative and Public Transportation
New Brunswick has a huge traffic problem due to a lack of safe and accessible public transportation. To make matters worse, the city council has stalled the implementation of a passed bike lane proposal that had wide public support. City watch is working to get bike lanes built across New Brunswick for easier access for bikers along George Street.

Easy and Equal Access to Polling Places
Unfortunately, student turnout in our city elections is at an all-time low. Yet students are critically important to decisions that are being made at the city level, given it is the future they are inheriting.

We'll work to make sure that access to voting is simple for students. We'll work with the Vote NJ campaign and Governing Associations to get more polling places on or close to campus in order to increase student participation in the democratic process.   We will also register students to vote through the New Voters Project.