NYC NOW - Midday News: NJ Transit Getting Ready to Restart Service, Dangerous Section of Jacob Riis Beach to Stay Closed, and New Jersey Voter Registration Deadline Is Tuesday

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

NJ Transit says it needs time to bring trains back online after reaching a tentative deal with its engineers and ending a strike. Train service is expected to resume Tuesday. Meanwhile, a dangerous section of Jacob Riis Beach will remain closed this summer after several recent drownings. Plus, the deadline to register for New Jersey’s gubernatorial primary is Tuesday, though most voters don’t know the election is coming. To learn more, WNYC’s Michael Hill spoke with Jesse Burns, Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of New Jersey.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Monday, May 19th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. NJ Transit trains resume full service tomorrow morning. The Locomotive Engineers Union and the Transit Agency reached a tentative agreement last night in the third day of the strike. NJ Transit President and CEO Chris Killory says the agency needs time to safely bring trains back online. We will never compromise the safety of our riders. For us, it is better to get it right and do it methodically than to rush and try to meet some artificial deadline and get it wrong. And we will not do that.

Union officials say the new deal includes higher pay than the offer of members rejected in April. If engineers approve this deal, it would be their first raise in six years. A treacherous section of Jacob Rees Beach in Queens will likely remain closed this summer. WNMIC's Liam Quigley reports. The Army Corps of Engineers dumped more than 350,000 cubic yards of sand on the beach in the summer of 2023. But most of it washed away in the following months. The erosion created dangerous currents and swimming was banned. But people still went in the water.

Last year, two teens drowned in the area after being pulled under a wave. And last month, a surfer drowned. A spokesperson says the Army Corps has no. plans to do further work at Reese this summer. National Park Service did not respond to questions about the erosion. Locals say the Park Service is neglecting Reese Beach. They say the city is doing a better job maintaining other parts of Rockaway Beach. 66 in sunny now. Sunny today in a low 70s for high temperature, but those winds gusting to 30 miles an hour out there today so be careful tomorrow increasing clouds, low 70s, much

calm the wind. Stay tuned for more after the break. The primary election for candidates hoping to become New Jersey's next governor is three weeks away. But if you want to vote in it, you must register by tomorrow. A recent poll found many voters in the Garden State don't know it's coming. The Rutgers-Eagleton poll from April reported only 24% of respondents knew about the June 10th election. Jesse Burns is the executor director of the League of Women VIII. voters of New Jersey. It's a nonpartisan organization that encourages civic participation,

and Jesse joins us now. Jesse, would you give us a little background on voting in New Jersey? Are participation rates generally low, especially in a primary election? Yeah, so New Jersey has off-year elections. So what we typically see is really low turnout rates, particularly for, you know, gubernatorial elections, which is a really big deal. The legislative Assembly is also up right now. So we're hopeful that the end of the county line, as well as the competitiveness, both the Democratic and the Republican fields, have a lot of candidates running really competitive races, that we can encourage folks to turn out and kind of change that trend. Jessie, your organization, as we said, works to encourage more people to vote. What do you find

motivates people to get involved who might not have otherwise? A couple of things. The lead is currently knocking on doors and having, you know, really intense and deep conversations, nonpartisan conversations with voters that have been sitting elections out to kind of find what issues they care about. I think a lot of times these voters are ignored by traditional campaigns. They just don't have the information they need. So the League is trying to provide that information to them. One of the things that really does encourage folks, though, are our peers. You know, when we have friends, text friends, and family talk to family with this information, we find that, one, folks don't have the correct information. It's really important to get it out there.

And these trusted sources, messengers really do help people realize, okay, primers important. It's coming up. Here are the deadlines. And they're more likely to turn out when they're friends and family encourage them to do so. You know, Jesse, both major political parties on the national level are, always talking about making the case how urgent every election is. And we do see more, way more voters, as you point out, come to the polls in national elections. But local elections give voters the opportunity to make some change closer to home and more immediately. Why do you

think there isn't more turnout? For a couple of reasons in New Jersey, we see low turnout in local elections. One, I think that folks don't quite realize how important local politics are to their everyday life. You know, so if you're talking about municipal or school board elections, these have really direct impact on, you know, your everyday community in town. Legislative elections, a lot is decided in the state house that impacts us. And of course, the governor is a very powerful position. New Jersey has a lot of elections.

We had school board elections in April. We had nonpartisan municipal elections in May. now we're having a June primary on June 10th. Folks just don't quite recognize that all of these are happening, and it's very hard to keep up with all these elections in New Jersey. Based on the turnout that you're describing, Jesse, for some of the elections, off-year elections, as some people might call them, and it's not a national presidential election,

does all of that make the case send to better coordinate elections to have the election for governing New Jersey, the same year you hold it for presidential election and so forth, so that they're more in line so that there's less voter drop-off from election to election. Yeah, so the reason that New Jersey decided to have these off-year elections that weren't in line with the federal elections is because the folks who decided this was a good idea, thought they wanted to keep state politics and federal politics separate. But I think now in 2025, that really just isn't the reality, right? A lot of federal conversation is very much in our gubernatorial election.

These things aren't separate. So I think that really, you know, we are seeing this hurt voter turnout by having elections separate. And it's not just the gubernatorial. It's all these different elections. So I think consolidation is something that we might want to start to consider to make it a little bit easier for voters to have the information they need, show up for, you know, one election season, instead of consistently having to turn out again and again, particularly,

like I said, there was an April, a May, and now a June election. Wow. Jesse, for listeners out there who want to register or to help someone else get registered right now, what do they need to know? What do they need to do? Yeah, so the deadline to register for the June primary is tomorrow, May 20th. New Jersey has online voter registration, so I encourage folks to use that. If you go to vote.nj.gov, which is the state website, there's an online voter registration portal. I also really encourage everybody to check their voter registration status. Sometimes folks think they're registered or think they are active or registered at their right address and they're not. So you can visit that

website, vote.nj.gov, and check to see to make sure that you're registered at the right place. and your registration is active. Jesse Burns is the executive director at League of Women Voters of New Jersey. Jesse is always great to talk to you. Thank you so much, Michael. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday,

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