I am in favor of community policing because it builds better working relationships with the communities.

We have to scrutinize the entire abatement process to ensure the companies that are under consideration for an abatement truly need one, and I don't believe that is being done now.

I do feel we can create more jobs and opportunities for Jersey City residents, but in the spirit of free enterprise, I do not think it is right to force companies to hire a fixed percentage of local residents.

I believe the challenge the city faces is attracting continued development into the inner and western part of Jersey City. Nobody should be left behind as Jersey City continues to prosper and grow.

My father was born in the year 1900 in South Carolina, and he grew up at a time where being an African-American child in the American South was to be deprived of access to anything close to a reasonable education. He only had three years of formal education, but he was self-taught. He read two newspapers a day.

I had two different kind of parents. My mother was obsessive with movie stars and cinema and Hollywood because she worked in movies. And my father was obsessed with beauty everywhere - in art, in nature, animals.

I know my family's condition and how we struggled. But the Almighty has something for everybody.

The truth is that at age 19, I was a teenage mother living alone with my daughter in a trailer and struggling to keep us afloat on my way to a divorce. And I knew then that I was going to have to work my way up and out of that life if I was going to give my daughter a better life and a better future, and that's what I've done.