Recall TV is Back! And, Random Notes

After a two-month hiatus, Recall TV is back with two All New Episodes!!

OK, not really. After far too long a break, I finally managed to finish the third and final installment of the Trenton Recall How-to Workshop that Jim Carlucci and I conducted in December of last year.

The link to the YouTube video is here.

I’ve also strung together all of the Power Point slides that Jim wrote up for the workshop, in one 4-minute music video. All of the info, none of the chatter!!

You can find that here.

It’s now 79 days before any Recall activity can take place for any current elected officials, so you have all that time to study up. Take your time. There will be a Quiz! Thank You’s to Jim C, for putting together the slides and for conducting the well-attended workshop with me. And to Kevin Williams for his camera work in December.

On other matters, earlier in the week an article in the Times discussed ongoing conversations and discussions at the local, county and state levels – coordinated by the state’s Department of Community Affairs (DCA) – looking at the concept of merging and consolidating police services at the County level in three NJ counties: Essex, Camden and Mercer.  These conversations are part of the overall search  being conducted statewide, for economies of scale and shared services that may lead to lower tax burdens on state taxpayers.

Anyway, for that Times article, reporter Megan DeMarco interviewed Trenton Mayor Tony Mack from his secure, undisclosed location on the subject, and he was in favor of the idea. “’There are already towns in our county that are willing to have those dialogues [about shared police services],’ Mack said. ‘Some towns have reached out to our police department and asked if we would be willing to take over their police functions. There’s definitely a feeling it has to be done.’”

Yesterday, a further article on shared police services appeared in the Times. This article, bu Matt Fair, carried some quotes from other Mercer elected officials who – how to put it charitably? – Expressed Some Skepticism at the accuracy of the Mayor’s remarks.

Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes:  “’I can’t find a single town that has asked Trenton to take over their police departments,’ Hughes said. ‘I can’t find a single person, and I think I’ve talked to every mayor.’”

Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried:  “I think it would be difficult to get towns that have for the most part got their house in fiscal order to be willing to partner with Trenton at this time knowing that (Trenton’s) leadership and (Trenton’s) finances are in such a state of uncertainty.”

Ouch.

So here we have yet another example of the disconnect between the reality that Tony Mack sees in this town, and the reality that everyone else sees. So far, nothing new, and I won’t waste any more bits bemoaning that state of affairs.

Let me go on another tangent. So, Mr. Hughes,  you can’t be pleased with what’s been happening in this town for the last several months and years. You have to be pretty livid, I would guess. Long gone are the days when Trenton was the economic engine driving the region to prosperity, with secure and confortable lives for its citizens and workers. Trenton is too much of a dead weight and anchor now on the economic recovery of this County. Can all of the other townships and boroughs in Mercer truly thrive while Trenton founders?

So why do you, Mr. Hughes, and your other elected colleagues in Mercer still so often pretend not to see what’s going on here?

A couple of days ago, New Jersey Newsroom featured an op-ed by Irwin Stoolmacher calling for an intervention by all of you elected officials in our affairs, for public statements and public actions against the status quo in our City.  A nice sentiment, but this is the same op-ed that ran in the Trenton Times about six weeks ago, the same column that inspired Lauren Ira’s execrable “momentum” op-ed in response.

Stoolmacher’s sentiment was just as correct six weeks ago as it is now, but it didn’t get much of a response from the public officials to whom it was directed then, and it’s probably not likely to get one now.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how, at the Mercer Democratic Convention, a few current elected officials expressed to me how pissed off they were at the state of affairs in the City. And how, apart from one isolated statement from one of last year’s failed mayoral candidates, there has been silence from every other one of those who would have wanted to sit in Tony Mack’s chairs themselves.

I am more than a little tired that it has fallen to a small number of Trentonians to do all the heavy lifting of opposing the many stupid, crazy, lame-brained, corrupt and increasingly nakedly illegitimate goings-on under this Administration. There are a few consistently-strong voices on Council – thank you Mr. Muschal, Ms. Caldwell-Wilson and, most of the time, Mr. Chester – who are watching out for us and asking the right things. But Council needs to cohere as an effective body, and a few of the more useless members of that Board need to –  literally in some cases – Wake UP!

We are getting some support in the Judiciary. As more and more of the knuckle-headed actions of the City find their way to the Courts to be litigated, the more occasions we are likely to hear Judge Linda Feinberg or a colleague strike those actions down as “sloppy” and “a mess.”

More and more citizens are speaking to their Council members, and speaking at open Council session. This is always good, and helps to give Council the kind of backing they will need to take effective action against Administration excesses and missteps.

There are those of who who continue to scribble and chatter online, trying to make noise and provide some more depth beyond the 250 or so word limits in most daily newspaper stories.

And Council will be getting more help directly from the State. As LA Parker’s Saturday Trentonian article describes, DCA Office of Local Government Services Thomas Neff reached out to Council via Councilwoman Reynolds-Jackson to offer assistance to Council in balancing the City’s budget.

These efforts are all good. But there is too much conspicuous silence from those elected officials at the County and State level who represent this City and its citizens. What, if anything, are they doing behind the scenes? Because they are surely not providing any public leadership in any attempt to try to control this runaway train.

There are Seven County Freeholders (including the newest, Trenton resident and Cadwalader Heights neighbor Sam Frisby), Two Assembly members, One State Senator and One County Executive who all call Trentonians Their Constituents.

Where are They?

Most of them are up for election this year, as it turns out. They will all ask for our votes. As I suggested eleven days ago, sure to ask them, to press them, “What Have You Been Doing to Help Trenton?”

If they want votes from Trentonians, make sure they stand up for Trentonians.