Drowning

Tony Mack is drowning. As much as the private implosion of a man is something that is painful and unseemly to glance at, let alone stare – there but for the grace of God go any single one of us – it is impossible not to. Almost every single word of today’s Times article by Erin Duffy is filled with pain, and I was riveted to it.

The mayor is quoted from 2010 as saying something in about as honest and frank, and real, a voice as any we have heard from a man who in the last two years has publicly seemed divorced from reality and in denial about too much in his personal and professional worlds: “’This is my third or fourth foreclosure over the last seven years, since I lost my job in 2004,’ he said in 2010 after news of the latest foreclosure surfaced. ‘I’ve been struggling to keep the things that we own, things I worked hard for.’”

It’s hard for me not to sympathize with that cry from the heart. Over the last dozen years, in economic good times as well as horrid, I’ve experienced several job losses and long hiatuses, and known some of the same problems Mr. Mack has experienced. It’s tough, especially when you have a family. When times are good, you do well and sock some money away for a rainy day. But when rainy days become rainy weeks and months, the ground drops away from you until you find yourself in a hole. It’s hard to dig out of a hole.

But I am not the mayor of Trenton. For many, many years, Tony Mack presented himself as the most qualified person to help lead this poor city out of the hole that decades of changing economic conditions, poor leadership and rising crime, among multiple contributing factors, dropped it into. In 2010, he got his chance.

It is impossible to dig a city out of its hole if you can’t dig yourself out of your own. I was willing yesterday to cut the Mayor a little slack when news of an unpaid utility bill came to light. That was a single, if embarrassing incident. But today’s account of multiple and massive problems with several properties in foreclosure, unpaid tax liens on top of the truly staggering (if still unconfirmed) PSE&G bill the Mayor was dealing with, leads to the sad but  inescapable conclusion that the Mayor is drowning.

Two years ago, almost to the day, the mayor’s personal residence showed up on the Mercer County Sheriff’s Tax sale list, and was scheduled for public auction. It was the first glimpse that many of us had into our new mayor’s personal financial problems.

At that time, not so much because of the mere existence of those problems, but due to the man’s evasiveness and dissembling about them, along with several early missteps in office, I gave up on Tony Mack. I put it this way on August 4, 2010:

I feel very bad for him and his family, and wish them the best of luck as they try to resolve this very tough personal problem in the next several weeks. But the cumulative effect of this most recent news, along with the missteps and bad judgment of the last week or so lead me to the sad but urgent conclusion that Tony Mack can not be the Mayor this town needs right now.

• He will not be the man with the strength and will to tackle the city’s structural deficit.
• He will not be the man to form an effective partnership with Governor Christie and the State of New Jersey.
• He will not be the man to provide institutional investors the confidence they need to continue to buy our bonds and rate them as safe and prudent investments.
• He will not be the man to be able to attract businesses to invest and develop in this city, and train and hire Trenton citizens.
• He will not be the man to keep the public safety departments effective and motivated during painful reductions in force.
• He will not be the man to keep our neighborhood libraries open, or get them back open after they have to close their doors.
• He will not be the man to provide the leadership to reform our schools in the wake of the mismanagement and lack of controls revealed by the recent State Audit.

In all fairness, given the dire condition this city was in on July 1, it may have been too much to expect that one man could have solved all of our problems. Although I really, really hoped him well, it has become clear that Tony Mack is not that man.

Is it fair to write off this administration only 34 days in? I fear what else could happen in the remaining 1,426 days!

The stakes are way too high for all of the 85,000 souls who live here, to let the situation get any worse, any longer.

Over the intervening two years, it appeared that, as bad a mayor as he proved to be, the regular income he earned in his steady job in office allowed him and his family to resolve many of his financial problems. It is clear today that nothing could be further from the truth.

As recently as yesterday, I was writing that we should focus on the multiple failures in office of Tony Mack based on his policies, his actions, and his mistakes. To dwell on his personal finances, and the legal cloud over him, was a distraction.

With today’s disclosures, I cannot ignore all of those other factors. Tony Mack has been a failure as a mayor based on his work alone. But along with the truly crushing financial problems he faces, and the high probability that legal charges of some kind will be filed against him, it is inescapable that there is almost zero chance that he can be effective and productive in office for the next two years. On a simple, human level, it is too much to expect that he could miraculously transform himself into an effective manager of the city’s affairs when he faces so much personal calamity.

This city and its 85,000 people simply can not afford to drown along with him for these next two years.

The Times article concludes with a poignant scene of the mayor and a friend – and in that moment he was a friend first and foremost and not a political colleague and ally – bowing their heads in prayer to seek God’s help.

As a fellow sinner, I truly wish the grace of divine Providence to help Tony Mack and his family in this extremely difficult time. As a Trentonian, I would beseech Mr. Mack to consider that he can no longer offer us any service as mayor. If he truly, truly seeks to help the people of this city, he must perform one last honorable act, and resign. He is a proud man, and will be sure to resist that path. I pray for divine Providence, and anyone who is his  true friend, to help show him the way through to see this decision as the best he can possibly make for the people of this City in these painful circumstances.