There's A Special Place in Hell for Those Who Fuck With Libraries

I am glad that the Editorial Board of The Trenton Times is finally coming around to realize that the “Mayor’s Learning Center Libraries” – the Walking Dead Zombies that the Indicted Occupant and his cronies inflicted on the people of Trenton over the last year – are, in their words, a “travesty” and a “debacle.”

My only question is, “What took you so long?”

The editorial states, “Proposed about 18 months ago, the mayor’s idea was a good one — to repurpose those furloughed buildings as havens where children could go after school to read, do their homework or use the computer. Adult supervision and security guards were part of the pledge.”

The Times was snookered by the grand announcements of the Administration. Almost from the very day that the plan was announced to reopen four neighborhood branches of the Trenton Free Public Library, closed since the fall of 2010, it was apparent to anyone who cared to actually look at the situation that the plan was fatally flawed. By the secretive way a so-called “Committee” drew up its plans over the course of several months while denying that plans were even in the works. By the secretive way in which unknown amounts of funds were unaccountably drawn to repair the buildings and fund operations. And by the illegal way in which these libraries were to be operated, outside the jurisdiction of the only body recognized by New Jersey State Law to run libraries, the Trustees of the city’s Free Public Library.

In a piece of reporting, the Times published earlier this week  an article by Emily Brill, about the conditions in the Zombie Libraries several months into their operations. It is a heart-breaking, and infuriating, read. The Centers are closed more often than they are open, which counts as a good thing. Because when they are open, they are truly sketchy and likely dangerous places.

Rather than being staffed with trained volunteers who have undergone background security checks, the Centers are apparently staffed at least partially with convicted “offenders completing court-ordered community service hours.” By itself, that revelation should be leading to the city’s police, or sheriff’s deputies, or the NJ Child Services people – or someone! – to close these centers down, immediately!

How dare they?! How can Tony Mack, and Tony Roberts, and any one else involved with these monstrosities, let these centers operate with individuals performing community service!

The Administration has actively avoided answering any questions about the due diligence it performs on the people working in these centers. It has illegally ignored duly submitted requests for information, such as mine, filed under the state Open Public Records Act, asking for details on the type of background checks performed, and their number. In Ms. Brill’s article, the former “Acting” Business Administrator and current mayoral “Aide” Anthony Roberts continues to peddle the Administration’s party line that staffing the centers is being done appropriately. “They’ve all been vetted and they’ve all gone through background checks. We made that abundantly clear at the beginning,” he lied. Brill follows Roberts’ quote with, “He declined to describe the background checks.”

There are several other details and vignettes in the Brill article that make it worth reading. The first financial disclosure about how much money these centers have cost the City is in there. $200,000 is cited as the amount of unauthorized and unapproved funds spent so far. But given the way this Administration hides what it does, and buries its work as well as it can, I don’t believe for a moment that is the total amount.

Roberts also talks about a “funding source” in the works for the centers, due to come through any time now. Considering the Administration was talking about “private philanthropic investors” for the Libraries as far back as August 2010 – without materializing – I don’t think Mr. Roberts talk now about funding coming online now is worth the oxygen he used to make the statement. I can’t see any philanthropic individual or foundation or corporation going anywhere near these zombies.

There are other tales, too, recounted by Ms. Brill. The few professional staffers on the payroll haven’t been paid in weeks. Expensive large flatscreen TV’s mysteriously walk out of the centers as fast as they are installed. What onsite security there is, in the form of city Park Rangers, is sporadic and apparently part-time.

The Indicted Occupant and his cronies have laid waste to the government of the City of Trenton in their time in office. Just about every department of the City bears the scars of these assholes. But to me there is just something inescapably evil about the way these guys have been fucking with the city Libraries. From their first weeks in office, they made promises to support the institution while they set about gutting it.

I criticized the Occupant a year ago for continuing to peddle a padded resume that promoted  the “Tony Mack Cares Foundation” – bankrupt and closed for years yet still presented as a current and vital foundation – and its work for kids, calling him out for being cold enough to lie about charitable work, of all things!

He is still at it.

It’s one thing to turn city departments, like Economic Development, or the Water Works, or Purchasing to corrupt purposes – as the Indicted One, and Ralphiel Mack, and Muscles Davis, and JoJo Giogianni, and Charles Hall, are all finding. But to take an institution like a library and grind it into the ground as has been done with the neighborhood branches is somehow much worse in kind as well as degree. There surely must be a special place in Hell for these people who have fucked with the branch libraries and turned them into mere further opportunities for their incompetence and criminal corruption!

I take City Council to task for letting the four branches open and “operate” (such as they are) without actively seeking to shut them down. This space has written several times over the last year about what a travesty they have been: wastes of money and time, illegal in their planning and operation, and staffed with unknown individuals working with the city’s children. For letting this situation develop this far without stopping it, Council is surely complicit.

Perhaps NOW they will do something? Perhaps NOW Council will formally close these centers and put a stop to the travesty.

Perhaps NOW City Council will realize that Every Single Thing that the IO and his people touch must be considered as Tainted until proven not!

And perhaps the Editorial Board of one of our local papers might finally consider that they gave the benefit of the doubt to this Administration and its horrid decisions and policies for far, far too long. The Times Editors are about 2 1/2 years behind the curve, even rhetorically.

This morning’s editorial concludes, “The debacle of the learning centers follows so many other promises from Tony Mack— full of sound and photo ops, signifying nothing.”

Hmm, that’s a good Shakespearean allusion there, and appropriate when talking about the Library. But I feel it worked better the first time, in September 2010.

Wake up, Trenton Times! Wake up, City Council!

Everything the Indicted Occupant touches turns to shit. He has been a disaster since Day One! His trial is still months away, but the first task should be to first stop as many of his ongoing disasters as you can, and then start the long job of repair.

Closing the Zombie Learning Centers once and for all, and working to re-open them as legitimate, professionally-operated, and above all safe neighborhood libraries under the direction of the Trenton Free Public Library, would be a good start.