Sorry, We Don't Have Any Funds to Do It!

“We don’t have any funds to do it,” Kersey said after the meeting of the annual request from the state. “So we will just notify them that we don’t.”

If Trenton’s City Council has any common-sense – Alright, you can laugh. Long and hard. Get it out of your system. Feel better! OK? Let’s proceed – and a sense of irony, they would quote Joyce Kersey’s words right back at her next week. Ms. Kersey is the current Chair of the Lafayette Yard Community Development Corporation (LYCDC), the Board empowered to manage the City-owned Hotel. Her quote is from an article in this morning’s Trentonian about last night’s meeting of the LYCDC, in which the Board voted 3-1 (Hiltonia’s Michael McGrath being the sole, wise opposing vote) to authorize Ms. Kersey to finalize two ongoing discussions and two contracts.

The first is with the Marshall Hotels & Resorts group, the company that may take over the management of the Lafayette Yard hotel from the current Waterford Group. The LYCDC only received a draft contract for review last Friday, but voted anyway to let Ms. Kersey finish the process as she feels fit without any further review from the full Board.

The second deal is with Wyndham Hotels, the brand that the hotel may affiliate with after Marriott leaves in June. LYCDC hasn’t even seen a draft contract with Wyndham, but voted to let Ms. Kersey work that deal without any review. The only member who was bothered with that was Mr. McGrath, who voted against. “I’m definitely not signing off on approving a contract that hasn’t been presented to me,” he said according to both the Trentonian and the Times account of the meeting. Wiser words have not been spoken by any public official in this town in a long, long time.

Anyway, back to Ms. Kersey’s words that opened this article. A part of the Trentonian article mentioned the existing, close to $31 Million of debt that the Hotel currently owes to various parties. Of that $31 Mill, about $9 Million is owed to the State of New Jersey, to various entities. Once a year, the State sends a letter to LYCDC, essentially asking, “About our loan to you. Do you perhaps have any intention of, you know, paying any of it it back?” And once a year, the LYCDC says, “Sorry, no. Not a dime.”

This time, at least as quoted in the Trentonian, Ms. Kersey’s response sounds awfully flippant. We are broke and don’t have the money to pay anything, she said, “So we will just notify them that we don’t.”

Just notify them that we don’t. Just, basically, stiff them again. “Them,” of course, being the taxpayers of the entire state. We don’t have it, so just let them know. Until next year, when we’ll say the same thing.

I agree that the hotel is in no financial shape to be able to pay off any of the $31 Million in existing debt the LYCDC owns. But it strikes me as very odd that Ms. Kersey would be so casually dismissive, so cavalier, about brushing off the hotel’s obligation to the State only one week before she and her board appear before City Council to ask for more money. LYCDC will make a presentation before City Council on Tuesday May 7 to officially ask Council for another $3 Million Dollars to prop up the failed property for yet one more attempt to make a go of the place.

And, should Council give her another $3 Million, which will either have to be funded by more debt or as appropriations to an already over-extended current operating budget, what happens in another couple of years when the City, or the State, or the holders of $14 Million in municipally-guaranteed bonds ask about getting their money paid? What will Ms. Kersey, or her successor, say then? “We don’t have any funds to do it. So we will just notify them that we don’t”?

One would think that Ms. Kersey – at least leading up to the Council meeting – would at least attempt to pretend as if the public’s stake  of tens of Millions of Dollars in the hotel were important. But no, she’ll “just notify them” that they are out of luck, the LYCDC will be stiffing them, and us. Again.

Instead, next Tuesday night, after her presentation, City Council should respond to the plan by saying, “Sorry, We don’t have any funds to do it.”