Please, Stop Them Before They Spend Again!

At a City Council meeting on June 10, Fuckup Without Portfolio Anthony Roberts announced to a surprised Council that the City would host and fund the 2013 Heritage Days Festival. The FWP made this announcement despite the Administration having promised in the previous year’s budget hearings that it would not produce the Festival with City money. When asked why, he responded that the Indicted Occupant of Trenton’s Mayor’s Office had “changed his mind.”

At the June 10 meeting, less than three weeks before the Festival was to take place, the cost estimate for the Festival was announced as $40,000. Remember that number.

Last night, at a City Council budget hearing, Mr. Roberts, along with The $5,427.50 Man, Trenton Water Works stock clerk Paul Harris, appeared before Council to request that the Recreation Department budget for the new Fiscal Year 2014 be increased from the $150,200 in the budget year just completed to $263,923, a whopping increase of 75%.

During that meeting, it was disclosed that the just-completed Heritage Days Festival did not cost $40,000 as estimated just last month, but closer to $55,000.

In the space of only three weeks, the actual costs exceeded the estimate by $15,000, or close to 40%.

How is this acceptable? This Festival was deliberately not authorized by Council. Yet the Administration not only spent the money in defiance of Council, but exceeded their numbers by Forty Freaking Percent!

Was Mr. Roberts lying to Council last month when he gave them the lower number? Or did he, as his title indicates, just Fuck Up, again?

It doesn’t really make a meaningful difference. A 40% overage on a project like this suggests an operation running with no management, no controls, and no responsibility.  The Recreation Department under this Administration has never had a Director, and has been under the personal direction of the IO, with Mr. Roberts and Mr. Harris providing day-to-day administration.

We see yet again that the announcement made last September that “the [Recreation] department has updated its account and control procedures in order to better monitor spending and revenue” [Emphasis mine – KM] was just a sick joke. There are no controls whatsoever in Recreation, or the rest of the Administration, and that the intended check on mismanagement and corruption that is supposed to be provided by Business Administrator Sam Hutchinson is non-existent.

City Budget Officer Elana Chan told Council last night that Heritage Days was paid for with $25,000 from the Recreation Department, with the rest coming from unnamed “other city departments” according to the Trentonian article by Brian Dzenis. Clearly, the budgets of other city departments are not immune from the out-of-control spending in Recreation. These guys have to be stopped before they spend again!

I have said it before, but it bears repeating using the same exact words:

Would Trenton’s Fire Department hire an accused arsonist? Would the Police Department hire an accused thief? Why is the City of Trenton allowing Tony Mack to produce Heritage Days and handle the revenue?

It is totally baffling to me how Tony Mack and Anthony Roberts continue to be entrusted with any part of the Recreation Department. I don’t know why City Council or the State Department of Community Affairs haven’t insisted on appointing a permanent and qualified Director to run the Recreation Department and take it out of the hands of those guys.

Tony Mack and Anthony Roberts can’t be trusted with this Department any longer.

Because They Are Liars. That’s Why.

Council should not approve a dime for Recreation as long as The IO, The Fuckup, The $5,427.50 Man – and Sam Hutchinson – are within 100 miles of City Hall.