Posts Tagged ‘candidate’

The Fix Trenton’s Budget committee created a multiple choice survey to assess the aptitude and policy perspective of Trenton’s municipal candidates.  This was the committee’s major pre-election project.  We hope it gives some perspective on the kinds of things that are necessary to fix the problem and the candidates who are most in tune with the correct solutions.

Dealing with Trenton’s budget in the long term means

• Having clear goals and focused priorities,
• Turning Trenton into a developer-friendly city,
• Re-tooling our tax system to stimulate investment and to be fair
• Putting a budget process in place that lets our city adapt to change

We weighted the question areas as follows

• Budget goals and levels at 30%,
• Development issues at 40%,
• Re-balancing at 20% and
• Budget process at 10%.

Scores were between 1 and 10.  “No answer” got a zero.

Below are the results of our Scorecard survey.

Christine Donahue and Jim Carlucci both scored well in the At Large race.  Carlos Avila was the only respondent from the South Ward.  Eric Jackson and Frank Weeden did best in the Mayor’s race.  Roland Laird gave the best responses in the North Ward.  Kevin Moriarity was the only respondent in the West Ward.  Verlina Reynolds-Jackson was the only respondent in the East Ward but is far out of alignment with our budget priorities.

Candidates who didn’t respond either don’t have clear positions and know it or are don’t consider it a priority.  The survey took 15 minutes to complete, shorter than many canvassing visits.  The Budget Committee doesn’t recommend any of these candidates.

Political representation of Trenton’s South Ward was snatched from the hands of Trenton’s political machine three years ago by a smart and energetic Baptist minister.  Reverend Coston was well educated, well read and well …. basically a decent guy.

Coston did much to initiate the Ward’s political renaissance through his efforts in organizing opposition to two ill-considered government funded housing projects in 2004.  HUD’s Hope VI would have replaced the old Kearny homes project with another one and Leewood Village would have bulldozed 8 blocks of the South Ward in order to make room for subsidized fake colonial townhouses.  Coston became president of the Lamberton Historic District Committee (LHDC) which hosted meetings that regularly drew 300 residents to the protests.

I bring up this bit of South Ward history to point to both what’s needed and what’s lacking in the crop of candidates hoping to fill Coston’s now vacated council spot. Read the rest of this entry »