Posts Tagged ‘Dan Dodson’

I’ve been voting candidates off the island on FaceBook.  This is my advice on the remaining six (including me).

Eric Jackson, Frank Weeden, John Harmon, Keith Hamilton and Annette Lartigue are left on the Island along with me.

Don’t even consider voting for any of the others. They have policies and / or personalities that are dangerous to Trenton’s future.

So where are we with these five? I’ll use the Trenton Times, Fix Trenton’s budget survey and Mill Hill forum responses to compare and contrast.

Jackson and Lartique are the most Developer friendly
Hamilton, Harmon and Weeden seem to think forcing developers to hire Trenton workers is the way to encourage development. Jackson and Lartique are less clear about this. Furthermore Hamilton is the only candidate who favors forcing developers to pay prevailing wages. Increasing ratables is our #1 priority and to make life complicated for the developers that might make that happen is the ultimate in counter-productivity. It also demonstrates an attitude that government can and should control the economy. This is currently the Palmer Admin policy and look where its gotten us. People wonder why I’m running and this is it. We can’t afford to have four more years of anti-business policy in city hall.

Lartique is the most aggressive on the budget
Weeden says he will cut budget and hopes unions and Governor will cooperate. He opposed the reassessments necessary to correct our tax policy at the Mill Hill Forum.

Lartique is probably the most open and aggressive in her stance on re-working the budget, creating a strategic plan and doing reassessments. She’s not quite 100% correct on her explanation of zero based budgeting but she’s trying and I’d be glad to help her.

Jackson is the second most aggressive in his stance. He’s a bit more vague in his approach and doesn’t support zero-based budgeting. But he’d at least try. He told Mill Hill he opposing reassessments but changed his mind on the Fix Trenton’s Budget survey.

Harmon keeps saying he can’t explain his policy to reduce costs in limited space. What he doesn’t realize is that by not being able to simply express his approach he’s fairly much saying he doesn’t have one. He opposed reassessments at the Mill Hill forum and was tentative about it in the survey.

Hamilton says he’ll be able to find a $40M surplus. That kind of crazy talk gets people voted off the Island. His answers on reassessment show that he hasn’t thought about it.

Finally I’d have to say Jackson has the best temperament to be Mayor, in 2014
Jackson appears to be as serious and earnest as he comes across. Harmon, wants to be everbody’s friend and keeps talking about resources he’d bring to Trenton. I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean or why he hasn’t brought those resources before. Lartigue has had some troubling and well documented anger management issues. Weeden is a “lone wolf” and hasn’t solidified support among the very people he thinks should support him, including me. Hamilton doesn’t seem to have serious notions about running a city and his policies don’t seem to be based on a philosophy.

As for me.You can be sure that developer hiring practices would be left to developers. Our city budget would undergo zero-based budgeting which means each department STARTS with no budget and has to prove why they need one given goals agreed by the Mayor and Council. And while I’m sure my temperament isn’t perfect for Mayor it is pretty good for making “by the numbers” business decisions. I won’t care about my political future, just about turning around the city.

For At Large
Jim Carlucci for his knowledge. Al Ward for his smarts. Christine Donahue for her process based business background.

For West Ward
Moriarity for his tenacious exploration of our financial issues and for exposing LA Parker and WIMG.

For North Ward
Roland Laird for making reassessment central to his campaign

For East Ward
Kesner Dufresne for talking about the wage tax and about being pro-business

For South Ward
Carlos Avilla for doing well on the budget survey even though he complained

Here’s the thing.  I don’t want to have to be involved in local politics at all.

However, I live in Trenton and own enough property so that high taxes and declining value could be a substantial economic blow.  I am not alone in this precarious situation.  Every home and building owner in Trenton is at risk as our city’s budget comes closer to falling into the financial abyss.

I’ve listened to the candidates and just don’t hear a serious “by the numbers” explanation of how they think we can rescue ourselves.  Instead, I hear a lot of blame being laid on the State.

I also know that many of our candidates have been in public life for many years but have never jumped up and down screaming about the fact that we were so dependent on the State.  Even now, several of the candidates are asking for votes so they can do more for the poor citizens of Trenton.  We’re sinking, as a city, and yet there are candidates talking about new social programs.

There are candidates who either believe or know that citizens want to hear, “that fixing the schools will revitalize Trenton”.  That notion is absurd and tells me that I’m listening to a “Know Nothing”  politician.  In order to magically fix the schools, we’d have to start with the young kids and put them into some magical environment that hasn’t even been invented, wait 12 years, and then perhaps we’d have a graduation rate worth bragging about.  It could be decades before Trenton’s schools are better than surrounding suburbs.  Nobody moves to a city for the schools that are “almost as good”.  Trenton schools need to be “as good, or better”, but we can’t make that happen in time to save our city.

We need a no-nonsense, and dare I say pragmatic (another word for Republican) approach to our problem.  We need a “Bull in the China shop” much like Chris Christie has become for NJ.  We need to do the opposite of what we’ve been doing in Trenton for the past 20 years.

We don’t need balance, we need imbalance.  Trenton has gone out of its way to be attractive to the poor for quite some time and has done little to attract middle class and high income residents.  We’re going to have to change that balance.  We’re actually going to have to find a way to appeal to people with disposable income and lots of them.

As I look at the candidates and at myself,  I’ve come to the conclusion that I have something to offer Trenton.  As a Management Consultant, my job is often to help organizations improve and to do the best things first.  We help our clients manage by the numbers.  As a volunteer in Trenton, I find myself drawn towards the challenging problem of urban revitalization.  It’s one of the great challenges of our time and I want to be a part of meeting that challenge.  ReinventTrenton.com is all about that as is TrentonLofts.com and FixTrentonsBudget.com.

Running for mayor is a thankless job and being mayor would involve some personal and financial pain for me and Michelle (Michelle doesn’t like the idea).  However, if voters look around and decide they just can’t tie their futures to any of the existing candidates and would prefer to take the opposite approach, I will serve.  Probably only for one term, but I’d serve long enough to give the opposite approach a chance to take shape.

I understand that many Trentonians have been fed a diet of rhetoric on revitalization over the years and I’ve written quite a bit to debunk much of it. But, just so there aren’t any surprises, a few of the ingredients a Dodson administration include are listed below.  If you can’t depart with the notion that these sacred cows need to be cast out, then don’t vote for me:

• Create and institutionalize a meaningful budget process
• Reassess on a 5 year cycle and adjust our tax rate accordingly
• Lift the residency requirement for all city workers (we need the best minds possible on the case)
• Call in outside law enforcement support to augment our police
• Reinvent our city processes to enable our staff to have a bigger impact for less
• Make every aspect of Trenton the MOST business and development friendly in the US
• No support at all for subsidized, deed restricted, housing
• Negotiate a fair deal with the State, to gradually get us off of state aid
• Lobby, maybe through the US Justice Dept., for integration of schools in Mercer County and NJ (that equates to busing)

For those that have read my blog over the years, none of this is new.  I just want to make it clear that my firm belief is that protecting the above “sacred cows” is in the way of Trenton’s progress.  Adopting the above is the “opposite” of what we’ve been doing and the “opposite” of the positions for many of the current candidates.

In the end, it’s the voters choice. If called I’d serve and would love the challenge.

Jim Coston was a transformational councilperson for Trenton and the South Ward but with his leaving, the race to fill his spot is wide open. Read the rest of this entry »