Apparently, one needs Trenton “cred” to be part of the political discourse in Trenton.  It’s obvious that “clear thought” isn’t a pre-requisite.  So to try and establish a bit more “right to talk”,  here’s my Trenton story.

Unlike a lot of people involved in Trenton politics and revitalization I wasn’t born and bred here.  I was born in Alexandria, VA and was raised mostly in North Carolina.  My wife, Michelle Emerson, and I moved to NJ from Dallas in 1998 and to Trenton in 2000.  That’s 11 years in Trenton, not exactly born and bred, but pretty long.

Our Development efforts
We moved to Trenton with the idea of buying an old warehouse or factory and converting it in to a loft.  At the time, that  hadn’t been done in Trenton in any scale.  We lived in Grand Court Villas for six years while we looked, which is itself a converted cigar factory.  

As we looked, we estimate we’ve walked through about 500,000 SF of vacant Trenton buildings with our realtor, Anne LaBate and sometimes with our architect, Rich Carrol.  Buildings were either too big, too far gone or in really rough areas, sometimes all three.  

We almost gave up looking, but in 2005 we purchased our current mixed use building on S. Broad St. on the outskirts of Mill Hill.  We kept the front half of the 5200 SF building intact as two rental apartments and a storefront.  We gutted the back half of the building to create an open (aka lofty) living space for us.  Our home has been featured on HGTV’s “What You Get For the Money”.   Viewers from across the country got to see our Trenton home and suffered through my explanation of the city’s history.   We invested about $400,000 in this project.

In 2002 we bought two rental properties in downtown Trenton on Peace St.  We rehabbed one of them ourselves and had the second one professionally renovated complete with a design from Rich Carrol and construction from a first time Trenton General Contractor.  This was a major upgrade in housing stock for Peace St. and adds to the inventory of living space in downtown.  We invested about $200,000 in these properties.

We’ve invested $600,000 in Trenton.

In the process of doing these three projects I’ve learned how painful it can be to be a developer in Trenton.

• I was told by the previous administration that my original desire for a $500K loft in downtown Trenton was misguided and that I should move to Hiltonia instead.
• I’ve been cited by rental unit inspectors for non-sense violations
• I’ve had plan reviews held up for months by a slow technical inspections department
• We’ve evicted tenants, gone months on end with empty units and not been able to raise rents in 6 years.
• Our tax rate has been raised every  year
• We’ve been charged a rental license fee and can’t figure out what it pays for
• We had difficulty finding property insurance (Note to regulators: State Farm red lines Trenton)

As part of the 2002 Leadership Trenton program I led an effort to have that group start a homesteading program only to be torpedoed by the previous administration.  They preferred to reserve the neighborhood we targeted for HOPE VI and the Leewood Village project, both of which never happened.

While we were looking for property to develop, I started a web site called TrentonLofts.com.  Trenton Lofts was set up to collect and inform a group of potential investors, buyers and renters about the project we would eventually build.  Along the way, I turned it into a more generic site that promotes residential development in Trenton (for free).  I don’t charge developers and I do answer personal emails from potential residents and investors who have questions about Trenton, specific neighborhoods and projects.  

Over the years, I estimate I’ve helped sell at least 11 units and have indirectly supported the sale of many more.  Recent residents stop me all the time and tell me how much trentonlofts.com helped them in that I would give objective advice about Trenton.  You can do that when you don’t charge for listing a property.

Trentonlofts.com has listed over 100 properties over the past 6 years and gets thousands of visits a week.  It has an large associated email list of potential Trenton residents who receive an irregular newsletter about loft projects and some politics.

Creating an arts community
My stated investment philosophy for Trenton was to buy low, help make the city a more attractive place to live and then, because Trenton had revitalized, sell high.  Seemed like a good idea in 2000 before I knew better.

Along the way we’ve spent quite a bit of time involved in supporting Trenton’s arts community.

• Michelle and I were on the founding board for the Trenton Film Society and  helped run the first Trenton Film Festival.
• Michelle has been on the Trenton City Museum Board
• She’s been on the Passage Theatre board where she’s run the Passage Gala
• Both of us were on the Art All Night Committee, Michelle twice

We’ve supported almost every arts format there is in Trenton with patronage and donations hoping to make those organization stronger and the city more attractive to new residents.

Our Civic Association
We’re active in our civic association and have helped run the Old Mill Hill Society’s Fall Festival and its Holiday House Tour.  Our home has been on the Mill Hill Garden Tour, which along with the Holiday Tour raise money to support the organization and its grant program.

Civic Leadership
I was in the inaugural class of Leadership Trenton in 2002.  It was good group and many of its members have run for office and otherwise been heavily involved in the community.  

I’ve done about everything there is to do in politics short of run for office and even then I’ve worked on campaigns.  I’ve helped organize petition drives, and I’ve helped run candidate forums in 2006 for Trenton Council of Civic Associations and in 2010 for the Old Mill Hill Society.  There was that little incident of a 2010 “writen-in” mayoral campaign that I wish had never happened.  Lesson learned, every vote counts.

I helped form and run the Lamberton Historic District Committee which fought the  HOPE VI and Leewood Village projects in South Trenton.  Both projects were being shoved down the neighborhood’s throat and both included subsidized affordable housing.  The Leewood Village project would have bulldozed 8 square blocks of homes.  It was initially backed by city council and the Mayor.  We protested in the press and on the streets and eventually the city backed down.  By opposing the projects, the neighborhood had the opportunity to attract market rate private development in the form of Coopers Crossing (Ryan Homes) and Trenton Ferry (HHG Development).  

I was a charter member of Trenton’s Urban Studies Group which met and discussed many books about cities and revitalization over the course of two years.   I’m proud of its role in stimulating authors David Hart and John Calu to write their new book,  Trenton: A Novel.

For the past four years I’ve written a blog about the economics of revitalization in Trenton called ReinventTrenton.com.  There are over 80 articles that include research and analysis of economic issues ranging from the Economics of Crime, to management philosophy to budget and taxes.  ReinventTrenton.com is the most complete compendium of policy and revitalization thinking available in Trenton.  The site attracts hundreds of viewers in a typical month and is widely read by Trentonians interested in policy and politics. 

I started Fix Trenton’s Budget and think tank of 12 people who are developing citizen led positions on important topics relating to our budget and budget process.   The group will use these positions to help educate the public and our elected leaders on the difficult choices facing Trenton’s budget.  One of its first efforts was an economic scorecard for candidates in the 2010 election.  We’re actively working with city government on our projects.

I’m currently serving on the Lafayette Yard Community Development Board which oversees the city’s interest in the Marriott Hotel.

Being part of the community
On Dec. 20, 2008 our 19 ½ month old son, Alexander, passed in his sleep from an as yet unexplained cause.  Our son is buried in Trenton at Riverview Cemetary and we have a headstone and plot with his and our name on it.  We’ll be buried in Trenton next to Alexander.

Michelle and I organized Alexander’s Run in downtown Trenton which raises money to support research into Sudden Unexplained Death in Children (SUDC) and for the Alexander Michael Dodson Scholarship Fund which sends Trenton children to an educational summer camp.

Michelle has been on the Child Placement Review Board which looks after the children in DYFS cases.  She also founded the ROCKETS science and math program at Trenton Head Start.  Michelle’s been in the Junior League for 10 years, on the board for 4 and is the immediate past president of that organization which supports women’s and children’s causes in our community.

Along with two other couples, Michelle and I co-host one of Trenton’s biggest annual private parties.  With another interracial couple (BTW – I’m white and Michelle is black) we host Trenton’s annual Loving Day cookout commemorating the 1967 Supreme Court Case: Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia which legalized interracial marriage in the US.

We were members of the Trenton Club where Michelle was on the Board.  We are current members of the Trenton Country Club.  Both of these institutions are long standing  parts of Trenton’s history.

I’ve been robbed three times and we’ve had murders on our block.

Why get more involved in public policy
I’ve done everything  I can think of with my money and time to revitalize Trenton and have come to realize that I’ve got an uphill battle that can’t be won without a more enlightened government.  I’ve met all of our politicians and know that many of them will welcome help in thinking through the problems of urban revitalization.  Every hour I spend volunteering and every dollar I give is mostly wasted until we have a city that’s operating in a way that will stimulate investment.  

My real Job

My bread isn’t buttered in Trenton so I’m not beholden to any politician or government agency.  Instead I work for a management consulting firm in Philadelphia called IBB Consulting where I’m a Fellow.  We help our clients with their strategies, improving their operations and rolling out large infrastructure investments.  Our clients are mostly large cable operators. 

My Education

I got my undergraduate degree in Computer Science from NC State University in 1984.  That means I was there in 1983 when the mighty Wolfpack won the NCAA Basketball Championship under Jim Valvano.  I also have an MBA from Harvard Business School, class of 1990.

Other Cities in which I’ve lived

A person’s perception of a place is often shaped by where they’ve lived.  In addition to Alexandria and Dallas, I’ve lived in Boston, Atlanta, Winston-Salem, Raleigh, Cullowhee, NC, Athens, GA and have spent significant time in Denver, Bangkok, Prague and Hong Kong.

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

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.

The Hispanic vote, if there is such a block, could be split three ways. Carlos Avilla is likely the front runner in this group having received Coston’s endorsement and picking up some organization support. Carlos is a nice guy but seems to want to please everybody and will therefore please nobody at all.

In the Jersey St. debate he quoted President Kennedy’s speech about not asking what your country can do for you, and thirty minutes later proceeded to pander to a single mother by telling her what he and the city could do for her. Which is it Carlos?

His economic policy is no different than Trenton’s failed approach for the last 20 years. He has shown bad economic judgment in several choices of videos to feature on his web site. None of his guest speakers have prescribed sensible approaches to urban revitalization. My fear about Carlos is that while he says he’ll seek out good ideas, he won’t recognize them when they’re right in front of him.

Evelyn Deleon, as I’ve written before, seems a nice and earnest person but simply has a difficult time expressing herself and staying on point. This was evident both in the first candidate debate on Jersey St., then on LA Parker’s radio debate and in her posting on reinventtrenton.com. Deliberations in City Council must be held with both clear thinking and clear speech. Evelyn doesn’t meet this qualification.

Juan Martinez was on the wrong side of the failed Leewood Development project that would have destroyed the character of South Trenton long after the incumbent politicians withdrew their support. Juan’s ideas about economic development are rooted in the 70s making him the dangerous choice for the South Ward.

George Muschal just doesn’t seem to have his head in the game. He doesn’t come across as the kind of innovative thinker we need on Council. His low point was when he expressed his displeasure over my questioning him about the city budget. He didn’t appear to have any awareness about the budget and questioned the veracity of my assertions about it. I can’t abide this kind of ignorance about the most important issue in our city.

Now for the tough part.

Pat Stewart is well known to me and is a person whom I respect. I’ve discussed the city and its revitalization many times with Pat and find that her views are basically sound. Pat would be a safe choice for the South Ward Council seat. She understands the workings of city government and would be a vote of reason.

However Stewart has failed to do two things critical for a councilperson in 2010. She has not posted a web site. A simple web presence is an important way to communicate a candidate’s views and to maintain transparency. Furthermore she’s failed to communicate a vibrant vision for Trenton.  We need vision from the South Ward as it’s quite possible we won’t get it from the other wards or city hall. I won’t be disappointed with having Pat on Council but I can’t endorse her.

This brings me to my endorsement of Paul Harris. I know more people who’ve been rubbed the wrong way by Paul than support him so I definitely feel like I’m out on a limb with my support. However, I have talked with Paul about his views and have come to believe that we share a basic philosophy.

• Trentonians are responsible for fixing their own fiscal mess.
• We can be a great city and can be Mercer County’s downtown.
• Residential development is the path to revitalization and the city has no business holding on to vacant property.
• Crime fighting should be part of a broader economic development strategy.

Paul is bright, earnest and energetic. He’s ambitious and quite frankly I think that’s what bothers folks. Paul will need to temper this but I am sure the ambition to make Trenton great again is what’s needed in government. His vision is for us to be a “shining city on the hill” not a last resort for the people with no choices. He will welcome new residents with disposable income rather than reject them out of jealousy.

The politicians who ramble on about how much they will do for you aren’t the kind of councilpersons we need now. We need someone who understands Council, the budget and the big picture on revitalization. We don’t need another social worker on Council rather we need to understand that Trenton must compete in a competitive world. We need thoughtful people who can think for themselves. We need a person who is using the web effectively to communicate with his constituents. We need energy directed at the right things, not candidates that are wedded to the social programs that have dominated urban politics throughout Trenton’s decline.

Paul Harris has the endorsement and support of ReinventTrenton.com.

]]> http://livingonthenet.com/wordpress/the-south-ward-council-election-is-no-time-for-politics-of-the-past/feed 7