Posts Tagged ‘Goals’

Now that Reed Gusciora is Mayor and everyone seems to want to sing “Kumbaya“and forget how low he sunk to win the election, perhaps we can all rally around some measurable goals.   After all, isn’t that what people naturally need in order “move forward” in the same direction.

I’ve had any number of people suggest that we need to all work together.  But what does that even mean?

What is the work?  What are we trying to accomplish?  What are the best tactics towards reaching those goals?   How do the 85,000 citizens of Trenton pitch in?

Unless someone can answer those questions, the next person that suggests we all work together, is likely to get slapped.

Work together doing WHAT?

My confidence that Mayor Gusciora ever provides “goals” for his administration is low, albeit not as low as the confidence I had in Tony Mack or Eric Jackson.   It’s possible though.  I know at least a couple of people on the transition team that know what a measurable goal is.   However, I know that there are likely many others who would advise against setting goals.

But you know what, in some ways it’s too late. The Mayor has already made one big whopping campaign promise that can equate to improvements in three of the measurable goals we use to measure city success.  Reed says he wants 1000 new homes in 1000 days.   That’s pretty big.  Improbable, but nonetheless big.

This is a different kind of approach to the one Doug Palmer had.  The Palmer administration was always trying to hit home runs with big multi-million dollar projects that sounded impressive to voters.   Unhappily, by swinging for the fences all the time he struck out all the time and even hit some foul balls that injured people (the hotel).

1000 homes in 1000 days is more like trying to hit a bunch of singles.   He may not hit a 1000 but if his approach works at all maybe he hits 500, which is about 500 more than Palmer.

But what about the real goals that matter and objectively measure our success? ReinventTrenton and other groups use the following:

• Crime levels as measured by the Uniform Crime Report
• Population growth as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau (in the case of Trenton, every year)
• Graduation rate as measured by the NJ Department of Education
• Median Household Income as measured by the U.S. Census, and
• Economic success as measured by our Tax Base

Let’s start with the three that Reed is sort of talking about: Population, Tax Base and Household Income.

Adding 1000 homes is a big goal but to measure the impact we need to make some assumptions.  First, what home price is necessary for the city to break-even between property taxes and costs to serve the property owners.  For Trenton, a house needs to be about $200,000, that’s somewhat lower than the average for Mercer County.   Let’s assume Reed does the right thing and targets $200,000 as the average price for these homes.

Tax Base

Trenton’s tax base is $2,395,945,829. Given the home price assumption, 1000 x $200,000 equals a $200,000,000 increase in our tax base. His goal should be $2,395,945,829 + $200,000,000 or roughly $2,600,000,000 ($2.6 Billion).

Population

Our current population is 84,964.  If 1000 new homes were added averaging, let’s say 2 people per home (just under Trenton’s average of 2.2).   1000 homes at 2 people per house equals 2000 new citizens.   Reed should have a goal of 87,000 residents.   That would be a healthy turnaround of 2.3% and above the growth rate for the State of New Jersey.

Household Income

Trenton’s current Median Household Income is $34,415 over 34,654 housing units (both houses and apartments).   To buy a $200,000 home, a household income will need to be at least 1/3 the value of the home, or $67,000 but let’s call it $70,000 to make the math easier.  If 1000 homes were added with an average household income of $70,000, the city-wide average could go up to reach a goal of $35,413, an increase of 2.9%.

The next two goals aren’t as dependent on the 1000 new homes, so perhaps Mayor Gusciora’s goals should simply reflect improvement trends over the last year.

Crime

Our Uniform Crime Reports  for 2017 are 3276.   This was down just over 1% from 2016.   If that trend continues Mayor Gusciora should be able to achieve a 4 year goal of 3147 by 2021 or a 1% yearly decrease.

Graduation Rate

The 2017 graduation rate was 70.14%, an increase of almost 5 percentage points over 2016.  That kind of improvement isn’t likely for 4 years straight, but he does get the benefit of a shiny new high school.   Without doing a lot of complicated trend analysis, I’ll simply throw out a goal of 80% by 2021.   Hamilton and Ewing are around 90% so this isn’t quite the average we need but it would be good progress.

It’s not important that the Mayor and his team adopt these exact goal values, but it is important that they express some measurable goals to the citizens of Trenton.  Maybe the Mayor thinks graduation rates could be 85% or only 75%.  What matters is there is a number goal.   I strongly suggest that these measures are used as they are publicly available, well understood and published by reputable 3^rd party sources.

If we don’t see goals published by the Mayor and agreed to by City Council, then reasonable citizens should question the dedication and ability of the new government to turn the city around?

Mayor Jackson has been in office for a full year and the results for Trenton over that time period are promising.   Yes, that’s right, I said promising.

The Mayor has been helped by a generally improving economy and a corresponding drop in crime.   That said, just like we blamed Mayor Mack for the city’s decline we have to give Mayor Jackson credit for the positive shift in most of our numbers

There are five key indicators of Trenton’s health on which thoughtful people have agreed over the years.   Five measurable and mostly 3^rd party numbers, that show how well we’re doing.   And if all five of these indicators started showing signs of improvement, all Trentonians would notice the city coming back to life.   If we could see progress in these five areas we’d have hope again that would be contagious.

The indicators are all well-known statistics that are easily and regularly measured in Trenton.  They are:

• Crime levels as measured by the Uniform Crime Report
  • Latest data is for 2014 and include 6 months of the administrations term
• Population growth as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau (in the case of Trenton, every year)
  • Latest estimate is for 2013 and therefore predates the current administration
• Graduation rate as measured by the NJ Department of Education
  • Latest data is for the 2014 academic year and predates the current administration
• Median Household Income as measured by the U.S. Census, and
  • Latest estimate is for 2013 and therefore predates the current administration
• Economic success as measured by our Tax Base
  • Data is up to date as of mid-year 2015

The following is the 2015 Report Card:

Our economy is gaining wealth!

In 2011 Trenton’s tax base, the value of property on which we can charge a property tax, was $2,009,731,470.  By  2014 it has declined to $1,993,783,800. In the last year our tax base has rebounded to $ 2,036,287,800 for 2015.   This ~$40,000,000 in new or revalued ratables is a healthy 2% increase in one year.

The implications of this increase are large.  At a 4.8% tax rate, that increase in ratables translates into an extra $2M for our city budget or roughly 1% of the total.

We can never have a lower tax rate or afford to spend more money on parks, police and streets unless our ratables keep going up.

Because the direction changed I give Trenton a “B” for its much needed increase in ratables.  A $100M increase (the rate needed for our economy to reach escape velocity) would garner an “A”.

Our crime rate came down!

The 2014 Uniform Crime Report represents 6 months of Mayor Jackson’s tenure and the leadership of a new Police Director.  It’s fair to assume that that change has helped stimulate the 14% decrease in crimes from 2013.

Uniform Crime Reports for 2014 are 2960

• This is a decrease from 2013 of 14% which shows we’re moving in the right direction,
• This is in addition to a 14% decrease from 2012 to 2013.
• Our murder rate was also down a bit from 37 to 32 last year.

There is a direct correlation between population decline and crime

In “CRIME, URBAN FLIGHT, AND THE CONSEQUENCES FOR CITIES”, economists Julie Berry Cullen and Steven D. Levitt found that each FBI index crime leads directly to one person moving out of an inner city, like Trenton. That’s bad enough but high income residents are 5 times more likely to leave due to crime than average. Families with children are 3 times more likely to leave. Finally crime rate is negatively correlated with depopulation, home values and per capita income.

If our crime rate can continue to decline and other positive stimulants are put into play, there may be hope for us yet.

Crime reduction is the 2^nd bright spot in this report card and deserves an “A”.

Our people are still leaving the city

Trenton’s 2013 census estimate is 84,349 residents. This is a slight decline of from 2012’s estimate of 84,447.

• Since 2010 our population has declined by 0.7%
• Meanwhile New Jersey’s population has grown 1.4% in the same period

Relative to our neighbors, Trenton has become a less desirable place to live.

Give ourselves a C.  The exodus has slowed.

It will take an influx of new residents to begin the process of rebuilding our tax base.  We have room to grow.  At its peak in the 1920s, Trenton housed 140,000 residents.

Our incomes are still relatively low

Trenton’s Median Household Income is $36,662 (2013).  This is slightly lower than the 2012 estimate of $36,727

• This is in stark contrast to NJ’s 2013 median household income of $71,629, which is almost double that of Trenton’s.
• Hamilton’s median household income is $71,724 for 2013.

Income levels are very important to the health of a city as they determine how much money residents will spend, which in turn, determine the attractiveness of a city to retailers and other amenities.  While NJ’s median household income is double that of Trenton’s, NJ’s per capita retail spending is three times our rate.  This means that retail spending falls off disproportionately to income.

Making Trenton attractive to retail and entertainment business is important as the presence of those amenities makes the city attractive to new residents and businesses but we won’t get new amenities without more spending power in the city.  As it stands, Trenton is a relative “non-entity” when it comes to retail spending.

Because we’re grading on a curve and Camden and Passaic are even worse off than we are, Trenton gets a “D”.

Our children are still dropping out of school

The Trenton school district’s 2014 graduation rate was 52.9%.

• This is an improvement over 2013’s dismal graduation rate of 48.6%
• This means that almost half of the students who entered 9^th grade in 2009 graduated in 2013.
• There is no world in which this is healthy.
• It can be argued that fixing the schools isn’t a prerequisite for revitalizing the city.  The easiest target market for new residents is the millions of people without kids.  However, failing schools don’t help.

With 50% of our young adult population grossly under-educated, they are likely to become a drain on the economic future of our city.  High school dropouts are more likely than graduates to turn to crime and create a social cost for the rest of us.

There’s no other grade for a city that graduates barely over 50% of its students than “F”.

This is a complicated problem

A city is a complex system.  When dollars are invested in crime fighting in one part of the city, street paving may go undone in another.   That lack of street paving may have a larger or smaller impact on investment in the city than the crime fighting.

Investment will lead to a higher tax base but not for some time.  In the meantime, there may not be enough money to fund basic services and taxes have to be raised.

Higher taxes will devalue the investment, leading to lower than anticipated increases in the tax base.

And so it goes in any economy.  1^st and 2^nd order causes and effects are at play making seemingly simple policy decisions difficult. This is especially problematic in an environment where the public doesn’t appreciate the non-intuitive nature of such decision-making.

Is the city turning around?

We’ve been in a vicious cycle

• High crime led to depopulation and greater expense in policing
• Depopulation led to higher taxes which drives people away faster
• In a city where almost half of its budget is fixed on debt services and benefit obligations, our inability to fund discretionary budget items such as city services is limited
• Lack of services drives people away even faster thus creating a vicious cycle.

The data shows some promise!

A bump in our tax base, a decrease in crime and a slight increase graduation are all great.   It’s been a long time since 3 of these five important indicators have actually improved.

There is also some promise in the Jackson administration.

The Jackson administration has recently released a strategic plan of sorts that highlights some areas of focus.  I’ve not seen details but mostly like what I do see ( 5 things Trenton is focusing on to foster economic development).

The plan includes focus on

• Density, with good words about market rate housing and transparency for developers and some good stories about some upcoming “big” developments.
• Diversity, but what they are really talking about are small business loans for the Hispanic community,
• Quality of Life, what they’re talking about is Homesteading and getting rid of vacant properties, which is great.
• Retail, I don’t know what this focus might turn in to practically but they’re talking S. Broad St., which is great.
• Industry, is the puzzling piece.  It flies in the face of reason that light industrial development makes real sense (without big subsidies) in Trenton.

All in all this is a decent report card.  My prescription for Trenton after the 2014 election was to get basic government operation in order and make the 2^nd year the one were big policy initiatives were unveiled.  We started out rocky by operating without a budget for 9 of 12 months.   Hopefully that won’t happen again and we see some meat on the bones of the above focus areas.

The 2014 Report Card: We all know Trenton is in Rough Shape

July 2012

Now that Mayor Mack’s future has become uncertain, to say the least, contenders are being bandied about.  I plan to be even tougher with this new crop of candidates than I was in 2010.  I’m tired of empty suits with empty ideas and empty promises fulfilling their ego at the people of Trenton’s expense.  I can’t afford it anymore.

This article is meant to establish a starting point for the candidates.  It represents our state as a city.  The candidates will do well to express their plans in terms of goals for each of these areas.

Reasonable people agree that the only way to achieve a goal is to set one.  Thus the conventional wisdom of “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there”.

With this wisdom in mind, Fix Trenton’s Budget and Majority for a Better Trenton have identified five areas in which the City of Trenton should manage to measurable goals.

They are

• Crime Index reduction
• Population growth
• School success
• Average Income increase, and
• Economic success (as measured by ratable)

Most Trentonians would agree that if we did better in these five areas our lives would be better.  However, try getting a politician to commit to a real goal for school success or average income.  It’s never happened, at least not in Trenton and definitely not in Mayor Mack’s biennial report on the state of the city.

Imagine if instead of listing the number of grants we applied for, the Mayor reported on his plan to increase ratables by 10% to $2.1B or decrease our Crime Index from 3400 to 2000.  You didn’t hear that because setting goals commits a politician to producing results and quite frankly, producing results is difficult.

That doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t have goals for our city and that we can’t force political action both at the ballot box and otherwise that will help us achieve them.

This report is meant to provide a status report on these five important measures thus setting the stage for efforts planned later in the year to set citizen goals for ourselves.

The current statistics are presented in order of importance.  Notice that our most important goals are those that improve the economic health of the city.  We can’t fix anything in Trenton unless we have a healthy economy.

Economic Success: D

In 2011 Trenton’s tax base,  that is, the value of property on which we can charge a property tax, was $2,009,731,470.  In 2012 it has declined to $1,961,049,170.  This represents a 2.4% loss in ratable for the city.

The implications of this statistic are large.  Our property tax rate will have to go up, again, in order to make up the difference.  It means our economy is getting worse instead of better and most importantly, it means that our policies meant to stimulate economic growth are not working.

We can never have a lower tax rate or afford to spend more money on parks, police and streets unless our ratables go up.

Average Income: F

Trenton’s Median Household  Income is $36,601; which stands in stark contrast to NJ’s Median household income which is almost double that of Trenton’s, $69,811.

Income levels are very important to the health of a city as they determine how much money residents will spend, which in turn, determines the attractiveness of our city to retailers and to entertainment producers.  While NJ’s household income is double that of Trenton’s, per capita retail spending is three times our rate.  This means that retail spending falls off disproportionately to income.

Making Trenton attractive to retail and entertainment business is important as the presence of those amenities make the city attractive to new residents.

School Success:  F

The Trenton school district’s 2011 graduation rate was 47.7%.  This means that over half of the students who entered 9^th grade in 2007 graduated in 2011.

There is no world in which this is healthy.  While it can be argued that fixing the schools isn’t a pre-requisite for revitalizing the city, after all the easiest target market for new residents are the millions of people without kids, failing schools don’t help.

With 50% of our young adult population grossly undereducated, they immediately become a drain on the economic future of our city.  Furthermore, a significant portion of these kids will turn to crime and create both a public health threat to the rest of us and an expense in the form of police, courts and jails.

Moving this graduation rate up to 75% could theoretically halve our crime problem in the long run.

Population Growth :  C

Trenton’s 2010 census numbers report a population of 84,913.  Since 2000 our population has declined .6% while New Jersey’s has grown 4.5%.  Relative to our neighbors, Trenton has become a less desirable place to live.

It will take an influx of new residents to begin the process of rebuilding our tax base.  We have room to grow.  At its peak in the 1920s, Trenton housed 140,000 residents.

Crime: C

Trenton’s crime problems have tracked the national trend downwards over the last decade.  Uniform Crime Reports for 2011 show an increase in Index Crimes from to 3802 from 3744. That’s a 1.5% increase which shows we’re moving in the wrong direction by a bit.

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Our city leaders have abdicated their responsibility to set positive goals for the city.  Therefore it’s up to citizens to work together to set their own goals and to exert political force to make those goals stick and to construct a plan to meet them.

It is a truism that, “if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there.”

And so it is with Trenton. We don’t know where we’re going, and so far, it’s pretty clear we haven’t gotten anywhere good.

Ask five Trentonians what their goals for the city are and you’ll likely get five different answers. Try asking 7 city council members. Or, try getting an answer from our Mayor at all.

Leadership is painting a vision and lacing it with measurable goals.

To miss-quote John F. Kennedy – “We choose to go to somewhere in space in the future”. Not much of a call to action is it.

As a community we don’t have a common set of goals that represent our vision and drive our mission to revitalize the city. We need that. We need our leaders to be thoughtful about how our policies and our budget are used to achieve goals. We can’t do everything, so being clear on the things we must do is job #1.

It’s hard set measurable goals

Goals are meaningless if you can’t recognize when they’re accomplished. Too many people forget this. A goal doesn’t help if you can’t measure achievement, or the progress towards achievement.

Every meaningful Goal has an outcome, and the challenge to writing meaningful goals is drafting a clear, precise, and measurable outcome.

To oversimplify, which goal stated below is meaningful?

• To keep the citizens of the City safe from fire.
• To keep citizens safe from fire by maintaining first engine response time to less than 3 minutes.

Note that meaningful Goals often describe an action or activity [although not always], but they always describe outcomes that are clear, precise, and measurable.

Think about measurement. How would I measure this? Can I accurately count the number of times something happens? Will I know when something happens? Can the administration cook the books?

These are all questions we need to ask ourselves.

Broad health goals set the agenda

For Trenton we have four basic concerns: We want our city to be safe from crime, for our children to be educated, for the city to be a pleasant place and for our government to be affordable. These concerns are not only interrelated but spill-over into every other part of life in the city.

Bad school environments breed crime, which makes us feel unsafe. When we feel unsafe we want to hire more police, which costs money we don’t have. However, if we don’t reduce crime we’ll not attract the new investment that would help us pay for a police force and a good school system.

Four broad goals can serve to focus us and our government policy on these concerns.

Ratables: Goal is $2.1B. in 4 years

That’s a 10% increase over the current $1.9B. Source: City tax rolls.

Ratables are what drive property taxes. In Trenton our property tax pays for 15% or our total municipal and school budget. The average for New Jersey is 50%. The State of New Jersey is under increasing pressure to decrease its funding to Trenton and we’ll need to make up the difference. However, to be a great city, we need to have a tax base that does more than maintain minimum services as we’re doing now.

Today the State of New Jersey funds $285M of Trenton’s school and municipal budget. If State property were taxed like private property, it would pay only $45M. Clearly we exposed to tightening budgets at the state level.

Ratables are measured in Trenton by the tax assessor and the tax roll is maintained by Trenton’s tax office. While property assessment is generally a well disciplined art, Trenton will need to update its processes and regularity for property value assessment.

Population: Goal is 90,000 people in 4 years

That’s up from 84,913 in 2010. Source: US Census – ACS

Growth in population shows that our city is appealing to outsiders. If we’re attracting people we’ve been successful in making the city livable for existing residents but we’re more attractive to businesses as well.

Population in Trenton is measured by the US Census bureau with a hard count every 10 years and an accurate estimate every year via the American Communities Survey.

Crime Index: Goal is a 20% decrease in one year, 40% in four years.

That’s from 3851 crimes in 2010. Source: Uniform Crime Report

The Uniform Crime report and FBI Crime Index report crime in a standard way and is a widely used statistic for assessing a community’s safety.

Graduation Rate: Goal is 90% graduation rate in 4 years

That’s up from the rate of 78%. Source: NJ DOE

Educators will argue over the use of this statistic but then fail to provide an alternative single measure for the health of a school system. A school system’s overall graduation rate, while not a perfect measure, is a good indicator of success and has the virtue of being well understood by the public. Furthermore, graduation from high school is a solid predictor of a student’s future success in life.

I hope that by publishing these four goals and our current state of affairs. We, as a community can begin to discuss them honestly. Perhaps we’ll change the targets up or down a bit, but in the end we need goals on which we can agree.

By far my biggest complaint is our city’s lack of a strategic plan. All of the mayoral and council candidates stressed the need for it in the election, all of them.

So here we are one and a half years later and we have nothing, no plan at all. Not even a bad one.

The Mayor says the “state of city” pamphlet is his plan. It’s a document full of past statistics that are mostly irrelevant. Nothing about it discusses our measurable goals and how we’ll use our limited resources to achieve them. There are no strategic themes around which departments can build their operational plans. There is no new thinking. There’s nothing.

When I complain to the Mayor, he says, “I have a plan, just not one you like Dan”. “Really”, I say, “Could you email me a copy?” I’m still waiting.

The other day it hit me between the eyes how bad not having a plan can be.

Great cities are made by bringing creative people together. This isn’t a new thought and it’s been crystallized for me recently as I read the Richard Florida author of The Rise of the Creative Class and Who’s Your City. I’ve been thinking about what we could do in Trenton to jumpstart own value generating creative juices.

My idea was to help organize an entrepreneur’s conference in Trenton. It’s something I’d be interested in and perhaps we could pitch Trenton as a good business location.

I went to city council meeting on Dec. 13 and my hopes were dashed.

A local business owner and several other speakers were at council to complain about a rise in the business registration fee from $10 to $300. You can pay even more if you’re a more successful business. Basically our city council and administration are planning to institute a business tax. Nearby Hamilton doesn’t have a registration fee and yet Trenton is going to add a new one. We’re adding a business tax in addition to having the highest property tax in the State.

Is this part of the plan? Is making Trenton the most expensive place in the region to do business part of the grand plan?

And now for the dysfunctional part.

At this same city council meeting, our council members were confused about how and why the business tax was so high even though they approved it. Apparently the ordinance creating the tax was put together by the city clerk with consultation from the Trenton Downtown Authority. However, the Chair of the Downtown Authority, John Clarke, spoke at council to oppose the business tax.

It seems as though the tax is some kind of miscommunication. Wow!

Slapping business owners in the face isn’t all our city council has been busy doing. It seems they have been going through the city budget line by line. They’re doing this not because they want to but because they have to.

According to council members and members of the public who’ve been there, the city’s business administrator isn’t aware of the particulars of our budget. It seems as though department heads haven’t been very involved either. In other words, they took last year’s budget, which was based on the budget from the year before that and have just copied the numbers. There’s no new thought in the budget. Imagine that our city’s only important strategic document has no strategy and no new thinking. In fact, council members are finding personnel and expenses simply shifted around.

Trenton’s dysfunctional government is managing our affairs by wandering around aimlessly, with no serious forethought and without a strategic plan. Please someone email me the strategic revitalization plan that includes rehashing old department budgets and increasing the business registration fee by 2900%.