Posts Tagged ‘Trenton’

by guest writer  – Brian Hill

So I was thinking about what I do for a living, and that I am a municipal public employee… and how I see so much waste everywhere. I also really dislike the perception that we are all just lazy bastards. So how do we really change the City of Trenton employee image and while we are at it, how can we change the image of Trenton? Us, how can we do it as well???  I did some research and wrote this up…

It’s just a few days away now — Election Day. Regardless of who is elected Mayor on June 15, the City of Trenton will close one chapter of its history and begin a new one.
Hopefully the new administration will bring new ideas to the challenges we face as Trentonians: challenges that are economic, challenges that are sometimes uncomfortable, and even though in some cases we will flat out disagree with policy, we hope that the greater good is served.

It has always been a mantra of mine that we are a service-driven industry but, what does that really mean? Those of us that work for the City of Trenton probably feel that we know our job, our role and the responsibilities that come with it. But maybe it might be a good idea to have a refresher course and take the lead from some great groups. At the Disney Company, they recognize that a key element in creating the best environment for engaged employees is great leadership. Leaders take responsibility for creating a vibrant employee experience, understanding that their own behavior and vision drives the creation of a work environment in which employees can be fully engaged. This is needed in the City of Trenton, from all employees.

We also need to take a look at what some folks believe is a sound business plan for public service employees:

• Improved effectiveness – more oriented to identifying and producing results.
• Greater service orientation – developing a culture in which the delivery of an outstanding service to the public is accepted as the norm.
• Improved accountability – performance must be effectively managed, measured, and failure to meet standards should be recognized and dealt with
• Improved financial accountability – the competent management of resources according to a strong “value for money” ethos as a hallmark of the public service. The public needs to see their money is not wasted
• Improved flexibility – a greater ability to work in teams across traditional departmental lines. Especially now with little funds and shrinking departments.

These are just a few things we can do as employees and hopefully  be part of an engaged municipal government. We will all be part of the team that works on behalf of Trenton, from paying our taxes on time, the upkeep of our home or business, to sweeping the street in front of our home – and it is up to all of us to work with the new leadership to tackle those challenges.

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.

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.

Candidate	Score	Position
Best Score Possible	100%
Christine Donahue	85%	At Large
Jim Carlucci	83%	At Large
Carlos Avila	82%	South Ward
Eric Jackson	79%	Mayor
Frank Weeden	78%	Mayor
Roland Laird	77%	North Ward
Kevin Moriarty	73%	West Ward
Algernon Ward	71%	At Large
Marge Caldwell-Wilson	67%	North Ward
John Harmon	61%	Mayor
T. Missy Balmir	60%	At Large
Annette Lartigue	59%	Mayor
Keith Hamilton	56%	Mayor
Verlina Reynolds-Jackson.	47%	East Ward
Juan Martinez	36%	At Large
John Vaughan, Jr.	-	West Ward
Joyce Kersey	-	West Ward
Zachary Chester	-	West Ward
Crystal A. Smith	-	South Ward
George Muschall	-	South Ward
Dennis Vereen	-	North Ward
Divine Allah	-	North Ward
Marvin W. Ford	-	North Ward
Alex Brown	-	Mayor
Manny Segura	-	Mayor
Paul Pintella	-	Mayor
Shahid Watson	-	Mayor
Tony Mack	-	Mayor
Errick Wiggins	-	East Ward
Joseph Harrison	-	East Ward
Kesner Dufresne	-	East Ward
Zane Dion Clark	-	East Ward
Alex Bethea	-	At Large
Darren Green	-	At Large
Donnelle Presha	-	At Large
Ernest Perez Jr.	-	At Large
Kathy McBride	-	At Large
Phyllis Holly-Ward	-	At Large

In the past, I’ve criticized candidates for having little or no Internet presence.  By the last election cycle in 2006, the Internet had been in wide use for 10 years, and yet only a tiny handful of Trenton’s municipal candidates had web site and many didn’t know how to use e-mail.

In this cycle the situation has improved dramatically.

All eight of the mayoral candidates have web sites and 16 of the 27 city council candidates have sites.  Most of the candidates appear to also have a Facebook presence and I’m Facebook friends with many of them or have “Liked” their campaign pages.

In addition several of them are showing up on blogs in town (Keith Hamilton has a recent comment on Reinvent Trenton).

I’d like to think my chastising the group has had something to do with it but I suspect that’s not it.  Rather, the politicians are following the voters onto the web, have availed themselves of relatively inexpensive web solutions (Kevin Moriarity’s blog is an effective mechanism for communicating his views on campaign issues) and are following their Barrack Obama’s example of effective grassroots use of the Internet.

This is a good thing.

It’s inexpensive for the candidates and that’s good for them and for us as voters as they are less beholden to non-citizen funding interests.  It’s good for voters because we get to quickly read more about a candidate’s position than they’ll ever be able to communicate verbally or with their printed material.  Furthermore, many of the websites enable online donations.  I appreciate all of this.

Candidate Websites

Candidate	Website
Mayor
Alex Brown	www.alexbrown4trenton.com
Keith Hamilton	www.hamiltonformayor.com
John Harmon	www.harmonfortrenton.com
Eric Jackson	http://www.ericjacksonfortrenton.net/
Annette Lartigue	www.annettelartigue.com
Tony Mack	www.tonymack.com
Paul Pintella	www.pintella2010.com
Manny Segura	http://mannyseguraformayor.com
Emmanuel Shahid Watson Ben Avraham	http://eswaformayor.com
Frank Weeden	www.frankweedenformayor.com
At Large
T. Missy Balmir	http://electmissybalmir.com/
Alex Bethea
Christine Donahue
Darren Green
Phyllis Holly-Ward	trentoncommunitymatters.com
Juan Martinez
Kathy McBride	www.vote4mcbride.com
Ernest Perez Jr.	http://ernieatlarge.com/
Donnelle Presha	www.preshafortrenton.com
Algernon Ward	http://algernonward.com/
East Ward
Zane Dion Clark
Kesner Dufresne
Joseph Harrison
Verlina Reynolds-Jackson.	http://www.ElectVerlinaReynoldsJackson.com
Errick Wiggins
North Ward
Divine Allah	www.newblackpanther.com/divineforcouncil/
Marge Caldwell-Wilson	www.margefortrenton.com
Marvin W. Ford	www.trentonnorthwardforford.com
Roland Laird	www,lairdfortrenton.com
Dennis Vereen
South Ward
Carlos Avila	http://carlosavila2010.com/
George Muschall	www.muschalforsouthward.com
Crystal A. Smith
West Ward
Zachary Chester	www.zacharyachester.com
Joyce Kersey
Kevin Moriarty	www.kevin-moriarty.com
John Vaughan, Jr.	http://johnvaughanjr.com/home

The below is a guest article by Stephen Slusher – Thanks to him for letting Reinvent Trenton publish it.

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A Modest Proposal to the Governor For Preventing the Institutions of NJ from being a Burden the Taxpayers and for Making them Beneficial to the Public.

Governor Christie is pushing cuts in state funding for the City of Trenton, including eliminating the Capital City Aid program.  Meanwhile state budget officials and legislators are struggling to balance the budget – and everybody thinks if we can just get through this next year things have got to improve.

There is a solution that addresses both state funding for the City of Trenton and the state budget crisis.  It’s actually quite simple: just sell all the state office buildings in Trenton to the highest bidder.  The buildings can be sold subject to a long-term lease to the state, so state agencies remain in their current buildings.  Purchasers have guaranteed revenue, and if Republicans structure the deal right, also have guaranteed profits.  Private equity funds will jump at the opportunity.

I’m usually opposed to privatization of governmental functions and services.  But given that Governor Christie evidently intends to abandon historical – and completely reasonable and justifiable – obligations to the City of Trenton, then I say let’s call Christie on Republican philosophy.  Privatize the billions of dollars of state office buildings in Trenton.  It’s a win-win for everyone – and state government can continue to ignore Trenton with impunity.

The results are obvious – state government gets cash up front to spend on whatever it wants, purchasers of the buildings have guaranteed revenue streams (and profits) from the state as a tenant, and because the buildings are now privately owned, Trenton gets lots and lots of property tax payments.  With luck, the City of Trenton will get enough in consistent and recurring revenue to actually intelligently plan and budget.

Presumably the buildings are worth somewhere between about one and three billion dollars.  Sure, the state will have to pay rent.  But what’s a little rent (or even a couple hundred million dollars a year in rent) when the state both gets fair market value for the buildings and gets out from under its obligations to the City of Trenton?  And since Governor Christie evidently supports making the rich even richer, state government could sweeten the pot by providing some sort of special tax relief to purchasers of state buildings.  The only caveat – they pay property taxes at the full rate with no abatements or reductions.

It might be argued that privatization is bad government policy, and that it’s better (and cheaper) to own than to rent.  Recent imbroglios surrounding private prisons illustrate limitations to privatization of intrinsic governmental functions.  But this proposal is simply to get cash out of doubtless appreciated, but not revenue generating, real estate.  Taxation and Revenue will still operate out of its not particularly attractive building at 50 Barrack Street.  The only change is that some private equity fund will own the building.

For sentimental reasons, the state could decide to keep a few buildings, like the New Jersey State Capitol Building and the War Memorial.  Heck, maybe we could keep everything built before about 1950.  But all the state office buildings constructed in the 1970’s through the 1990’s should be sold – and given that virtually all are an aesthetic embarrassment, good riddance.

Of course, it may well be that the Governor has another plan in mind, and squeezing the City of Trenton past the fiscal breaking point somehow fits in his plan.  I say we call his bluff and find out.  Let’s sell state government to the highest bidder!

Now that the Petitioners have won their court case, the voters may need to decide on whether to do the Water Deal.  This is a complicated decision and presumably will be on the ballot this December.  In the meantime, the city will have to pass along at least an $.80 / $100 tax hike.  That’s assuming there’s not another tax hike on top of that to make up for money the State is taking away.

With the tax hike as currently proposed our tax rate will go from $4.69 / $100 with an effective rate of $2.784 / $100 to a rate of $5.49 / $100 and an effective rate of $3.26 / $100.  On a $100,000 home tax would go from $2784 to $3260 or up $476.

We will move into 4^th place in NJ for highest taxes and 1^st place for towns over 25k residents.

That’s all very nice, but we as citizens still have some high finance to sort through.

1)        First, a new administration could decide to abandon the sale all together.  We may not have

2)        If the issue does go to a referendum (and I think it should despite the new administration)

• The ONLY question you should have as Trentonians is: is it a fair price?
• Despite all the risks and loss of future revenue, there is a price at which we should sell.
• The question is, “Is $80M that price?”
• Astute financial analysts should presumably be deployed on both sides of the debate to convince the public as to the correct valuation
• Since the general public, doesn’t typically understand what a valuation is, both sides will resort to non-financial arguments, that will no doubt distort the issue (as they already have)

3)       In reality, you would be voting one way or another because you either trust the people who negotiated the deal to have negotiated in good faith, or you don’t trust them

In the long history of this debate, I’ve not found a single person who would turn down the deal if it were priced at $1B.  OK.  What about $500M?  $100M?

See how it’s really about valuation.

There are plenty of risks:

• Will the company actually buy water from us in 20 years?
• Will our neighbors be mad at us?
• Might our neighbors agree to pay us more money for water in the future, and we would have lost out on our opportunity to squeeze them?
• All future cash flows carry some risk and therefore need to be discounted and turned into a present value

All of these risks can be factored in to a proper valuation and hopefully they were.  An intelligent question for the administration would have been, and may still be, could you show us your math for valuing these risks.

As for whether this is a stop-gap or not, that’s a different issue.

The current plan was to use 80% of the proceeds to pay down long term debt.  When selling off a long term asset, it’s generally wise to pay off corresponding long term debt.  We could argue about whether 80% or 100% should be applied to debt, but the effect will generally be to reduce Trenton’s future interest expense.  This should offset the loss of net income from the water wholesale business.

I understand how this issue got to be emotional, but really it should have just been a business deal.  That said, it’s a BIG business deal and the owners should have had a vote.

The elephant in the room when it comes to revitalization is schools.  Everyone knows it but most are hesitant to talk about the real underlying problem.

In the late 60s when most school systems including the ones in New Jersey were going through racial integration, New Jersey dropped the ball.  Sure enough the schools were integrated but at a city level and with predictable results.  With racist fear in their hearts parents began leaving Trenton and stepped across city lines to Ewing, Lawrence and Hamilton.  That drain of stability and capital led to a gradual decline in both school performance and the tax base necessary to fund basic services.  Like it did in many school systems across the state and nation, a vicious cycle of decline set in.

We are where we are.  Now there is no way that an inner city school system like Trenton will reach academic success levels better than the surrounding townships in our lifetime.  Anyone who says it’s possible, hasn’t been paying attention to the failed efforts over the past 30 years.

Meanwhile, in the South, schools were integrated at the county level rather than city.  This made all the difference and it wasn’t because southern governors were enlightened, instead they were forced at gunpoint by the federal government.

In cities like my hometown of Winston-Salem, kids were bussed all over the county to achieve racial balance. It was expensive, messy and uncomfortable.  However, it also helped to avoid “white flight” because there was no where to which to fly.

Today, cities like Winston-Salem and Charlotte have grown in population and have retained much of their economic vibrancy.  Neighborhoods have remained stable and over the years, as the country and the South have become more racially tolerant, neighborhoods have become integrated.

I’ve previously referenced a Harvard study on school segregation that finds the most integrated schools to be in the South.  That same study lists New Jersey as the fourth most segregated in the country.  This shouldn’t be a surprise to the calm and rational social observer.

Had New Jersey’s state leaders been more enlightened they would have followed the Southern model.

Governor Christie is proposing to cut the cord on the very cities that have felt the brunt of New Jersey’s failure as a state to practically integrate schools.  I caution our suburban neighbors not to do that as the results will create vast holes of lawlessness that will spill over at alarming rates into the adjoining suburban sprawl.  It isn’t far-fetched to remember Mario Van Peebles’ 1991 movie, New Jack City as a point of social reference.

There are options for turning the tide in Trenton but none of them involve a dramatic reduction in funding.  Rather the goal should be a gradual reduction in state aid over the next 20 years.

One of the options on the table should be State tax credit investment in urban market rate development.  The current investment climate is a non-starter for private urban development.  The market has simply been made too risky by a combination of city and state policy.  Large, market shaping investment on the order of $100s of millions of dollars is necessary to stimulate any kind of meaningful increase in Trenton’s ratables at this point.

However there are two other less expensive and potentially more socially beneficial options that the Governor and legislature have so far ignored.

1. Consolidate our schools into 21 county-wide school systems
2. Offer vouchers in urban districts

Either option fundamentally changes the picture in urban centers like Trenton.

County-wide consolidation is the most straight-forward approach and has the advantage of 40 years of experience.  With a stroke of a pen and a modest investment in transportation, Governor Christie could simultaneously reduce overall school costs in the state through shared service, eliminate the #1 reason for disinvestment in urban centers and improve race relations.

Whenever this topic is mentioned, well meaning people say our suburban neighbors will never go for it and home rule prevents it.  I’ll remind the naysayers that the South didn’t exactly go quietly.  Southern leaders didn’t go for it at all and their main argument (i.e. excuse) was “state’s rights”.  History has proven them wrong.  New Jersey is wrong as a state to simultaneously create dangerous hotbeds of social unrest and spend excessively in the process.

Integration will cause students with non-education focused backgrounds to mix with students who have education as a family priority.  The blending will be uncomfortable for both but students who have the ability to succeed in a positive environment will for the first time have one.  Students who are bused out of their suburbs into the city will find a new appreciation for diversity that will help them live a more meaningful life (the writer speaks from experience).

The transportation necessary for this transition won’t be cheap but will pail in comparison to the cost of the social unrest the Governors current plan will unleash.  And we’ll be a better State for it.

The second option is vouchers. Offering vouchers to families in urban cities will not likely improve overall achievement, rather it will create a stimulus for families to move into the city.  The beauty of an urban voucher program is that a $5000 / child voucher would reduce overall spending on public schools.  Spending $5000 per child and having the parent pay the balance of a private school education is a bargain compared to a $16,000 public education.

Overall spending on education doesn’t go down and neither does the demand for teachers, rather the spending is shifted to parents who are seeking to find more affordable housing options in cities like Trenton and will gladly make up the difference in school tuition over and above a voucher amount.

The exact amount of the voucher is important but whether its $5000, $10,000 or even $15,000 the effect is the same.  We would reduce overall spending per pupil and stimulate new investment in the urban centers where the program is offered.  It’s a nifty, no cost way of revitalizing cities like Trenton.

Of course the education unions have spent decades opposing any new thinking in educational funding.  As a society we can no longer stand for that attitude.  Trenton’s schools are not what we want and its time for the unions to get out of the way.

“Reinvent Trenton” takes and economic view towards revitalization and sometimes that means taking aim at the elephant in the room.  Perhaps this is right time and right Governor to make the most important change in the way our state operates.

I should point out the central fact that is in dispute in the Mayor’s speech on March 30th.

Mayor Palmer claims that the State should be paying us $155M if they were taxed at our rate (~let’s say 3% effective). That would equate to a valuation of state property of roughly $4.5B.

However, DCA estimates the value of all public property in Trenton which includes State, City and Federal buildings (but doesn’t include schools and the arenas) at $1.4B. Based on this number and some analysis by TDA and my guestimate, I’d say the State valuation is more like $1.2B. With that valuation in mind, the State would owe more like $36M/year in PILOT.

Trenton’s actual ratable value is $2.1B (the number our property taxes are based on).

A disagreement about this basic fact would lead to two radically different positions. If the Mayor is right, then the State is a deadbeat like he said. If my calculations are right, then we’ve been receiving aid for a long time because the State currently funds us to the tune of $340M ($250M for schools and $90 for municipal).

Where we agree is that a sudden $42M decrease in aid (or whatever you call it) would be disastrous, just as the Mayor said. The big difference is the negotiating position we go in with.

I’ll stress that the above are my numbers (so far). The Committee to Fix Trenton’s Budget is working to get to the bottom of this and develop a group position and then an approach.

In light of this evening’s speech, I thought it useful for my neighbors to have this perspective. Look for a more for the FixTrentonsBudget.org group.

One member owns a new restaurant downtown.  Another develops real estate, converting old buildings to new residences.  A third works on Wall Street.  Other members by profession include a college professor, a retired state worker, and the director of a non-profit arts organization.

All are among the eleven Trenton residents that have joined “The Committee to Fix Trenton’s Budget”, a new civic organization led by Dan Dodson, who is a management consultant.

“The state and the city are both in a budget crisis, at a time when the existing political leadership in the City is going to completely turn over for the first time in 20 years,” says Dodson, “The new City administration is being ‘thrown to the lions’ so to speak, and no matter who sits in the Mayor’s office and City Council next June, they’re going to need help from the citizens of Trenton.”

The current committee plans to reach out to neighborhood associations and other grass-roots citizens groups to increase membership.   The committee has established 3 key goals:

1. To define an open budget process for the City’s government.
2. To establish a rational set of policies to govern the relationship between the City and State government, that will enable the city to develop economically and ultimately reduce its dependence on State funding.
3. To educate Trenton citizens and politicians about the City’s budget, and to encourage the adoption of budget and taxation policies that will help the City move forward.

The current core-group brings considerable expertise to the task.   “Last week,” says Dodson, “after several weeks of concerted information gathering we were trying to figure out the state’s contribution to the city’s budget.  We realized we still couldn’t figure it out!  If our group with two Harvard MBAs, a private banker and a former investment banker are confused, what chance do our fellow residents have?”  He added, “We’re determined to get to the bottom of this: to extract the information necessary to understand the current crisis, to inform our fellow residents, and to formulate rational policies that will help the City move forward.”

Patricia Stewart, long time Trenton activist, feels that everyone on the committee is working hard to overcome former differences.  “I’m sure a lot of folks on the Committee don’t agree with each other on specific issues.  But it doesn’t seem to matter.  We all believe in Trenton, and we’re all willing to work together, and to share our different skills and experience, to find a common way forward. “

The committee is comprised of renters and owners in the City.  In addition, “We are comprised of Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives.  We’re black and white, male and female, straight and gay” says Dodson, “The diversity of this group is one of its strengths:  if we can reach a consensus on policies and direction, it should be easier for the new administration and Council to adopt them as well.”

The Committee has a website:  http://www.FixTrentonsBudget.com .  Dodson and the Committee can be reached at: TheCommittee@FixTrentonsBudget.com

The Committee to Fix Trenton’s Budget:

Dan Dodson, Chair

Christopher Brashier

Ayesha De Mond

Stephen Doyle

Greg Forester

Michael Goldstein

Barbara Horne

Dennis Kim-Prieto

Pat Stewart

Mark Stradling

Cynthia Vandenberg