City council asks why? How?

Balk at hiring extra administrator.

Trenton’s City Council members don’t often get praised for the job they are doing. And there may be reasons for that, but last night they put the brakes on another excursion of the Doug Palmer express as the administration tried to ram through approval of a $75,000 contract to pay for an assistant business administrator.

Good for the members of city council for standing up and saying, “What!?!? NO!!!”

For those who missed it, the Times’ Meir Rinde wrote it up in this morning’s edition.

The long and the short of it is this:

At a time when the city has laid off employees, including much needed inspectors in the technical services division, the administration wants to contract with a person to perform “assistant business administrator” duties to ease the load of one Dennis Gonzalez who was “promoted” last year when former Business Administrator Jane Feigenbaum left to take a job in Perth Amboy.

Interestingly, the administration’s rationale for needing to hire this consultant is so the city can draft policies and manage assets in accordance with suggestions from auditors. Specifically, the adoption of whistle blower and conflict of interest policies as well as updating and maintaining a current inventory of city assets are needed and would be the responsibility of the consultant retained to serve as assistant business administrator.

Bearing the above in mind, we ask:

What did Mr. Gonzalez do when he served as acting business administrator? Wouldn’t these policies and the inventory have fallen under his responsibilities?

If Mr. Gonzalez failed to complete the required work as assistant BA, how and why did he get tapped to move into the “Acting” Business Administrator position?

And that’s another thing: isn’t the title “acting” a provisional one good for only 90 days after which time the appointment is to be brought before council for approval? If that’s the case, does anyone remember Mr. Gonzalez’s appointment coming before council for final approval anytime since, oh say, last February?

Voting citizens of Trenton take heed. Your current city administration continues to run roughshod over the rules and procedures of the laws that govern our city. Watch closely what they do in the next few months and watch even more closely those currently on council and all who seek your favor to gain office in the coming elections.

Their actions will speak much louder than their words.

Last night, Council made an excellent point.

Another member of Commodore Palmer’s crew is leaving the sinking ship.

Posting on NJ.com tonight confirmed rumor that had been swirling all day.

Trenton Business Administrator (BA) Jane Feigenbaum has announced she’s leaving to take the same position in Perth Amboy starting in January.

Feigenbaum’s tenure in Trenton has been marked by interesting financial ideas, including the proposed sell off of the outlying distribution system of the City Water Utility in order to partially fill a potential $26 million budget gap; even though the sale of water to suburban customers generated enough of a surplus in past years to augment Trenton’s operating budget.

Interestingly, Feigenbaum is headed to Perth Amboy, a city currently plagued with its own budget shortfall and an investigation into the prior administration. She apparently beat out her own assistant, Dennis Gonzalez, for the position there. Gonzalez was rumored to be seeking a position in Perth Amboy a few months ago.

As a consolation, Trenton’s Assistant BA will be bumped up to “Acting” BA. Justifying his choice for Acting BA, Palmer claims that Dennis Gonzalez has “done outstanding work in every job he has performed.”

Does that include threatening a citizen for questioning his effectiveness when he headed the Housing and Economic Development Department?

In a sideways acknowledgement of the many departures from his cabinet, Palmer tossed off a comment about how the city is “generally prepared for when senior officials leave.”

Yeah, generally…they can find another body to plug the hole and tout the party line. Not necessarily excel at the position.

Who row the boat when all the good oarsmen have left?

Too busy?

According to the article in this morning's Times, the reason Trenton Business Administrator Jane Feigenbaum didn't provide the information requested by South Ward Councilman Jim Coston was because she's been "busy working to fill a large budget gap."

Well, we have some more questions for Ms. Feigenbaum:

Were you too busy to communicate with the South Ward Councilman that you might not be able to provide all of the requested information in the alotted time?

Were you too busy playing shell games with the city's money to get this year's budget to council for approval on time?

Were you too busy being uncooperative with the people's respresentatives to project the dire shortfalls in the coming year's budget?

Cut the crap, Ms. Feigenbaum.

You deliberately ignored a legitimate request from an elected official for specific information and thought you could get away with it.

I guess you're going to be just a little busier now as you pull together the requested information by Tuesday and continue to work on filling that "large budget gap."

Better scrap your weekend plans, young lady. You've got Detention and a whole lot of makeup work to do!

Memo from a taxpayer

One person's twelve, oops, make that thirteen cents worth.

To: The Palmer Administration and Trenton City Council

Subject: The Budget

Ok. You danced around so long that the FY2008 budget has to be approved more or less as presented. There was no chance for City Council to find ways to reduce or eliminate the tax increase because a) the budget year is nearly 75% over and the money similarly spent and b) the Administration likes to play games with the amount of detailed, timely information given to Council so they can perform their fiduciary duties effectively.

So you won another round of “My Way.”

Well, let’s get started today on the FY2009 Budget. Let’s start with the assumption that revenues will not increase a single penny above this year’s (and it’s a pretty sure bet they won’t even meet that mark).

Let’s look at real ways to cut spending. And yes, this means jobs. But perhaps not the ones you were thinking of cutting.

For starters, let’s look at these various “Special Assistants” to the Mayor. By now we all know the saga of Barry Colicelli, the highly compensated “consultant” whose contract was not renewed by Council. Well that’s just the beginning.

How about Mr. Jerry Harris? Do we really need to pay him over $50,000 to be a part-time assistant to the Mayor? No!

How about Chief of Staff Renee Haynes? Is this position really required? A survey of most taxpayers might just show you that it is not. There’s another $100,000+ a year saved.

In fact, Mr. Palmer, if you were to “stay home” and tend to the business of running this city, you might not need all this extra help.

Oh, and let’s not forget your driver. How about we let those police officers assigned to you get back to doing the job they were hired to do in the first place: protecting and serving the people of Trenton.

I know it will be hard on your image as a highly successful municipal executive with a role to play on the national stage, but too bad!!!!

The people of Trenton need a leader. They want a mayor who is hands on, in touch and grappling with the real problems of this city. They don’t want a grandstander who is running all over the country promoting himself while the city sinks deeper into debt and despair.

So there’s your start. Check around the executive branch of Trenton’s government and see what other positions we can no longer afford. (Public Information Officer Kent Ashworth, maybe).

Next, stop spending incredible sums of money for outside professional services contracts when the work can be done in house with staff people (and if the people on staff aren’t qualified, get rid of them and hire people who are!).

Need an example?

How about all the various attorney contracts the City pays for? We have a legal department and staff. Why is so much work going out the door? Is it to “toss a bone” to your cronies and campaign contributors? (The names Peterson and Trimboli are just two that come to mind). Bet we could save some money there.

And just why are we dealing with so many legal cases anyway?

Let’s see, there are protracted union negotiations…and who benefits from those? Not the unions and their membership; not the public. That’s right, the lawyers.

And there’s the multitude of claims and lawsuits. Maybe if we didn’t arbitrarily tell the police to “look the other way” while someone shoots a movie without a permit or liability insurance; perhaps if we monitored the way we go about the city’s business, we could minimize or eliminate some of these claims and reduce the need for legal representation. I believe it’s called “Risk Management.”

And it’s not just contracts with lawyers. We need to seek out the best price on all outside professional services contracts…regardless of whether or not they are buddies or supporters of your campaigns (and those of your chosen few).

Along with this, we need to totally and honestly evaluate how the various city departments operate.

Now whatever happened to the management study being conducted in the past year? What were the results? How much did that cost? Are we reaping any benefits from that yet? Oh, and was it really necessary to hire as one of the sub-contracted consultants the wife of one of the division heads who’s staff was being interviewed and evaluated? Isn’t that a little dicey as well as pricey?

City Council, don’t turn away. You’ve got a role in this too. Apply what you’ve recently learned about the budget process to FY2009 expenditures. If you don’t have a working budget in front of you, along with the backup information and material, don’t approve any unnecessary expenditure! Especially outside contracts. It’s past time for you to exercise the power and authority that you have over the budget. Use it or lose it!

Back to the administration; stop proposing stupidly expensive and totally unwarranted spending.

The fire helmet was a bad idea from day one. It became an infamously costly bad idea as time went on. The next time it goes out, have it dismantled and sold for scrap. It’s worthless and we can’t keep spending money on it.

Municipal Wi-Fi: it is a bad idea. Scrap your dreams and whatever promises you may have made to E-Path. It will never be what you think it will. If E-Path or any other company wants to build a system, let them. Just don’t put one Trenton dime into it.

And stop buying half-assed technology just because somebody’s cousin or friend is "in the business" and will sell you stuff cheaply that you can then point to as an illustration of just how advanced and sophisticated Trenton is.

You did it with the old Computer Aided Dispatch System (CPLIMMS was it?)

You did it with the Motorola radio system for the Communications division (remember the promise that the whole County would share this system --- and the cost--- with us?)

You did it with the farce of the video surveillance cameras in the midst of the 2006 election campaigns.

Are the few minutes of positive press you get really worth the ultimate cost to the taxpayers for non-functioning equipment and systems? Not to mention the risk to life and property when they fail to perform as advertised?

If you really want to improve the city’s bottom line, how about making a real and concerted effort to wrest control of the multitude of vacant buildings from their owners who are sitting on them like golden eggs that will never hatch. Take those buildings and put them in the hands of the various small developers who have been working very hard to restore and revive the market for this great old building stock. Get these building out of the hands of speculators and into the hands of people who will realize their full assessed potential.

Forget the big marquee development projects that never seem to work out or get started or become what they were promised to be.

And stop squandering our money and UEZ funds on your friends like Mr. Torricelli and his touted yet unrealized promises of “full occupancy.”

In short, the Mayor and the Administration must stop treating the City budget like their own personal treasury. Pennies must be pinched. They must do without some of the fun things (do all the various directors and such really need full-time city provided vehicles when our cops don’t have enough decent cars to use?) and perks.

If we can’t afford them, you can’t have them. (And by the way, a lot of this also applies to that money pit subset of City government, the school system. Let’s get rid of the extra assistant and special superintendents, various other dead weight positions, unneeded extras and spend money on good teachers, supplies and facilities!)

So let’s get cracking! Sharpen those pencils and fire up those calculators. July 1 is but four months away. Let’s see a fully thought out preliminary budget and all the back up detail presented to Council by then.

Wi Fi Fo Fum...

On Tuesday Trenton's City Council will be on the receiving end of a presentation from the would be provider of a city wide WiFi wireless network.

Mayor Palmer touted this in his recent State of the City address so we might assume, judging from past experience, that the Mayor considers this all but a done deal. In fact, recent history tells us that if the administration wants it and City Council approval is required, so it shall be.

Of course the vendor-to-be will put its best face on and sell lots of sizzle to Council. Business Administrator (and part-time city resident) Jane Feigenbaum will note all the positives that adopting this technology will bring to city services. Non-resident Police Director Joseph Santiago, in his appearance before Council next-week, will no doubt tout the benefits of a City-wide wireless network to improve policing (like surveillance cameras that work?). To be sure, a strong case will be made for adopting this technology as a way to help bridge the "technology gap" between Trenton residents.

While these arguments and benefits need to be weighed, so too should the facts and experiences of other municipalities around the country who are considering WiFi networks as well.

The facts are pretty clear to even the least techno-savvy layman: the technology is not yet sufficient to provide a low-cost, wide-spread, consistent network. The cost of installation and maintenance are not insignificant and too high for most municipal governments to bear alone. For an outside vendor to provide cost-effective, profitable service the system must be supported either by advertising, subscription/access fees or some combination of both.

In neighboring Hamilton Township, there is free public access to wireless internet in Veterans Park. Before you can log-in you have to register (for marketing purposes) and there are ads on the access home page. And this is just to cover the costs of providing access in one limited area of the township.

Just downriver, Philadelphia's ambitious plan to provide wireless internet access across the city has been a less than glowing success. Some residents still haven't been able to achieve proper connectivity and Earthlink, Philly's service provider, has actually regrouped and stopped bidding on contracts elsewhere as they seek a build a better business model.

Before any decisions are made whether or not to approve a wireless internet package for Trenton, the contract should be reviewed thoroughly by an independent consultant. Of course, this won't happen.

The Palmer administration has already reportedly turned down on offer from a professional consultant (and city resident) to review any proposals from interested vendors. Admittedly the consultant is a frequent critic of the way the city goes about its business, but is that really a reason to turn down free, qualified help?

Lacking any real due diligence on the part of the Mayor's hand picked henchmen (and women), it is up to the members of City Council to do their own homework.

We should all encourage our elected representatives to study not only the "facts" placed in front of them but to also research how other municipalities are approaching this technological frontier? City Council has the resources and the responsibility to gather the facts independent of those spoon fed them by the administration.

...this may be an idea who's time has not yet come.

Are You A High Roller?

Here's an interesting item found on NJ.com:

Six AC councilmen petition for mayor's recall
by South Jersey News Online

Thursday August 30, 2007, 7:01 AM

ATLANTIC CITY -- Six of this city's nine city council members have signed a petition seeking the recall of Mayor Bob Levy, according to The Press of Atlantic City.

Displeasure with Levy's administration drove creation of the "Atlantic City Committee to Recall Bob Levy," When asked why he signed, Councilman Gene Robinson cited his frustration with Levy's strong support of city Business Administrator Domenic Cappella. Robinson said Levy has turned over city administration to Cappella, "who is letting evil rule his life."

Can you imagine a City Council so fed up with a heavy handed administration that two thirds of it's members opt to form a recall committee for the Mayor?

Talk to anyone in the know at Trenton's City Hall and ultimately a couple of names will be mentioned as the primary source of "evil" within those hallowed walls. These individuals are appointees of the Mayor and he has seemed to abdicate much of his authority to them.

Do you think five of our seven Council members would sign on to a Mayoral Recall movement? Odds are against it since three of the seven explicitly owe their seats to the Mayor's support.

Better odds on winning the MegaMillions. Then if you're still around next election cycle (2010), you can buy your way into City Hall.