Who'll Stop the Rain

Well we need it. We've been a little shy on rainfall this summer (but not for the year to date) and the extreme heat of the past couple of weeks didn't help. So we really can't complain about a couple of days of grey, wet weather. It's good for the ducks and the mushrooms.

Speaking of mushrooms...you know the old joking way of referring to people left out of the loop on decision making as mushrooms because they are "kept in the dark and fed a diet of manure." Well, sometimes I feel like Trenton is being run like a big mushroom farm.

The leadership of this city is deeply mired in the habit of tightly controlling what it wants people to know and when. And this might not be all bad in theory, but in practice, so far, it pretty much sucks.

Councilman Coston has reported on his blog that directives have been sent out stating that City Council people are not to address concerns with City Department Heads directly and, conversely, Department Heads are not to respond to City Council people directly. All communication, we're told, is to go through the Mayor's Office of Citizen Concerns.

Does that seem odd to you? If City Council people have to take Citizen Concerns through the Mayor's Office, doesn't it sort of defeat the point of electing City Council people? Readers of Mr. Coston's blog know how he feels about this, but we haven't heard anything from the rest of Council. They should be outraged at being neutralized by the Administration, yet we hear nary a peep (except from the representative of the South Ward).

And then there is the most recent round of transfers and reassignments in the Trenton Police Department. Now its always a slippery slope if management decisions are made by public consensus, but some decisions are just plain wrong and should be reconsidered. What possible reason can warrant informing someone while on vacation that he has been reassigned from a job that he thought (and a majority of people seem to agree) he was performing well, if not excelling at?

Further, if the whole operational premise is one of "community oriented policing" where the various officers are assigned to specific areas and meet with the people from those areas regularly, then shouldn't the people be informed of the changes directly and at the same time as the officers are?

Doesn't it make sense to inform the community that they are going to have new "partners" and provide their names and contact information so there is no lapse in communication?

Apparently not in Trenton under the current police leadership. No, the Police Director appears to practice "management at will" (or is it "management by whim?") and he seems to believe there is little to no reason to inform the public of his decisions.

And then there is the situation where Zac Chester was threatened with legal action for doing nothing more than asking for some information about development and redevelopment projects in Trenton. In what is assumed to be an attempt to silence anyone who dares question members of the City Administration, a high ranking official is suggesting he'd rather sue than answer to a city resident and taxpayer.

The underlying theme in all of this is a very strong desire to not let the public know, for fear they might scrutinize and then criticize, what the Administration is doing. The leadership is apparently fearful that the public might not react well to how it's going about the City's business.

"What they don't know can't hurt us," seems to be the mantra emanating from City Hall.

Keep them in the dark and feed them manure.

Well, its' time that the citizens of Trenton stop acting like mushrooms. We need to stand together and demand the accountability of our appointed and elected officials alike.

We need to stop this deluge of indifference to the public's right to know and shed some light on just what is really going on in Trenton.

We need to demand proper, complete and timely answers to our questions.

Let My Fingers Do The Talking

Let's just recap all the events of the past week in Trenton that have left my hands exhausted from typing:

The week started with the discovery of a video produced in the manner of a movie trailer for an action film that touted the accomplishments and credentials of our own Mayor Douglas H. Palmer. The video was made by the US Conference of Mayors, a lobby group that Mayor Palmer currently presides over. It was filled with in-jokes and padded with TV and film clips. A DVD with the video plus a longer, more serious one was sent to select individuals in the area.

From this viewer's perspective, the video was in poor taste considering the state of our city. We'll comment on that at a later date.

Following on the heels of the release of the video, the September issue of Esquire hit newsstands. Inside was a pictorial shot at the Conference of Mayors Convention in LA in June. And there was "Dapper Doug" with a full page photo modeling a very expensive suit, shirt and tie.

More inflated that the cost of the clothes were the self-serving quotes that accompanied the image.

In a newspaper article reporting on the Mayor's Publicity Blitz, Mr. Palmer feigned humility and embarrassment at all the attention. A few days later the editors of the same publication called him on it by suggesting he could simply say "No" to these TV appearances, magazine layouts, etc.

On Thursday came the revelation that Dennis Gonzalez, a self-described "loyal employee of Mayor Palmer" sent a letter to a private citizen threatening to sue for libel and slander unless that citizen offered up a spoken apology at that night's City Council meeting followed by publishing newspaper ads with the same apology. And all the Citizen had done was ask for an status update on the various and sundry development projects that had been proposed since Mr. Gonzalez had become a city employee.

Imagine being sued for asking questions of your local government!

And to cap off the week, a dedicated and effective Police Detective was notified (while on vacation no less) that he was being reassigned to patrol in a seemingly deliberate attempt to weaken the Police/Community relationship in the City's South Police District.

Yup, folks. There is plenty of fodder for conversation in the events of last week.

Meet me out on the stoop and we'll talk about 'em.

Bad Call, Blue.

Community leaders in Trenton's South District have just been informed via South Ward Councilman Jim Coston that Detective Luis Reyes is being reassigned from Community Affairs to Patrol.

The Councilman, who emailed the news while away on vacation, reports that Patrol Captain Paul Messina has made the determination that Det. Reyes will be better utilized on Patrol.

Now, we don't purport to know why or how this decision was made. But even from this distance, it appears to be a bad one.

Det. Reyes has worked very, very hard at building a solid relationship with the members of the community throughout the South Policing District. From the beginning, with Lt. Gonzalez and continuing through with Lt. Maldonado, Det. Reyes has shown a real passion for building and maintaining that all important bridge between the community and the police.

The fact that he has worked within the community for so long, coupled with his dedication and the fact that he is bi-lingual makes him a perfect fit for his current assignment.

Detective Reyes, along with his colleagues in the other three police districts, has just been recognized by the Trenton Council of Civic Associations as Public Employees of the Year. This must be an indication of the kind of job he and the other Community Concerns Detectives are doing.

Whatever rationale Captain Messina might have for this reassignment needs to be checked.

This is a poor management decision.