Failed

The first eight months of Mayor Tony Mack’s administration have been a tragic-comic opera. It is a plot overloaded with bad decisions, missteps, and colorful characters. It has given us the crowd favorite tag line: “Happy Pearl Harbor Day!”
Daily the action unfolds in front of an audience split into two camps: those who still support the Mayor and those who are ready to “give him the hook.”

Those who defend and support the Mayor suggest that the others are being unfair. “He’s only had eight months to undo all of the mess left by the previous Mayor,” they say.

Or they might offer up this, “Where were all these critics while {Doug} Palmer was running this city into the ground?”

Some have even gone so far as to suggest that Mayor Mack’s missteps are the result of him being “dumb, not criminal.”

Loyalty is a good trait…to a point. But when it becomes blind, if not delusional, it is a bad thing.

Past Palmer

Those who think there was no criticism of the previous administration and council either were not paying attention or are in complete denial. From 2003 onward, there was increasing criticism of Palmer’s actions and much was made of his “rubber stamp” council.

True, there was not the same amount of media coverage then as there has been of Mayor Mack. Yet there were people speaking out then who continue to speak up now. (This blog, started in 2006, is but one example).

It was the action and criticism on the part of the public that stopped the ill-conceived Leewood development plan for South Trenton; it was the citizens that passed the city’s Pay-to-Play ordinance that the current Mayor is now running afoul of; it was legal action brought by the citizens that removed Joe Santiago from the police director position for not following the residency law; it was legal action by citizens that got the proposed split and sale of the Trenton Water Works onto the ballot and defeated.

There is no argument and no doubt, that Palmer left a mess in his wake. It is actually amazing that anyone, let alone 10 individuals, would want to run to succeed him, knowing how bad things were. Some might think that Mr. Palmer had “outgrown” the job of Mayor of Trenton. We think he was trying to outrun the collapse of the house of cards he had built here.

Regardless…Palmer is gone; what he did (or did not do) is in the past and it cannot be changed. Certainly, more people voicing publicly what many would only say privately might have helped slow if not avoid the city’s decline. Again, it is in the past and cannot be changed. The point is some noise was made; some criticisms levied, some change occurred.

First steps faulty

Only July 1, 2010, Mayor Mack took the reins of city government and almost immediately displayed a failure to grasp the situation he found himself in.
At a time when the city was facing a huge budget deficit and impending layoffs, Mack dismissed all of Palmer’s cabinet members…and the experience and knowledge that went along with them. Note…we are not suggesting some of them did not need to go, but the wholesale dismissal seemed a little shortsighted, pun not intended.

Knowing there was going to have to be a staff reduction of some sort in the coming months, Mayor Mack padded the payroll with unnecessary hires, filling out the full compliment of aides afforded him under the Faulkner act, paying top dollar to his new appointees, putting on “interns” and paying them through CDBG money that might better have been applied to the real needs of the city. Just a few months later, demotions and layoffs reduced the workforce and the pool of knowledge and experience the Mayor could have drawn upon as he struggled to keep the city afloat.

The nomination of a felon as a department head, the questions surrounding the appointee to the municipal bench, and the game of musical chairs regarding who sits in the Business Administrator seat are all indications of the Mayor’s lack of comprehension as to what his responsibilities are to the city.

It did not take much to figure out why the highly respected and experienced Bill Guhl stepped away from city hall after only a month of volunteering to help Mack get a handle on things. Tony continues to not accept good counsel and helping hands when offered.

Instead, he prefers to hide behind a screen of sycophants and hangers-on while he fiddles and the city burns.

Many people have offered advice and assistance to help the Mayor steer the city forward, but he seems to prefer to consult with the expensive suits from Atlantic City and the company of his lackeys to anybody who really has the best interest of Trenton at heart.

The list of bad choices and inappropriate actions is lengthy. The one consistency of the Mayor’s tenure so far has been his inability to do the right thing.

And there are exceptions to that rule…his appointment of Dan Dodson and Michael McGrath to the board of the Lafayette Yard Development Corporation. This entity actually “owns” the Marriott Hotel and oversees its operation for the taxpayers of the city. From its inception, it functioned in secret with little information flowing to the public “share holders.” That has started to change with Dodson and McGrath on board.

Unfortunately, that is not enough to make up for the rest of the eight months of foolishness coming out of city hall.

Is it the money?

Is it the Mayor’s personal money situation that has made him such easy prey for outside interests? It certainly would not be the first time that a desire for financial security has lead to poor decision making.

And to those who want to excuse Mack’s shortcomings as a function of his mental capacity, well…that just doesn’t wash. If eight months of mistakes are because he is intellectually deficient or mentally incompetent than he is not qualified to serve in the position of Mayor. We all have limitations and Tony’s may preclude him from holding his current job.

This is not to pick on him, put him down, or make fun of him. If he doesn’t have the sense to make the right decisions or won’t compensate by listening to those who do have the ability to determine what the right decision is and accept their suggestions, than he must go.

The taxpayers of the city of Trenton cannot afford to subsidize such ignorance. And anyone who thinks otherwise must also have diminished mental capacity.

Tony Mack has failed in his short time as Mayor of the City of Trenton. There is no way to argue or refute that fact. The citizens who continue to stand by him are failing as well.

Accept that Mr. Mack will probably not finish out his term and let’s start thinking about finding a competent, ethical, intelligent replacement.

Accomplishments?

Mayor Mack tallies his toils for the first 100 days (give or take a few days)

On Wednesday, October 27, Mayor Tony Mack held a press conference to enumerate the things he's done since taking office on July 1.  In an accompanying and poorly constructed press release titled

Mayor Tony Mack Announces Highlights of First One Hundred Days:

Hope. Dream. Do. How Trenton Makes a Breakthrough

the Mack Administration enumerates a lot of...well...nothing.

For six pages, the Mack flacks assembled a rambling, mismatched cut and paste listing of daily functions and activities that any elected official/administration would go through.  There is no substance; no breakthrough. 

It doesn't take much scrutinizing to realize that the list was assembled out of snippets lifted from various supervisors' reports.

For example, on page four of the document is this tidbit:

• 1719 William Trent House Museum hosted may events for the public such as Getting the House Ready for Summer, Colonial Ice Cream Making, Herbs in the Trent House Garden, Trent’s Enslaved Workers-Theme Tours Garden Theme Tours.

And right below it:

• Fred Miller concert, Art Exhibit Opening, Art/Theatre Camp, Art Exhibit Opening, Battle Against Hunger Event, Garden State Watercolor Exhibit Opening, Gallery Talk, Trenton High School Exhibit Opening

The former was obviously taken from a report on activities held at the Trent House.  It lists a number of the full schedule of activities held there.  These are nothing new.  The non-profit support group the Trent House Association has been programming activities at the city owned facility for years.  It is not an accomplishment of the Mack Administration's first 100 days.  It is a continuation of something already in place.

In the case of the latter the reader is left guessing as to exactly where and what and how the activities were held.  Those in the know would realize that this was a listing of events held at the Trenton City Museum.  The museum is currently housed in Ellarslie Mansion in Cadwalader Park.  Both the building and the surrounding lands are city owned.  The collection, exhibits and programming of the museum are the responsibility of the Trenton Museum Society, another non-profit.  These accomplishments that the Mayor lists as his own are actually due to the Museum Society...solely or in partnership with other groups.

In both of the above cases the Mayor is actually claiming as an "accomplishment" items from ongoing series of events that pre-date his term in office.  We call "FOUL!"

Others have taken note in blogs and comments elsewhere on the Internet of the liberal use of "we" and the poor grammar; mismatched writing styles, etc contained within the press release. It is such a blatant patchwork of poor writing it begs to be printed in a ransom note type font (you know, as seen on TV and in movies, where the kidnapper cuts words from magazines and newspapers and glues them onto a sheet of paper and sends them to the police or whomever).  This begs the question of why the city is paying over $83,000 a year for someone who is supposed to be overseeing "policy and communications" for the mayor.

So with that point, let us leave you with a real list of Mayor Tony Mack's "accomplishments" since taking office on July 1, 2010:

1. One of Mayor Mack's first appointments, Carleton Badger, was a convicted felon.  Mr. Badger "withdrew" from consideration after the press published his criminal history.
2. Mayor Mack pads the city payroll with friends, relatives and the daughter of a city council woman while layoffs loom for nearly 400 city employees (including over 100 police and fire personnel).
3. Mayor Mack's promises to keep the city's four library branches open even on a limited basis failed after he was unable to deliver adequate funding through an outside donor that never materialized (some would argue that never existed).
4. Mayor Mack lied to the city council about his nominee for the lead Municipal Judge seat having completed a full background so they would vote in favor of the appointment.
5. Mayor Mack fumbled the removal of deputy city clerk and former councilwoman Cordelia Staton from her job. He then lied on the record at a city council meeting and tried to implicate the Trentonian in a conspiracy surrounding the police being called to escort Staton from City Hall.
6. Mayor Mack's team failed to communicate openly and in a timely manner when the city's water filtration plant was shut down in early October. We're still waiting for an explanation of what really happened.  And why.
7. Mayor Mack continually submitted and re-submitted resolutions to city council until he got professional services contracts awarded to law firms connected to his transition team and inaugural ball committee. 
8. Mayor Mack's Municipal Judge pick Renee Lammare Sumners (see # 4) is revealed to have a history of passing bad checks to pay for her license to practice law and an unpaid credit card bill of over $2200.00 that resulted in a bench warrant for her arrest to be issued in September.
9. Mayor Mack's total mishandling of the city's affairs (and yes, we all agree he inherited a mess, but what has he done to mitigate that?  NOTHING!) may weigh heavily in the Governor's final decision on how much "transitional aid" the city gets from the state.

Do I need to go on?

For those who keep talking recall, you had better start the search for a viable replacement or we are going to be in worse shape one year from now.