Fed up?

The arrest last week of former Trenton chief of staff Paul Sigmund brought out the expected waves of compassion from the public.  To be sure, everyone wishes Mr. Sigmund well on his journey down the long road of recovery. 

What can't be overlooked in this matter, however, is the fact that Mr. Sigmund should have never been hired by Mayor Mack in the first place. 

The past two days, letters to the editor have appeared in the Times addressing this situation.  On May, 9 we read this:

Noblesse oblige


The writer of the letter "Enough, already" (May 6) complains that The Times has published "humiliating photos of the son of one of the oldest and most respected families in Mercer County."

This newspaper has not humiliated the Sigmund family; Paul Sigmund IV did that all on his own. I, for one, would expect more of someone like Mr. Sigmund. This is a man born with all the advantages, all the connections, all the chances that most of us just dream about. I think it's deplorable that Mr. Sigmund behaved in such an irresponsible, selfish and thoughtless manner.

Patricia H. Stewart,
Trenton

And on May 10, this letter appeared:

A gaggle of rogues plummet from power

I applaud The Times for often showing the Trenton mayor's disgraced former chief of staff, Paul Sigmund IV, in handcuffs on Page One (letter, "Enough, already," May 6). He deserves the newspaper's shaming and so much more. As for his "respected Mercer County family," it is surely quite less so now. They have a lot to explain, if they hid the truth from the citizens of Trenton.

I urge The Times to publish a rogues' gallery of all the corrupt, unethical or incompetent high-level city appointees once placed in positions of trust and power by the good mayor of Trenton. Remind the newspaper's readers and the taxpayers and voters of the city that birds of a feather flock together. It is "enough, already." Trenton Mayor Tony Mack should resign before he does any more damage to the reputation of the Capital City, and all of his unworthy henchmen should be fired.

William E. Andersen,
West Windsor

Both writers make valid points.

The Times (of Trenton), the Trentonian, the New York Times, WPVI-6 none of the media outlets created this situation.  It may be argued that they have surely capitalized on the newsworthy event of a high-ranking official of New Jersey's capital city being arrested for drug possession and assaulting the arresting officers.  The fact that the official is the scion of a notable family just adds to the interest factor.  The humiliation is totally the responsibility of Mr. Sigmund.

Mr. Andersen's letter is about another humiliation...that perpetrated by the Tony Mack administration with his string of bad choices for appointees.  The suggestion that Mayor Mack step down is not an unreasonable one. 

For those who might question the right of a non-Trenton resident weighing in on the matter we would respond, "and why not?"

The taxpayers of the state of New Jersey have underwritten Trenton's mismanagement for way too long now.  They should have the right to voice their opinion on whether or not the city's leadership is doing a good job.  Surely, the voters of the city of Trenton have not shown they are up to the task.

After electing the previous mayor to five terms the voters seem to have lost their way.  From a field of 10 possible replacements running in last May's election, Mayor Mack won the runoff in June.  Since then, the city has suffered one humiliation after another. (The saga has been reported here and elsewhere, we won't delve into yet again).

There is a chance for the voters to redeem themselves.  Anytime after this Thursday, May 12, a recall effort can be launched.

It is a daunting task with a maze-like process that is bound (designed?) to trip up the unprepared.  But it can be done.

For it to succeed, Trentonians must keep a few things in mind.

The three person recall committee needs to be representative of the city populous. 
There should only be one committee to recall.  Multiple entities will just dilute and derail the process.  Regardless of one's reasoning for wanting to remove the Mayor (or a council member...they are subject to recall as well), you must join together over the common bond of wanting to improve things in the city.
Similarly, any individual wanting to run to replace a possibly recalled official should be vetted and agreed upon collectively.  Too many candidates will just make it that much easier for the status to remain quo.
Get organized and get smart.  The signature drive is a large hurdle to get over in the process. Work together and consider using centralized signature collection locations rather than relying mostly on door-to-door canvassing.

The clock is ticking, Trenton.  Nearly everyone you meet is talking about the needed changes in city government.  You can make it happen.

Or you can be humiliated again.

That was close!

By a margin of approximately 3 to 2, Mercer County voters chose to keep Paula Sollami-Covello as their County Clerk rather than hand the office to former Trenton City Councilman Gino Melone.

Guess Gino finally coming out as a closeted Republican after all those years pretending to be a Democrat didn't win over any voters.

Or was it the electorate's memory of the games Gino played going into his final term on Trenton's council.

At that time Melone shepherded Doug Palmer's slate of at-large candidates around the East Ward to get them votes with the hopes of securing the council presidency for himself.  That ploy didn't work either.

We don't mean to pick solely on Gino.  All politicians and would-be candidates should take note of his plight.

You'll win office once in awhile with your craft and cunning but sooner or later the voters will tire of your games and duplicity.  Then you will be left out in the cold.

Serve the public and you can serve for a very long time and move up the ladder.  Serve yourself and eventually you will pay.

Where did they go?

Has the City of Trenton mysteriously reduced its payroll by hundreds of people?

We were doing a little online research last week for a project and discovered something odd on the Data Universe site run by the Asbury Park Press.

On this particular site, you can do searches on NJ Public Employees to check salary records as they relate to the public pensions.

In the past, if we wanted to see…for instance…how much Mr. Palmer was paid, you could plug his name and Trenton City into the appropriate boxes on the search form and within moments up would pop a grid with the information you wanted. It’s all legit and all public information.

The other day when we checked, we couldn’t find that information any longer. In fact, we could only find information on 19 city employees contributing to the Public Employees Retirement System. Four of them were Councilpersons Annette Lartigue, Cordelia Staton, Gino Melone and Paul Pintella.

Gone was the Mayor, Chief of Staff, Department Heads, etc. And we plugged in names of Division Directors and Staff people, still no information.

Checking further…we could find 574 Trenton employees enrolled in the Police and Fire Retirement System.

At the Board of Education, there are the records of 799 employees who pay into the Public Employees Retirement System available. Another 1173 school employees are in the Teachers Pension and Annuity Fund.

Similarly, the Trenton Community Charter School has 85 employees show up on the listing.

The Trenton Housing Authority has 58 employees on the books and eight show up under the Trenton Parking Authority records.

But where are the Mayor and the bulk of the City of Trenton employees?

Why aren’t their records available online?

Is this part of the legal tussle over the allegedly illegal raises that city council unquestioningly/unknowingly approved for the Mayor and his administration staff in a questionable resolution in 2008?

Has the administration taken all the public employee (with the exception of the 19 names we found) somehow out of the public record in an effort to hide what certain people were being paid? Was this done, in part, to cover up the fact that the Mayor and Department Director salaries were no longer published in the ordinances as they had been prior to the raise granted in 2003? Or in part to hide the fact that these same salaries were not fixed by ordinance but rather a salary range had been adopted…possibly illegally, with the Mayor approving salaries at his discretion…without council’s knowing consent?

We think this stinks of very fishy business and the city administration needs to make sure this information is publicly available.

And all those wannabes vying for the big chair in the office on the second floor of City Hall should take heed. A pledge to return the city to fixed salaries (not ranges) adopted by ordinance and published is required if you want the citizens of Trenton to vote for you.

Come clean, Palmer

Admit there was no 10 year plan

Doug Palmer and his acolytes are fighting hard to ram the sell off of the outlaying water distribution system down the throats of Trenton’s taxpayers.

As has been noted on Greg Forester’s blog, the administration seems a little worried that the petition currently circulating might be successful in at least delaying if not stopping the sale.

And without a doubt, if the proposed $80 million sale doesn’t go through the City of Trenton’s financial picture darkens considerably. That translates to higher property taxes.

It is very difficult, however, to accept the “official” line that this deal has been worked on for 10 years.

Let’s go back to January of 2003 when then Times reporter Albert Raboteau reported officials in the suburbs were questioning the sudden increase in money being taken from the water utility to pay for city services, including all or part of the salaries of three of Doug Palmer’s aides.

So was there really a plan afoot to sell off the water utility five years ago? Was part of that plan to plunder and pillage the resources of that asset and then try to sell it off for cold cash once the Palmer administration couldn’t wring another nickel out of it?

And what about the rate increase enacted in September of 2006 that increased suburban water rates some 17% and the rates for water customers within the city by 31%? Was that part of the long range plan to sell off the outside infrastructure?

In typical Palmer fashion…his mismanagement decisions are made based upon what is most expedient to his personal agenda and not that of the city he purports to serve yet long ago abandoned.

The city has been in a downward fiscal spiral for more than a decade. Rather than tighten up the purse strings in city hall and hold the line on budget items, Palmer…with the able and apparently willing assistance of former Business Administrator Jane Feigenbaum literally robbed from Peter (the water utility) to pay Paul (the ballooning costs of a bloated administration).

At no time did anyone from the Palmer administration rein in the ridiculous spending at city hall by excising superfluous aides, vehicles, etc. or eliminating services that were duplicated elsewhere. Instead, they just kept crying poor to the state for more money and taking from the water utility surplus what rightfully should have been returned in the way of system improvements and holding down usage rates.

Instead, the spending has continued unchecked until the only way to fill the gap is to divest the city of the outlaying parts of the water utility for a chunk of cash that might, conveniently, hold tax increases to a tolerable level until the end of the current term.
The Palmer administration has yet to satisfactorily demonstrate any rational attempt to reduce spending through cutting the layers of staff in the Mayor’s office, curbing personal use of city vehicles (or shrinking the size of the take home car fleet).

For years people and some elected officials have pointed out that if the city was more diligent in enforcing its laws and collecting fines, we’d be in better financial shape. But that has not happened either.

Yet we are to believe that the plan for the last decade has been to sell off the portion of the water utility serves customers outside of the city limits. But we never heard of this long range plan until Palmer and company felt they had the citizens over the barrel by delaying a city budget until it was so late that the only answer appears to be selling off the water system or face huge tax increases. If this is such a good idea, why aren’t we getting rid of the entire water system and thus reducing the city’s huge expense to maintain and staff the utility?

A plan that supposedly has been in the works for 10 years should have been brought to light and discussed openly so long before it was time to sign the sale agreement. That might have eliminated some of the resistance and backlash.

If Palmer and company want us to truly accept and believe this sale is the end result of a long-rage plan, show us the documentation. Take us through the timeline of the steps taken to position the city to benefit now and going forward from this proposed sale.

It is obvious that one cannot document something that didn’t exist.

The notion that this plan has been in the works for a decade is another Palmer pipe dream that is turning into a hose job for the citizens of Trenton.

Listen up!

Some notes for Council President Paul Pintella and the administration:

Point number one (from the City Ordinances):

§ A316-2. Rules.
The following rules shall govern the Council and its meetings:
RULE I
Governing Rules
Except as may be provided in the Charter, questions of order, the organization and the conduct of business of the Council shall be governed by Robert's Rules of Order in all cases to which they are applicable, and in which they are not inconsistent with these rules.

Get a copy of the book and learn how to properly conduct a meeting.

Point number two (also from the city ordinances, note especially the italicized section):

§ 2-9. Removal.
A. Pursuant to the Charter, N.J.S.A. 40:69A-37 and 40:69A-43:
(1) The Mayor, in his/her discretion, may remove any department head after notice and an opportunity to be heard. Prior to removing a department head, the Mayor shall first file written notice of his/her intention with the Council, and such removal shall become effective on the 20th day after the filing of the notice, unless prior thereto the Council shall have adopted a resolution by a two-thirds vote of the whole number of the Council disapproving the removal.
(2) The Council may, for cause, remove any municipal officer other than the Mayor or a member of Council.
(3) The Council shall consider notices under Subsection A(1) above and motions under Subsection A(2) above only after notice and an opportunity to be heard are given to the affected officer. The Clerk shall forthwith cause a copy of the notice or motion, as the case may be, together with a statement of the charges involved and notice of the time and place fixed for hearing to be served personally, or by registered mail, upon the officer affected. The hearing shall be held not less than 10 days nor more than 15 days after the date of such service. The hearing shall be open to the public.

B. Pursuant to the Charter, Council may veto a removal under Subsection A(1) above, by a two-thirds vote of the Council and may adopt or defeat a motion under Subsection A(2) above, by a majority vote of the Council.

Take heed that you can and should consider the removal of any municipal officer who consistently ignores the reasonable requests for information made by you and/or your colleagues on behalf of the citizens of Trenton you were elected to serve.

(Are you paying attention Ms. Feigenbaum, Ms. Haynes, Mr. Gonzalez, Mr. Santiago?)

Now you’ve got one day to become familiar with Roberts Rules of Order and the Administration has one day to gather the information requested last month by Mr. Coston. Let’s see if you all can manage to come together on Tuesday and get the City’s business done in an intelligent and meaningful manner.