Beautiful Trenton

Warming up for another chorus of Kumbaya

Tuesday night a group of concerned citizens will gather at Thomas Edison College on W. State Street to begin a dialogue about Trenton.

Reportedly, organizers of the event want to bring people together to identify concerns and issues that would then be placed in front of all the city council and mayoral candidates in the May 2010 municipal election.

Now don’t get us wrong. Anytime citizens come together with the intent to make things better is good. However, this most recent initiative leaves us scratching our head.

Aren’t there already groups in place that are or should be dealing with this? There are a variety of neighborhood based civic associations and the umbrella Trenton Council of Civic Associations who would seem naturals at generating the conversation.

There is the North Ward Citizen’s Action Coalition and Trenton Residents Action Coalition who have, whether you agree with them or not, spearheaded some pretty serious activity over the past couple of years. Fighting flagrant violations of Trenton’s residency ordinance, challenging the division and sell-off of part of the municipal water system are just two of the initiatives these groups have taken on.

Don’t we already know what the concerns are in this town? Do we need to convene another meeting to talk about issues that we are already familiar with and are (or should be) discussing?

Let’s be serious…talking about stuff we are already talking about and have been talking about for at least a decade or two is a waste of time if you don’t offer up some real concrete proposals aimed at making needed changes. We don’t need more questions; we need answers...and action.

Beautiful Trenton sounds like a civic version of a marriage encounter session. You can talk all you want, but if that discussion doesn’t lead to action, what is the point.

We suggest the first order of business on the Beautiful Trenton agenda should be to change its name. Beauty, as we have been taught, is but skin deep. Superficial would be another word.

Beautiful dreamers, take heed. Action, as we know, speaks louder than words and that is what is needed now.