This morning, we read one article describing how so many details of the Mayor’s “Comprehensive Crime Initiative” are missing. Namely, how the Police Department will be configured and scheduled during “All Hands on Deck” emergencies; and how the city will be able to afford the massive overtime such scheduling will likely entail. Just a few small details like that.
Tony Mack is quoted today as saying, “If somebody can present something better, it can be changed. I think it’s a great opportunity for us to solve a major issue in our city, and everyone I’ve spoken to today is excited about the comprehensive approach we’re taking and excited about the positive outcome.”
Translation: the Mayor seems to be content to let someone else work out the details; he’s the “vision” guy. TPD’s senior captain on duty this week, Fred Reister, is quoted as saying that Mack has had zero contact with senior officers about the plan since his press conference. All the ensuing confusion caused in the wake of his announcement the Mayor recognizes as “excitement.”
The Times also features an editorial this morning chiding the Mayor for the “library advisory team” whose actions and recommendations he cited as the reason he rejected the CityWorks proposal to lease the East Trenton Branch as a community training center and lending library. The Times is more generous than I: its editorial allows that this team “barely exists.” I think it’s entirely a fig leaf, a lie intended to cover up the Mayor’s inaction and malign neglect. But, our difference is really more one of degree than of kind. We are in agreement that the Mayor needs to be called out on this.
But with all this flurry of activity on public safety and public libraries that is awfully lacking on any real action, the Mayor is actually getting something done, at least when it comes to his new pet project.
This is the door to Room 309 in Trenton’s City Hall. Tony Mack’s “Mayor’s Commission on International Business Affairs (CIBA) is, apparently open for business. And it is open for business inside City Hall without any approvals for this “Commission” having been granted by City Council, nor by the State Department of Community Affairs (DCA). How about that!
In a piece earlier this week, I described in broad strokes how the Taxpayers of Trenton are on the hook for at least $100,000 in city resources for this enterprise, and as much as a Quarter-Million Dollars should the Commission fall short in its ambitious target for Corporate Sponsorships.
So, what will CIBA be spending all this money on, you ask? Good question.
I have no specific narrative description of all the activities to be undertaken by the Commission in its first year, only the labels on several budget lines, which are organized by Month.
For our current month, $4000 was set aside for the festivities held last Friday, when the “Commission” was sworn in and several African and Caribbean ambassadors were feted with local dignitaries. Another $2500 is described as going to a “Veterans Workshop.”
Throughout the year, there are several trade missions abroad that are anticipated: one to Trinidad & Tobago in June; one to Ghana/Liberia in September; and one to “China or Libya or Russia” in December.
The budget is loaded with such costs for “planning” for these trade missions; and for extensive materials and printing for informational and sales packets; and for otherwise-unexplained “Gifts” during these trade missions of $7400 per trade mission. And there is a gala Business Roundtable and Award Dinner planned for November, with Open Bar I might add.
All this does not come cheap. As mentioned above, the budget totals a little under $243,000.
But curiously, there are no actual costs for the Trade Missions themselves. No air travel, no ground transportation, no hotels, no meals, no incidental expenses. Nothing. Very, very Odd.
Where are those costs? Who is intended to travel on these “trade missions?” Who pays for them? What is a likely itinerary for these missions? What are the objectives for the City of Trenton and local businesses? Are there customers in “China or Libya or Russia” for what Trenton Makes? Really? Really???
No one knows. There has been to date no discussion of this enterprise, no deliberation by Council, no vetting by the State of New Jersey.
At the same time that the Mayor announces a “comprehensive initiative” on crime, with zero details worked out in advance; at the same time he stonewalls on public libraries with a Potemkin “advisory team;” at the same time the city boils during a winter crime wave; Tony Mack has the time and money to provide City Hall offices and up to a Quarter Million Dollars to this farce of an International Business Commission.
There is a City Council session next week (Tuesday 1/31 at 4PM – inconvenient, I know, for anyone with a day job) to publicly discuss the Budget for the Office of the Mayor for the current fiscal year. Since the Mayor’s Executive Order establishing the Commission states he is paying “all the expenses” for this body out of his departmental budget, I suggest this might be the right occasion to ask Tony Mack, “What the Hell Are You Thinking?”
Trenton HAS become a banana republic.