Who's Irresponsible?

So, the Current Occupant of the Mayor’s office in this town is trying to appear that he is still relevant and popular, this time by shamelessly pandering to the Senior Citizens of Trenton. After West Ward Councilman Zachary Chester was quoted in a Trenton Times article on Sunday by Erin Duffy, saying that possible budget cuts to items such as two of the city’s four senior centers might be a way to partially offset a projected property tax increase of 19 cents per $100 of assessed value, the Occupant issued another Press Release.

This is his preferred method of communication these days, it seems. He asks someone in his Administration with a decent grasp on the niceties of written English to write it for him so that it is at least grammatical, if a little on the melodramatic side. It allows him to make a statement without exposing himself to live reporters and leaving himself vulnerable to embarrassing and revealing questions. And it allows him to keep alive the illusion that he is earning his paycheck and still on the job.

Whatever.

Anyway, the press release – here, if you care to read it, although it’s only more of the same drivel he’s known for – considers such talk of reducing expenses to offset what would be the highest taxes in the County (more on that below) as scandalous and “irresponsible.” He defends his budget proposal as “continu[ing] the long tradition of funding various programs related to human services.” A long tradition, that is, of funding various programs this City can no longer afford!

The Occupant is very fond of using the word “irresponsible.” I’m sorry, but any guy who’s sweating out the days until an almost certain Federal corruption indictment by sleeping on his brother’s couch (a brother, by the way, waiting for his own indictment) because he can no longer afford his own house, should be very, very careful when throwing out words like “irresponsible.” You know?

The plain truth is that this City is broke, and can not afford a tax increase remotely approaching 19 cents. Especially when that proposed tax increase is to help pay for things like Heritage Days, Parades, Zombie Libraries, a fleet of vehicles that are driven by city employees who either don’t live here or who should have no business driving taxpayer vehicles, subsidies to Little League teams, or an abundance of senior centers.

We have a long tradition of funding such items, but Reality – like the FBI – has a way of knocking on our door and demanding our attention at inconvenient times. Mr. Chester is not only being Responsible and Professional when he talks about the tough choices we must face in adopting a budget for the current fiscal year, but he is also facing Reality.

Unlike the Occupant.

Back to the tax rate for a moment. It is unconscionable that we seem to be staring at a tax rate that would be the highest in Mercer, and no doubt among the highest in the State. It’s certainly not the case that those taxes would pay for the finest services in the County. Far from it. It is vital for City Council to work with the more professional city workers in the Finance and Budget departments to take a scalpel and if necessary a cleaver to the proposed budget, to eliminate the dead weight and the unnecessary expenditures in that document. Council also needs desperately to look at expanding revenues. Sustainable and recurring would be good, but one-off’s should probably also get a look.

However, these efforts – vital as they are – are not enough. Council needs to do some other things. One of those should be an attempt to knock down that catastrophic tax rate by looking at city-wide property re-evaluation.

No one has talked about re-evaluation since the 2010 campaigns, and very few people were talking about that even then. Here’s one old piece from that era discussing it , for more details if you like them. For now, I will just say that a fair property re-evaluation intended as revenue-neutral would likely result in property owners paying a lower stated rate based on higher assessed property values. That lower stated rate might – might! – help a tiny, tiny bit to attract investment opportunities to Trenton. Or at the very least, not leave Trenton with a suicidally high tax rate tied around our necks.

However, a successful re-evaluation (successful meaning a lower effective rate and current property owners paying the same in their quarterly bills) depends on a key assumption: that there still exists  a big difference between current assessed values and market values. As the Occupant pointed out in June, current assessments are about 72% of market value, closer than they’ve been in years. Of course, that’s only because the market value of Trenton property dropped a Quarter Billion Dollars last year. The Current Occupant was quite proud of that. The idiot.

So we are in tough seas here. Council must be responsible, and look at both cutting expenses and bringing money in. Council also has to do the tough work of starting to re-build Trenton’s finances from the ground up. One way to do that is to look hard at re-evaluation.

The City also has to (pardon my French) get its shit together on how it’s running this place. News about such items as making a contractor wait over a year to get paid isn’t good.

The long-running mismanagement at the Trenton Water Works – in which the Trenton put many of its own employees on the TWW payroll rather than the City’s – may be coming to an end. A settlement to a years-old lawsuit from the surrounding Townships against the City over a lot of this management abuse is reportedly close to agreement. This settlement will mean more involvement by the Townships in running the utility providing water to their citizens as well as ours. More involvement will mean more transparency in the TWW budget, and hopefully fewer shenanigans.

Trenton’s Council should get ready for that and finally move on that long-proposed measure to re-align the Water Works and the Sewer Utility into its own department, removing it from Trenton Public Works.

Council has quite a full plate. They should get moving right away. And not be distracted by any noise or whining coming from the Current Occupant of the office down the hall. He’s Irrelevant. And Irresponsible.