Pretty Skewed Set of Priorities

I am reminded this morning of Matthew 7:5 –

“You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Why, you ask? Because of a post yesterday on her Facebook page from City Councilwoman At Large Phyllis Holly Ward. I take the liberty of re-posting it here.

“NEVER stop dreaming and setting goals for your self! Yesterday I reached another one of my goals. “My goal in this first term in office was to create a Statewide Organization for City Council members (past and present) We are the only legislative body that does not have an organization to learn and network. Determined to make this happen over the past two years I reached out to many sources to help. Yesterday in partnership with the NJSLOM we held the first ever conference session in A.C. for City Council members. We had a great panel of statewide council and attorney speakers. It was a huge success with over 115 Council members/ Mayors/ Attorneys attending the session and joining in to start the first ever City Council organization. The word has spread so quickly this morning I have already received calls from council members in other States eager to join in and the make organization a National one. WOW!”

Wow, indeed. In principle, there is nothing wrong with her idea, in itself. But when the business of running the City of Trenton has been woefully ignored by this City Council, I find it nothing short of frivolous and pathetic to read that this effort is called “My goal in this first term in office.”

On some level, I suppose, I can appreciate that for a Trenton council person with little else to show for their 3 1/2 years in office, one might be a little desperate to find something – one thing – that could be considered a positive accomplishment. But that does not detract from how poorly timed and framed Ms. Holly Ward’s note was. An organization of City Council members sure looks like a speck to me, compared with the logs that the good Councilwoman should be dealing with.

This comes, after all, during a week of more press accounts of the continuing mendacity and corruption in Trenton’s city government, and Council’s utter impotence in dealing with any of it.

For example, there is this morning’s news about Business Administrator Sam Hutchinson. After months of defying Council as well as the City’s Law Department by insisting that his practice of paying a staffer with Federal funds was legal and proper, the BA has now admitted that, oops, it wasn’t!

Fewer than 10 days ago, Mr. Hutchinson – whose prior work experience before coming to the City included 20 years as a lawyer with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) – swore up and down that using HUD funds was OK: “I in no way aimed at skirting federal guidelines,” he told The Times, while at the same time a memo from City Housing Director and former Law Department Director Walter Denson written last month was no doubt sitting in his inbox asking “Why does he [ Hutchinson] Continue To Violate Federal Rules!” (sic).

Council huffed and puffed last week about responding to Hutchinson’s stubborn resistance: “City Council sent a letter to Mayor Tony Mack on Oct. 30 asking the mayor to intervene and force Hutchinson to return Robinson to the department of Housing and Economic Development. But Mack has declined to say whether he will comply, explaining that he does not discuss personnel issues.”

Right. Like that would ever happen.

Council, I am sure, will let this incident slide. Why should we expect them to do any thing in response to Hutchinson? After all, the Council was content to be openly lied to in open Council session last week by Fuckup Without Portfolio Anthony Roberts.

In a session where the FWP was supposed to explain why the City’s Recreation Department was spending so many City dollars on events and programs Council never authorized, Roberts openly bullshitted the members. He denied that City funds were used on events such as this weekend’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. “All of the events you see in recreation that are supported by the mayor are privately funded,” he [lied], presumably with a straight face. He refused to disclose the identities of any of the “private funders.”

However, his assertion was quickly shot down.  In that same Times article,  BA Hutchinson (for however much his statements are worth!) and City Budget Director Elana Chan “said no donations have recorded in the city’s accounts and there is no amount included in the city’s budget for any of the events, including the parade. ‘We are not aware of these donations,’ Hutchinson said.”

So, will City Council respond to Roberts contemptuous falsehoods made to them in open session?

What do you think?

For over three years, in the face of continued – no, uninterrupted – incompetence and corruption on the part of this Administration, this Council has not once taken any action to remove idiots like Roberts and Hutchinson, or the many who came before them, from their positions. This space has on multiple occasions –here, and here for starters – tried to remind the Honorable Members that they had the power to fire the sorry ass of any of these clowns other than the Indicted Clown-in-Chief per our City Ordinance.

Have they tried? Ever? Apart from one sad attempt to enforce the 90-day terms of appointed Acting City Directors, an effort easily swatted aside by the Indicted One, the answer is NO.

Time and again, for over three years this Council has been lied to, misled, hornswaggled, swindled, robbed, pickpocketed, pilfered, filched and ripped-off. Trenton, and its poor citizens are the worse off for it.

That’s why the boast by Ms. Holly-Ward that she is proud of starting a first-ever organization of City Council members strikes me this morning as profoundly off-key. She has one pretty skewed set of priorities to think that things are going so well in Trenton for her and her colleagues that she can work on something like this.

This Council has too many gigunda logs in its collective eye to waste precious energy dealing with collegial specks in the eyes of fellow Jersey Council members. Nice idea, maybe, but there’s too much going on here they need to attend to, and that they have failed to address.

Ms. Holly-Ward and each of her six colleagues who collectively have failed in their job, deserve no more than this current term in office.

If they had any honor left they would acknowledge that their best was in no way good enough, and step aside from any re-election effort.

But I don’t expect that. Each will probably point to all the others and say “I tried to do my best, but it was those other guys on Council, and the Mayor, and DCA, and the economy who made it impossible for me. I deserve another chance. With a new mayor and new Council members, I will be able to get something done.”

I don’t buy it. They had their chance. They are done.