The Comedians

If, as has been said, the Secret to Comedy is Timing, then those folks down at City Hall should rename their digs the Trenton Friars Club. Because they have some exquisitely-timed jokes scheduled for this coming Thursday night’s session – or should I say set? – at City Council.

I refer to this agenda item, the last scheduled docket item of of the evening:

That’s right. Along with their brethren at the Mercer County Board of Freeholders, Trenton’s Council will deliberate raises for themselves as well as Mayor Eric Jackson, his chief of Staff, the City’s Municipal Judges, and Department Directors.

Before talking about this Trenton raise proposal, a few lines about Mercer County, to compare and contrast the City’s plan. At the beginning of this year, the Freeholders voted for themselves, County Executive Brian Hughes and several department directors a raise of 4%, retroactive a full year to January 1, 2015. I had problems with that  proposal and shared my opinion with the Freeholders at the time. You may be interested to know I received not one reply to my note. So much for constituent communication. Whatever.

This morning, we read that the Freeholders will vote this Thursday, barely seven months later to award themselves, as well again as County Exec Hughes and some department directors an additional 2 percent bump, once again retroactive but this time only to January 1 of this year 2016.  The two actions represent then a total six percent increase over 2 years, an average 3 %.

Compared to Trenton’s plan, the County comes off as models of fiscal rectitude. Attached to the text of Ordinance 16-50, helpfully provided by Jim Carlucci – thanks, Jim! – is a memo by City Business Administrator Terry McEwen outlining the proposed salaries for the city’s officials over the next three years. They are generous increases.

For Mayor Eric Jackson, BA McEwen, Department Directors, and Judges, the proposed salary bumps are stated as 3.3% this year (retroactive to January 1; I suppose some in City Hall have watched what the County does!), then a big jump of 5.8% in 2017, and a more reasonable (compared to 2017, that is) adjustment of only 5.6% for 2018. The cumulative increase is 15.5% for all of these officials, or around 5.2% on average. This is well above the Freeholders’ measly 3% annual raise over 2 years.

Councilmembers will do almost as well as the Administration. For their part-time positions, the increase for 2016 is proposed to be a whopping 12.5% compared to last year, with the subsequent bumps for 2017 and 2018 only 1.1% each year.

However, the big winner out of this proposal is Francis Blanco, Mayor Jackson’s Chief of Staff. Ms. Blanco is set to receive increases over the next few years totaling 19.68%, or 6.56% on average per year. Sweet!

All of these proposed increases should be looked at against the general economic background of the last few years, when inflation and cost of living increases have been hovering around the 1%-2% range. Any wage increases in that range can be considered simply keeping up with inflation. I believe this is the general range that the City of Trenton has been seeking in some of their labor negotiations for new union contracts.

Wage increases above the rate of inflation are generally considered merit increases. I would then feel very comfortable in saying that the increases being sought by the Jackson Administration for themselves constitutes merit increases. And that is hilarious.

To be fair, these proposed increases are not as outrageous as those proposed by Tony Mack a couple of years ago, but they are still pretty funny.

So, you may ask, what’s so amusing about this proposal? It’s all in the timing! Coincidentally, this Salary Ordinance is included in the same docket that has several other items that show Trenton is no better off, and no better able to afford merit raises for his elected and appointed officials now than it was 4 years ago.

Let’s take a look!

Thursday’s Council Meeting will also include several other docket items of interest. For instance, this one:

Hmm, pending litigation? About the de3velopment at the former Champale factory site? What’s that about? Since this is to be discussed in Executive Session, we may not hear any details about it. Then again, we might. Later on the agenda is this item:

Looks like this matter is actually pretty far along, and as usual, the City is paying to settle the matter. How much? I expect we’ll find out. Trenton often settles, and always pays. Googling the phrase “Trenton Council settles” returns quite a list. Here’s Page One of the results. Spoiler alert: one of these items doesn’t belong to Trenton. NJ. Everything else, sadly, does.

You get the picture. Trenton Gets Sued, We Pay The Dude!

But wait! There’s more:

We all know what Hotel is located at 1 West Lafayette Street. Five months after we read of ongoing financial problems at the Wyndham Garden Hotel, problems that included a balance of unpaid property taxes to the City of $632,510 and unpaid sewer and water charges of $28K, we see that a Tax Sale Certificate for the hotel property may be assigned. This generally, but not always, is an action that takes place as part of a foreclosure action. What does this all mean for the formerly City-owned hotel, for which the City is still responsible of millions of dollars in annual debt service? I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound good. Is it possible that one of the largest, if not the largest, privately-owned property, as well as commercial employer, is in danger of closing, again? Will this jeopardize the future possibility of collecting the assessed annual $1.9 Million in property taxes the place is supposed to pay? Will this be another multi-million dollar hole to fill in the City’s Budget?

The above are just the items that are on the Council’s docket along with the proposal for the salary raises. This also should be looked at in the context of a number of other incidents over the recent past that must call into question the management skills of this Administration.

For instance, just this month we’ve seen the problems associated with the contracts to operate the City’s public swimming pools. This year, the City managed to attract only two proposals to run the pools this summer. The City hired the low bidder, USA Management, but fired them half way into the season. The City then turned to the other remaining bidder, the Trenton YMCA, to take over the contract until the end of the summer. This mishigas, I wrote last month, ended up costing the City, as these things usually do: “It looks like we are on track to be spending about: 65% more than the original USA contract amount; 20% more than the Y’s bid this year; 42% more than the Y’s 2015 contract; and about 50% more than the Y’s 2014 contract.”

Don’t forget a City contracting process that resulted in the award of the City’s Information Technology contract to a little-known and little-qualified company that was the third most-expensive out of 12 proposals received.

Last, but certainly not least, the same City Administration that saw Five Million Dollars of payroll tax money swindled right from under its collective nose, and which so far has refused to say if it has taken any action to prevent a future similar occurrence, now wants to give itself a raise.

For a job well done, no doubt.

THAT’s what I find so funny about this!

Recent history before this week’s Council meeting shows how many bad decisions this Administration has made – and continue to make – and how arrogantly they have refused to take any actions to either replace the personnel responsible or fix broken policies and procedures. That no one has been fired in City Hall for the Payroll theft is still mind-boggling to me. That many of the Administrators and Directors are still employed who ignored multiple warnings and red flags is an ongoing scandal that no one in the City is willing to face up to.

And they pick this week to ask for raises, when Council’s docket for Thursday nicely demonstrates we are still drunkenly spending money like we’re literally made of the stuff.

That’s just hysterical! Who writes all their material? They are comedy geniuses!

Too bad the joke is on us.