So, What's New?

A couple of days ago, columnist LA Parker wrote in the Trentonian about “an emergency contract with an engineering company to oversee operations at the troubled Trenton Water Works facility.” He wrote, “Trenton has signed a 12-month agreement with engineering firm Wade Trim in an attempt to rectify serious problems at the facility that delivers water to 225,000 residents in Trenton, Hamilton, Lawrence, Ewing and Hopewell townships.” Mr. Parker stated that City Public Works Director Merkle Cherry “could not comment” on that deal. The outgoing mayor “could not be reached for comment,” either. The Trentonian had better luck getting comment in a later piece.

This morning, Rob Jennings reports the same news in the Trenton Times. But Mr. Jennings had more luck than the Trentonian initially did. He quoted the Administration’s spokesperson Michael Huckabee Walker, who confirmed the reporting in both newspapers, saying the deal “is all part of [the outgoing mayor]’s plan to bolster” the ailing public utility. It’s all part of a plan, folks! They planned this!

If you read this space, you heard a week ago that the engineering firm of Wade Trim was hired by Trenton to assume managerial and operational control of the troubled Water Works. I had as much luck as LA Parker getting anyone in the City to respond to me, which is none.

So, as Hank Williams sang, “The news is out all over town,” that Wade Trim’s been seen out running around.  Guess who hasn’t yet heard about the new hire?

Yep. You’re right. Any of the 225,000 customers of the Trenton Water Works. Unless they read the papers or local blogs, that is.

Don’t get me wrong. The City of Trenton has posted notices about the Water Works recently. Lots of them. If you look at the front page of the Trenton city website, you will see the headlines of 20 notices. No fewer than 8 of them are about Trenton’s water. Boil water notices, lifting of boil water notices, conservation notices, lifting of conservation notices, pink water notices. A lot of notices.

To put this in some perspective, of the 20 current notices on the City’s front page, the next highest number, 6, concerned items connected with extreme winter weather. So, in the middle of winter, just consider there are more notices about the man-made screw-ups and crises at the Trenton Water Works than there are about the severities of Mother Nature’s extreme behavior lately.

How about that! Outstanding job, guys.

A lot of these notices were issued after long delay, which rankled a lot of people. But the delays in those notices were measured in hours. News about Wade Trim coming in as a potential solution to TWW’s current problems for over a week now, and we’ve heard nothing official from anyone in the City of Trenton or the Water Works.

Why in the world is this so?

I haven’t a clue.

Perhaps it’s because the outgoing mayor announced last Friday “that my work as mayor is complete,” and he no longer has to worry about such things as citizen and customer engagement and communication.

The link to the outgoing mayor’s “Mission Complete” announcement last Friday is right up there on Trenton’s front page, appropriately alongside all of the other man-made and natural disasters.

This isn’t acceptable. Hiring Wade Trim and getting them on the ground at the Trenton Water Works is the first critical step in restoring to reliability and dependability the utility that close to a quarter million Mercer County residents in the City and in the surrounding Townships. It’s a move that customers would like to hear and know about. This affects their lives, after all.

But they aren’t hearing about it from the City. Which is, sadly, all too typical of the City of Trenton.

Which is one of the big reasons why the current mayor, is now the outgoing mayor of Trenton.