Bowie of Suburbia

New Brunswick Trash Ordinance Could Disproportionately Affect Students. Where's Rutgers?

2011-08-02T14:12:00.005-04:00

The City of New Brunswick, NJ, is considering an ordinance that places a moratorium on bulk trash pickup between May and June. This, of course, just so happens to be when most Rutgers students living off campus move out of their apartments resulting in large levels of bulk items lining city streets. To be sure, it's a massive undertaking for the city to handle bulk pickup this time of year, but as the host of a University whose students call New Brunswick home, it's striking that this law specifically targets students, leaving them, and their landlords, in the lurch.

Why? Because if tenants don't want to risk losing their security deposits due to city fines levied on their landlords, they're going to have to pay to have their trash removed, or take other measures that aren't necessary other times of the year when there would be regular bulk pickup. This makes this measure unfair because it disproportionately affects a specific portion of the city's resident base.

According to a news release from Amy Braunstein, an elected member of the municipal Democratic Party committee, "first-offense fines of $250-$500, plus $100 per item, will be levied on the property owner, but will likely be passed along to tenants by way of deducting it from their security deposits. Third offenses carry a fine of $2,000, and all violations require a court appearance."

Whether this is a necessary measure taken by the city or an unfair "tax" levied on landlords of student rental housing is up for discussion, but at the heart of the issue is another key point that often gets lost. When it comes to the larger problem of off-campus student housing in New Brunswick, where's Rutgers?

Rutgers University is notorious for its hands-off approach to off-campus student rental housing, choosing to let the local housing market dictate demand, quality, and location. This approach is not only unsustainable, but destructive. Slumlords are given the ability to rent out subpar rentals to students willing to live in squalor, and subsequently, many (not all) students respond by treating city neighborhoods much like their landlords do -- that is, with neglect, disrespect, and disregard.

The University has been directly complicit for the city's inability to retain any University-oriented resident base, as well for the squalid conditions in campus-adjacent neighborhoods. These neighborhoods, many of which are historic, are close to downtown, transit, restaurants, and commerce and should be livable. They are not, and the city's seeming indifference, coupled with the University's dispassion, keep these neighborhoods down. The market keeps them populated, but the government and institutions keep them from thriving.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers / Good Enough / 8-24-10

2010-08-25T07:30:00.000-04:00

Edison Artist Displays Work Reflecting Travels Across U.S., India, and Europe at HP Library

2010-08-10T09:30:00.002-04:00

From The Home News Tribune:

HIGHLAND PARK — Indrani Choudhury is not
formally trained in art.

But the Edison resident has spent the last five years
working full time on her water color paintings,
which mostly include landscapes.

Her wide range of subjects reflects a life across
continents and cultures. Her paintings, which span
her whole universe, take us into courtyards and
bustling streets of her childhood in Calcutta, India
and on her travels across Europe and America.

"I take pictures of beautiful landscapes and paint
from that," the 59-year-old self-taught artist said.

Choudhury, who has had a career as a biomedical
research scientist for 25 years in both India and the
United States, worked most recently at the University
of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in
Piscataway.

In mid-2005, she decided to take a break from her
job and focus on her first love: painting.

What was planned as a one or two year break
developed into something more and now she
doesn't plan to go back to work as a scientist.

"I set up an easel in my guest room and returned to
a childhood passion," Choudhury said. "Since then,
my work has been developing in new technical and
imaginative directions."

She has even set up a website and sold couple of
her paintings, she said.

The Highland Park Public Library, 31 N. Fifth Ave.,
will exhibit, "Dreams Deferred, Dreams Fulfilled," a
water color show by Choudhury, through the end of
this month.

"It is a very inspiring exhibit," library spokesperson
Valeri Drach Weidmann said. "It shows that
somebody who has had a long career in a different
area can just pick up from their childhood and
explore their interests."

Additional information is available by calling the
library at 732-572-2750 or visiting www.hpplnj.
org.

Submit Yer Face for NB Free Public Library Exhibit

2010-08-05T15:03:00.003-04:00

From the New Brunswick Free Public Library:

The New Brunswick Free Public Library and Alfa Art Gallery are bringing the photographs of local residents to public attention in an exhibition entitled ”Faces of New Brunswick.” Entrants in the New Brunswick Free Public Library’s summer photography contest will be featured in exhibitions in the Alfa Art Gallery and the Library’s Community Room. The reception will be held on Friday, August 27 6:00-8.30pm. at the Alfa Art Gallery. First, second and third place award winners in the photography contest will be announced at the reception. Please note that the photo submission deadline has been extended from Tuesday August 3, 2010 to Tuesday August 10, 2010. Photos will be on display at both locations from. August 27th- September 13, 2010.

This program has been made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Art/ Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; through a grant provided by the Middlesex County Cultural and Heritage Commission / Board of Chosen Freeholders.

For more information on the exhibition or reception, contact Kavita Pandey at 732-745-5108, ext. 20 or Kavita@lmxac.org. For information about the Alfa Art Gallery, contact Galina Kourtev at 732-296-6720.

Two more New Brunswick employees charged in theft of parking fees

2010-07-31T08:33:00.000-04:00

From Friday's Star-Ledger:

--------
NEW BRUNSWICK — Two more people have been charged in connection with the theft of thousands of dollars from the New Brunswick Parking Authority, bringing to six the number of agency employees now facing charges.

Lawrence Sorbino, 44, of South Brunswick, a security and property manager for the city-run parking agency, was charged with accepting more than $5,000 in bribes to ignore thefts by agency officers, and Anthony Williams, 32, of Woodbridge, was charged with theft, conspiracy and destroying records, Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan said.

Four parking authority security officers were arrested in June, charged with taking money motorists paid at the Ferren and Lower Church Street parking decks, Kaplan said in a joint statement with New Brunswick Police Director Peter Mangarella.

Sorbino, of the Kendall Park section of South Brunswick, is charged with two counts of official misconduct and single counts of bribery, receiving gifts as a public servant, theft by failing to make required disposition of property, and conspiracy to commit theft, the prosecutor said.

Authorities allege Sorbino was paid more than $5,000 between Aug. 15, 2009 and May 15 this year to ignore thefts committed by four parking authority security officers.

Sorbino surrendered to police July 23, and was released on $100,000 bail, Kaplan said. Sorbino’s lawyer, Robert Gluck, did not return calls for comment today.

Williams, who was arrested earlier this month while at work, is accused of telling security officers how and when to disable security equipment before stealing parking payments. Also, he allegedly stole more than $500 in payments that were put in a drop safe on May 16, the prosecutor said.

Williams is being held today in the Middlesex County jail on $100,000 bail.

In June, Kaplan announced the arrests of four parking authority security officers accused of swiping nearly $3,000 from automated payment machines and customers during their 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. shifts at the Ferren and Lower Church street parking decks. The alleged thefts occurred between May 13 and May 15.James O’Neill, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, said the investigation is continuing and he could not give details. He declined to comment when asked if any thefts occurred before May 13.

The parking authority came under investigation after information developed by the State Commission of Investigation was handed over to local authorities by the commission’s executive director, Alan Rockoff.

Weiner Rails Against Republicans for Blocking Treatment for Ground Zero Workers and Residents

2010-07-30T10:07:00.006-04:00

This is really no surprise if you think about it, but House Republicans on Thursday blocked plan, sponsored by a New York Democrat, that would have provided billions of dollars for medical treatment to rescue workers and residents of New York City who suffered illnesses from the toxic dust and debris at ground zero.

According to The New York Times:

Until now, the federal government has been appropriating money on an annual basis to monitor the health of people injured at ground zero and to provide them with medical treatment. But the bill’s supporters said there were problems with the year-to-year approach, including that money for the program was subject to the political whims of Congress and the White House.

The bill would have provided $3.2 billion over the next eight years to monitor and treat injuries stemming from exposure to toxic dust and debris at ground zero. New York City would have paid 10 percent of those health costs.

Rep. Anthony Weiner was not happy about it, and for good reason. The right is wrong:

Subbing For the President

2010-07-28T09:51:00.009-04:00

With news that President Obama is coming to our very own Middlesex County here in New Jersey today, to promote a bill expanding loan programs and tax breaks for small businesses, it's not really shocking that people aren't focusing on the meat, but rather on the fixin's.

The president will make a stop at Tastee Sub Shop, an Edison mainstay in a heavily Democratic district (though more of the Hillary persuasion, probably—not that their policies differ, but due to a considerable dose of ingrained racism) populated by white working-class residents, and the largest population of South Asian immigrants in the United States. In fact, Mr. Obama's visit here is certainly an acknowledgement that, while Tastee is not Indian-owned, Indian businesses, families, and entrepreneurs have long contributed to economic revitalization as it has changed the cultural fabric in New Jersey.

And, of course, it's always a circus when the president—any president—comes to town. I've been near a handful of presidential visits in the past, and even covered one as a reporter, and, outside of the few minutes when the president is speaking, it's the residual stuff that gets people talking, that is, traffic (Tastee is near one of the worst four-way intersections on the planet), and if there's food, what's he eating?

Obama's a healthy guy, save a cigarette here and there, and if he orders tuna on wheat, he'll get criticized, but if he orders taylor ham, he'll be insincere. So what's he to do? We all know turkey is embedded in American symbolism -- hell, even Ben Franklin wanted it to be the national bird (it should have been just like Ray Charles's version of America the Beautiful should be the national anthem), so maybe the president gets a whole #7 with oven roasted turkey, with mustard, mayo, HOT peppers (regular peppers will be characterized as weenie), lettuce, but definitely no tomato, S&P, and vinegar. That's AMERICAN.

But it sounds pretty frackin' nasty.

How about a whole #2? Boiled Ham, Cappacola, and Cheese on italian bread? We like to boil things. It's the second oldest way to cook things (I'm just guessing) and it pleases a wide swath of cultures. But wait? Is it too exotic? Does the president say "Cappacola" as I, a Jersey Jew, would say "Coca Cola" or does he feign Jersey-style Italian lexicon and say "gabba-ghoul?" Nah, WAY too dicey.

OK -- I got it -- a standard: the #8: bologna and cheese. Classic, processed, and AMERICAN. That said, bologna and cheese is really only suitable on Wonder Bread, and while I don't think the president would ever get any flack for eating such a delectable lunch, he's at a sub shop, and you gotta order on sub bread. It's the rule, and bologna and cheese does not work on a submarine. It's the second rule.

Ham and cheese? Offensive. Sausage and meatball? Pandering. Pepperoni and cheese? Not a sandwich. Proccuttini, Cappacola, and Cheese? See reasons for not eating a #2. Roast Beef? It's good, but you can get it anywhere. All cheese sub? Do you want to lose in 2012? #5 -- a Super Sub, which is a 1, 2, 3 combo? Excessive. Might get messy.

While he's eating, I'll be listening for how New Jersey hopes to get out of its economic doldrums, with the state, one of the first to enter the Great Recession, is forecast to be among the last to get out of it. I'll also be listening for the administration's small business jobs proposals, including providing small banks with the capital and incentives to lend to small businesses for new equipment and expansion, loan guarantee programs and other initiatives that facilitate a small businesses' capacity to borrow from private lenders, creating tax incentives for small business looking to purchase new equipment or looking to expand, eliminating capital gains taxes for small business investors, and building on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the federal stimulus) that made available money for small business loans as well as reducing the fees those businesses pay for those loans.

UPDATE: Video from the president's appearance:

Excerpt of President Barack Obamas speech in Edison

As for what the president eats, I hope he was true to himself and ordered tuna on wheat. I like my leaders to be healthy, drive fuel-efficient vehicles, and to emphasize the "opportunity" in "photo-op."

Photo: this pool hall is right around the corner from where the president will visit today in Edison. Maybe he'll pick up a game or two.

Holocaust Exhibit at NB Free Public Library Closing With Reception

2010-07-27T15:35:00.003-04:00

This just in from the NB Free Public Library -- BΩS

The New Brunswick Free Public Library’s current exhibition from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings,” will close on August 10 after a closing reception on August 5.

The exhibition’s closing reception will be held on Thursday, August 5 at 7 PM in the library’s Carl T. Valenti Community Room. The reception will feature a lecture on the organized resistance in New Jersey to the Nazi regime, presented by Ron Becker, Head of Special Collections and University Archives at Rutgers University Libraries.

Since its opening on June 14, the exhibition has attracted more than 200 visitors from the United States and Canada, in addition to the well-attended opening reception with special guests Dr. Steven Luckert, Director of the Permanent Exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Dr. Douglas Greenberg, Executive Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University.

For more information about the exhibition or accompanying programs, please contact librarian Laura Szalaj at 732-745-5108, ext. 20 or via email to lszalaj@lmxac.org. The New Brunswick Free Public Library is located at 60 Livingston Avenue.

About the “Fighting the Fires of Hate” Exhibition

On May 10, 1933, upwards of 25,000 volumes of “un-German” books were burned in consciously staged book burnings across Germany, presaging an era of state censorship and control of culture. This exhibition examines the American reaction to the Nazi book burnings as well as the events’ evolution in film, literature and political discourse.

The exhibition is open to visitors on weekdays from 10 AM to 3 PM and Saturdays from 10 AM to 5 PM, or by appointment. The library is hosting this exhibition with generous support from New Brunswick’s Anshe Emeth Memorial Temple, Magyar Bank and the Kiwanis Club of New Brunswick.

About the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims — six million were murdered; Gypsies, the mentally and physically handicapped and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny.

A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to promote human dignity, confront hatred and prevent genocide. Federal support guarantees the Museum’s permanent place on the National Mall, and its far-reaching educational programs and global impact are made possible by the generosity of donors nationwide.

For more information about the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, please call 202-488-0400 or visit the museum’s website at www.ushmm.org.

NB Library Receives 2010 Book Award Collection

2010-07-26T16:35:00.003-04:00

Great news from the New Brunswick Free Public Library and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities:

The New Jersey Council for the Humanities has selected the New
Brunswick Free Public Library as one of five institutions to receive the
2010 Book Award Collection. The collection includes 33 titles nominated
by 22 publishing houses from across the county, demonstrating the
extraordinary breadth of the humanities and the insights of many gifted
authors. The collection includes this year’s Book Award Winner, The
Anti-Communist Manifesto: Four Books That Shaped the Cold War by John V. Fleming.

The books which will be presented in November cover a wide range of the
humanities including biographies of Yogi Berra, Governor Richard Hughes,
and Clark Clifford as well as histories of New Jersey during the
American Revolution. Other books range from a collection of Steinmetz
photos to Jewish architecture to New Jersey via its maps to Marc
Mappen's There's More to New Jersey than the Sopranos.

For more information, please contact E. Kim Adams, Archival Librarian,
at 732-745-5108, x20 or ekad1947@lmxac.org.

About the New Jersey Council for the Humanities

The New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a nonprofit organization, was
established in 1972 as the state partner of the National Endowment for
the Humanities. Its mission is to develop, support and promote projects
that explore and interpret the human experience, foster cross-cultural
understanding and engage people in dialogue about matters of individual
choice and public responsibility. It is funded primarily by the National
Endowment for the Humanities, with additional support from private
funders and, in some years, the State of New Jersey.

The City Formerly Known As New Brunswick

2010-06-29T10:03:00.003-04:00

In my previous post, A Crucial Vote for the Hub City, about the death of Richard B. Sellars, the one-time head of the New Brunswick, NJ-based Johnson & Johnson and a pivotal voice in keeping the corporation's world headquarters in the Hub City at a time of serious urban and economic decay, I looked (albeit superficially) at the effects of J&J's presence there.

I hinted that now, at a time when builders, retailers, and institutions are once again trending toward urban environs, and transit oriented development becoming a mainstream phrase, that it might be feasible to think that New Brunswick would have been just fine -- eventually -- without the unbelievable physical and cultural sacrifices the city made to accommodate these economic drivers like J&J, Robert Wood Johnson hospital, and Rutgers University. Acres upon acres of historic commercial districts were destroyed for suburban-style "campuses," a hotel, high-end residences, etc. In the picture above, is the foundation of the so-called "Gateway," a tower that will house very high end residences that will connect with the New Brunswick train station, as well as a Barnes & Noble. The Gateway comes at the expense of one of the last 19th-century-era commercial stretches in New Brunswick.

I get it. I get ratables and attracting business and deveopment to improve the economy. On the one hand, these days it's hard to argue with developing dense mixed-use, transit-oriented development. But it all comes at the cost of city history -- one that is now barely evident.

A Crucial Vote for the Hub City

2010-06-27T15:01:00.010-04:00

Richard B. Sellars, the former head of Johnson & Johnson died this week at 94. His was a crucial voice in keeping the health care conglomerate in the Hub City, and arguably the reason New Brunswick, NJ is, in fact, known as the "Hub City." Just the second person outside the Johnson family to head J&J, Sellars recognized the company's commitment to its original host city, particularly when company's board of trustees was leaning toward moving the company out of New Brunswick during the city's economic nadir in the 80s; and at a time when businesses and housing were trending toward the suburbs.The New York Times, in its obituary, referenced a 1984 interview with Sellars where he recognized the importance of J&J investing in New Brunswick:

“It was apparent even then that we had a commitment to New Brunswick that we couldn’t run away from,” Mr. Sellars said in a 1984 interview. “The survival of our country depends on the survival of its cities, so we’d all better get involved in cleaning them up.”

Of course, anyone familiar with New Brunswick knows the value of Johnson & Johnson's presence, but also the significant sacrifices the city made at a time when there was little political pressure to preserve the city's historical layout and buildings, as indicated in the picture above. There, the signature IM Pei building in the background and the fallowed land in the foreground that is now home to the Hyatt New Brunswick, were once major commercial districts. The sprawl development that resulted was heralded as urban reinvestment, but it would have looked the same in suburbia. The J&J campus and the Hyatt are colossal wastes of urban land.

These days, there are several major economic drivers in New Brunswick that remain committed to the city, but there continues to be little regard to the city's historic character -- character that was, in part, established by the institutions that remain.

Cap 2.5 Is Propaganda, But It Should Get Towns Thinking About Consolidation -- For the Right Reasons

2010-06-15T10:23:00.012-04:00

People who live in towns that they absolutely love are lucky. They are lucky for a number of reasons, but from a policy standpoint, they are lucky that they get to be completely sentimental, often to the point of being irrational, when it comes influencing policy. They are lucky because they have a voice and get to drive the town council nuts and have it actually produce results (unlike places like, say, New Brunswick, where driving City Hall nuts more often than not results in being stifled, harassed, shut out, etc.).

This could be wrong, but I would say that most residents of New Jersey's 566 municipalities would agree that there are several instances where it would make cultural, financial, and geographical sense for two adjacent towns to consolidate governments, police departments, fire departments, public works, and so on. I would also say that just slightly more than half of those residents would say that their town should NOT consolidate with the adjacent town. This is just my sense -- also, it's a sense based more on a pre-Great Recession and BC (Before Christie) mindset and less on new economic realities.

As governor, Jon Corzine recognized that certain towns needed to consolidate, but he never really made an aggressive case. He formed the Local Unit Alignment, Reorganization, and Consolidation Commission (yawn) that was charged to:

"Study and report on the structure and functions of county and municipal government. This effort includes the study of local taxing districts and their statutory basis. It also includes the fiscal relationship between local governments, and the appropriate allocation of service delivery responsibilities from the standpoint of efficiency"

This Byzantine mission statement is more that most of us can swallow, and resulted in kind of pushing for consolidating "the two Berlins" (not sure if that was more for symbolic purposes) and encouraged shared services between municipalities. LUARCC still exists, but while the state's Department of Community Affairs (the department that oversees LUARCC) remains in transition under the new Christie administration, it's unclear how the consolidation commission will proceed.

In the meantime, Governor Christie's tax caps, budget slashing, and overall disregard for tactful legislating will more likely than not result in towns making those tough decisions, including consolidation, that were once considered a luxury; pragmatic, but luxurious nonetheless. A quick aside: think about it, all of this tough love from Gov. Christie would be a lot more palatable if it weren't so, well, abrupt and rude and there were more of an emphasis on "love."

Brian Donohue from The Star-Ledger validates many of the pro-consolidation ideas documented in the late, great Alan Karcher's Multiple Municipal Madness in this NJ.com video clip. In it, you'll see some clips of Gov. Christie making some pretty good arguments in favor of municipal consolidation, using his native Mendham Township and Borough as an example of two municipalities that suffer from duplication of services, including two libraries and two school boards, not to mention two separate governments, police departments, etc.

Gov. Christie hopes Cap 2.5 will force town consolidation

When I covered the Princetons as a reporter for the local paper there, I came to understand several important things about consolidation. First, the idea that so-called doughnut towns -- both the hole and doughnut as is the case with Princeton Township (doughnut) and Princeton Borough (hole) -- share a community is kind of bogus. I mean, the Princetons share far more than other doughnut towns like Metuchen Borough and Edison Township, and Highland Park and Edison Township, and any other town swallowed by the mammoth, sprawling, Edison Township (once part of the even mammoth-er Raritan Township). But for the most part, the people living in Princeton Township and Princeton Borough are different. They do, however, share schools and a library, which, culturally speaking, is very important.

Second, as Donohue points out in his video, most arguments against consolidation are sentimental. Some very vocal groups would create specious arguments against consolidation, but those were fundamentally based on a desire to remain as two towns, just because. There are no good arguments against consolidating smaller towns like the Princetons.

Third, I will always remember something the current mayor of Princeton Borough, Mayor Mildred Trotman, said when she came into office: that consolidation would probably not be explicit, but that the towns would eventually "backdoor into consolidation." While the state does need to be more aggressive in getting towns to merge, especially towns that don't have as much in common as the Princetons do, her approach makes sense here.

Sadly, it appears that Gov. Christie's setting a 2.5 percent tax cap, while resonating well with make-believe penny-pinchers, exploits the genuine beliefs of mayors like Trotman. The tax cap is mostly propaganda, because towns have mandated expenses and contractural pay increases that exceed 2.5 percent are not addressed by the 2.5 percent cap and that those increases continue to mount, regardless who crafts the municipal budget.

Anyway, Governor Christie is speaking out against a "top-down" mandate to consolidation, but it's exactly what he's doing. That's not to say consolidation is not a fantastic, cost-cutting idea that increases efficiency and potentially improves public safety and schools, but starving towns of funds to force them to make potentially unsustainable, and life-changing decisions, is beyond reckless.

Rewarded for Mediocrity?

2010-04-28T15:55:00.000-04:00

Never really gave it much thought, but just found out that you can't create a save situation yourself, that is, if you come in to close out a game with your team up by three runs or fewer, if you give up a few runs to fall within that margin, it doesn't turn into a save if your team still wins. Basically, even if your team wins, you don't necessarily get rewarded for mediocrity. I like this.

Mets Classics

2010-04-27T00:12:00.002-04:00

With tonight's rainout, SNY showed a "Mets Classic" from 6/11/05, the Mets' first over-.500 season since 2001. In this game, in the top of the 10th, after Carlos Beltran, two months in to a dismal season to kick off his seven-year contract with the team, and Mike PIazza struck out, Cliff Floyd came to bat. Floyd, a fan favorite who was always either a little or a lot injured, came to bat, got to two strikes and crushed a foul ball. He then fouled off two more pitches before sending one over the right-center fence, just to the base of the scoreboard, to the right of the homerun Apple.

Those were the days when hopes were brightening anew, the Piazza era was coming to a close, and no one knew the anguish and high-end futility that would define the ensuing seasons. Nonetheless, I was a little emotional seeing Cliffy win it in the 10th.

Every damn Yankees Classic is a World Series game. The Mets' classic games are usually insignificant, but scrappy blue collar wins, usually staring forgotten heroes (or Mike Piazza). I prefer the Mets when they're scrappy and bad, and not expected to win. I never went to more games than I did between 2002 and 2005. Empty Shea, so many great seats for cheap. Good times.

Did He Hear a Goodbye?

2010-04-14T22:55:00.006-04:00

Some music is so good that sometimes, fairly often (because I listen to the best music. Just sayin'), I listen and lose breath for one of two reasons: 1) sometimes stuff is just beautiful, or 2) I desperately wish I were writing, performing, or singing that song.

There are some artists that do both: the Beatles is an obvious one, particularly when it comes to poppier fare like "And Your Bird Can Sing" (though that's no easy pop song) or Mean Mr. Mustard (though Lennon considered that one a toss-away. We should all be so lucky to sit under the table as John Lennon tosses us musical scraps). David Bowie is another one with Mick Ronson, doing his best VU, strumming Queen Bitch or, even better, Carlos Alomar laying down a funky, proggy riff on TVC15. These types of songs are the class of their genre, but like any great pop song, don't feel particularly complicated, though they might be and often are.

I don't play any instruments. I stopped playing piano when I was 15 and I bought a guitar when I was 31. Much to my son's delight, I figured out how to one-note (with zero technique) the chorus to the Moody Blues' "Driftwood" (don't ask me why I chose that one. It was in my head at the time). I even did my best Justin Hayward over my labored performance, but the guitar mostly collects dust. It's actually near me right now.

But then there is that singing. I can hold a note well, and have no real range to speak of (10 note? Low to middle C when it's humid?), but I have a great ear I'm tellin' ya'. I have relative pitch, and I can nail a harmony without hesitation, so naturally I'm drawn to harmonies. Crosby, Stills & Nash's harmonies have been described as a "miracle," and while I can't say that with any certainty, their vocal arrangements, largely assembled by Stephen Stills, fulfill my two emotional criteria.

Helplessly Hoping.

Two minutes and 37 seconds of subtle brilliance. The whole thing starts off perfectly like any Stephen Stills acoustic workout: four measures of A minor, C, G, & D, and then the vocals:

"Helplessly hoping her harlequin hovers nearby, awaiting a word." People might roll their eyes that the alliteration, which is punctuated by a muscular delivery of "hovers nearby." I love it.

Stephen Stills and Graham Nash are couched nicely in the right channel while David Crosby -- a singer whose phenomenal quality of voice is usually beyond (at least my) description -- is perched on display in the left. Stills is singing melody (the low part) in the middle until the word "nearby," when he and Crosby, who up to this point was singing the middle part, blend for an instant and Crosby continues to ascend, taking over the melody, finishing "awaiting a word" in the lead.

What I'm pointing out is no revelation, of course. What made CSN legendary were their miracle vocals, and the way those vocals are woven and arranged, and how Stills and Crosby constantly interchange, swap, and invert their parts to point where you often can't tell who is singing what anymore. Nash, with his falsetto, is usually identifiable, but he and Crosby often cross lanes here and there.

We're only at 25 seconds now.

"Gasping at glimpses of gentle true spirit, he runs, wishing he could fly." Basically the same as before with Crosby taking over the melody at "wishing he could fly," but this time with an added "only to trip at the sound of goodbye," where Stills slides back into the melody and the "bye" elongated .

"Wordlessly watching he waits by the window and wonders, at the empty place inside." Same as the first verse, but the second half of "window" is punctuated by Crosby, making it very clear where he once again takes over the melody.

"Heartlessly helping himself to her bad dreams he worries: Did he hear a goodbye or even hello?" The "hello" is sustained by Nash and Crosby while Stills takes it into the song's break, first singing solo on "They are one person," and then joined by Nash on "They are two, alone," and finally Crosby fills it out for "they are three together. They are four (for) each other."

Man I do wish I were singing this song.

Yes at the Wellmont

2010-02-17T16:07:00.002-05:00

A clip of Yes playing Yours is No Disgrace at the Wellmont Theatre in Montclair, NJ, February 16, 2010. Steve Howe's amazing.

Marriage Equality: Close (Yet So Far Away)

2009-12-08T08:42:00.010-05:00

The New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee voted last night to support a bill that would establish same-sex marriage in New Jersey, providing full equality for married gay couples. It was an important measure of progress, for sure, but in a state where a recent Rutgers-Eagleton Poll showed that same-sex marriage enjoys popular support, the 7-6 vote goes to show just how hard, even in the most progressive of states, it is for our courts and legislatures to act social change.

I'll admit, I take pride in making efforts to understand all sides of an issue, the pros and cons, and always try to understand why people might feel differently than I do. This is one issue where I just don't understand the opposition to same-sex marriage. I would understand it (though I wouldn't agree), if the whole of the opposition were in the name of religion, but when so many marriages, including my own, are conducted secularly, it just makes no sense. Further, while people can choose to make marriage a religious function, the fact that judges and elected officials can preside over a marriage is proof (if we needed any) that marriage is not necessarily a religious event.

So, if it's not for religious reasons, then I'm left to believe that people oppose same-sex marriage because they simply don't think gay people should get married and that marriage is an exclusive institution between a man and woman. This is not an acceptable position, and it's not the role of our courts and lawmakers to enact exclusionary laws -- particularly laws that exclude a certain portion of the population from enjoying all of the legal rights involved in a domestic union.

Also, I should have said this first, but opposition to same-sex marriage is just unabashedly wrong. Believing that only certain people should get married is fundamentally at odds with basic, inalienable rights.

SO, thanks to Hank Kalet, a newspaper editor here in New Jersey, here is a list of legislators we're asking everyone to call who are on the fence. Please take action.

Sen. Diane B. Allen, Republican
11 West Broad St., Burlington, NJ 08016 (609) 239-2800

Sen. Christopher Bateman, Republican
36 East Main St., Somerville, NJ 08876 (908) 526-3600

Sen. Jennifer Beck, Republican
32 Monmouth St., 3rd Floor, Red Bank, NJ 07701 (732) 933-1591

Sen. John A. Girgenti, Democrat
507 Lafayette Avenue, Hawthorne, NJ 07506 (973) 427-1229

Sen. Paul A. Sarlo, Democrat
207 Hackensack St., 2nd Floor, Wood-Ridge, NJ 07075 (201) 804-8118

Sen. Jeff Van Drew, Democrat
21 North Main St., Cape May Court House, NJ 08210 (609) 465-0700
1124 North High St., Millville, NJ 08332 (856) 765-0891
1028 East Landis Ave., Vineland, NJ 08360 (856) 696-7109
Additional Phone, Somers Point, NJ (609) 926-3779
Sen. Jim Whelan, Democrat
511 Tilton Rd., Northfield, NJ 08225 (609) 383-1388

Judge Orders New Brunswick To Place Ward Question on Ballot

2009-08-10T16:21:00.002-04:00

From Empowernb.com

New Brunswick, NJ – The Honorable Judge James P. Hurley ruled today, that New Brunswick residents will get to vote on a citywide referendum for ward-based City Council elections this November. In his highly anticipated decision, Hurley ordered New Brunswick City Clerk Dan Torrisi to honor the petition of a local grassroots group, Empower Our Neighborhoods. Hurley said that the New Brunswick city government acted improperly when it rejected the group’s petition on October 21, 2008. Both Torrissi and the City Council were defendants in the suit.

This decision is the latest in a chain of litigation which began in July of 2008, when the city government improperly rejected a petition for a vote on wards signed by 1,116 New Brunswick residents. EON brought suit against the city to compel Torrisi to accept the petition, and that litigation was still pending when ballots were printed for the November 2008 general election.

In October 2008, EON circulated a new petition calling for a referendum on wards in November of 2009, which the city again declined, citing an action of the City Council for an alternative ballot question. Judge Hurley rejected that rationale, pointing out that the prior litigation had determined the Council’s ordinance, O-060807, to be illegal. Charter study ordinances, as they are commonly known, are frequently used by incumbent New Jersey municipal governments who favor the status quo to prevent residents’ groups from winning changes to the municipal elections process.

“It’s fairly apparent by now that the city’s objections were politically motivated,” said EON member Martha Guarnieri. “The law requires a public vote on a legitimate petition, no matter what the government thinks of it content. We’re very glad Judge Hurley has affirmed the people’s right to determine their own form of government and look forward to another exciting campaign for change in our City.”

Longtime New Brunswick resident Thomas Peoples felt that the decision was a long time coming. “This is a great victory for New Brunswick.” said Peoples, leader of the Lincoln Gardens Neighborhood Block Association. “We’re finally going to have a government of the people, and that’s accountable to the people.”

The ward question, which would guarantee each ward one representative on the City Council, will appear on the ballot in the general election on November 3, 2009.

Losing the Book

2009-06-02T15:54:00.004-04:00

Charles McGrath, in his recent article in the New York Times, points to something that not even the Kindle can overcome:

One of the odder sensations of reading on the Kindle, though, is a sensation of eternal presentness. Your books are all there, perfectly preserved. The device even remembers exactly what page you were on last. On the other hand, as you read along, there are very few cues to how near you are to the beginning, how far from the end. You’re always in the middle."

Personally speaking, I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I finish a book - having never used a Kindle, I wonder if finishing a book is a less exciting affair?

Moreover, we have not begun to address the issue that technology has yet to address: the loss of the physical library. People have devoted rooms in their houses, and rightfully so, to display their book libraries, as well as their music libraries. About a year ago, I gave up buying CDs, opting to purchase only online. It was a hard decision. I love my iPod and I think that device has changed the way I listen to music — it’s made me appreciate music more. But you lose the liner notes, the _physicality_ of owning an album in its product form. You lose the art, and you lose the library.

About a month ago, I came around — opting to buy CDs once again, but only at independently-owned record stores, thus finding a happy medium between the convenience, the sound environmentalism of digital downloads (no packaging, no shipping), and the old-fashioned CD, replete with all the things we love about holding our music in our hands.

I have yet to read a book on a Kindle, but this one seems a bit more unlikely to go mainstream - at least in the short-term.

Gas Dump In Highland Park

2009-05-03T12:42:00.001-04:00

So yesterday, I went to the Raceway at 60 Raritan Avenue to dispose of some very old gasoline. After having no idea what to do, the station attendInt brought out a big metal bucket to pour the gas into. When that bucket wasn't enough to hold the roughly five gallons I had, he invited me to pour out the remainder of the gas into a nearby landscaped area -- right into the dirt.

When I told him that I wouldn't do that, he brought out several containers to package the rest of the gas. This was clearly not the proper way to dispose of gas, and I should have gone to a service garage where they routinely do this, but that said, this is unacceptable.

I called the DEP hotline this morning and spoke to a live operator to file a formal complaint.

Just FYI

Big Win For Change Democrats in Middlesex

2009-05-01T21:11:00.001-04:00

The Honorable Judge James P. Hurley upheld the rights of 20 candidates to compete for Democratic Committee seats in the upcoming Primary election on June 2nd. The challengers are members of Democrats for Change (DC), a coalition of long-term residents, renters and students from every district in New Brunswick running for 50 committee seats in the upcoming primary.

Charlie Kratovil, a campaign manager for the group, reacted to the ruling saying, “democracy had its day in court and democracy won.” The ruling delivered on Friday May 1st struck down the one year residency requirement which was the basis for Democratic Party Chairman T. K. Shamy's disqualification of the 20 DC members. Curiously only Rutgers Students or those under 30 with some University affiliation were targeted for disqualification.

The ruling is a tremendous victory for the residents of the city, who will see a competitive party election for the first time in decades for at least 50 out of 56 committee seats. Sean Monahan (Ward 5, District 2), one of the candidates Mr. Shamy attempted to disqualify, said, “This is a great day for New Brunswick residents because it allows us to bring all the different neighborhoods and communities together to bring change to our city just as we brought change to our country in this past November's presidential election.“

The argument came down to two NJ elections laws (NJSA 40A and Title 19) and which statute has jurisdiction over local party committee elections. The Hon. Judge Hurley's ruling was in agreement with the reasoning of Democrats for Change, namely that NJSA 40A pertains to elections for governmental offices but does not apply to political party positions. Deciding that Title 19, which makes no mention of a residency duration requirement, applies.

Deputy Attorney General Thu Lam, representing both the Secretary of State of NJ as well as the state Attorney General, weighed in agreeing that no residency duration requirement exists for party positions in the state of New Jersey.

Thomas Peoples, a Democrats for Change candidate in Ward 4, District 5, said, “I am thrilled by this decision. After reading the documents, it was clear to me that the one year requirement does not apply. The main thing now is that we run a strong campaign and get leaders who have a strong connection to their neighborhoods and clear understanding of what residents need.

Patricia Bombelyn, attorney for Democrats for Change, admitted that if the one year requirement was upheld, eight of the DC candidates would be struck down, but even under those circumstances, twelve candidates were wrongly disqualified. She cited the Mercer case from 1972 which upheld the right of persons 18 years or older to register to vote where they are living at college, arguing that the right to vote and the right to run for office cannot be divorced from one another.

The DC campaign was initiated by members of Empower Our Neighborhoods, spanning all walks of life in New Brunswick. What the DC candidates all have in common is the shared experience of working last November to make Obama's Presidency a reality and to bring meaningful change to the nation. Now DC members are looking to change their home city, to make government more accountable, and municipal decisions more democratic.

NJT Alert

2009-04-30T15:14:00.002-04:00

Who feels me? The constant delays on the country's most heavily used commuter transit system are disconcerting to say the least. The tracks are owned by Amtrak; federal funding, while slated for huge improvements under President Obama, are still insufficient.

Northeast Corridor service is subject to 20-30 minute delays in both directions due to overhead wire problem near Metuchen Station.

Need I say more?

H1N1 Virus (Swine Flu)

2009-04-29T13:19:00.004-04:00

In the name of public health, here are some helpful Web sites you can go to in order to find out unfiltered information on this flu:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Swine Flu - Includes definition, news, recommended preventative actions, ongoing investigations, and more. See also the CDC home page and CDC in Spanish/en Español - "Influenza porcina (gripe porcina)"

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS): Swine Flu - The U.S. Government's national health website

PandemicFlu.gov - News and information on Swine and Bird Influenzas and other forms of the flu virus

The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services

Going Mainstream With the Obama Vegetable Garden

2009-03-24T16:06:00.002-04:00

I’m a cynic when it comes to The New York Times and its reporting on culture, trends, dining, and style. Though I’m a fan of what is now seemingly one of the few print newspapers left in the world, normally, by the time it reports on, for example, a breakthrough “underground” album, that album is no longer breakthrough and it’s certainly no longer underground. The inescapable truth of the mainstream media is that it reports on and is viewed by, well, the mainstream—and not the underground.

So when I read in The Times that group of fifth graders from a DC elementary school will help Michelle Obama dig up the soil for a planned 1,100-square-foot vegetable garden, my cynicism goes out the window and all I can think is “How cool is this?” If The Times is reporting on this, perhaps community gardening is becoming mainstream!

It’s sad that that’s still my reaction, particularly since, for years, I’ve reported on, and been involved in local food initiatives. There is still a Gee Whiz quality to the Slow Food movement that is foreign to some, as well as somewhat of an “I-drive-a-hybrid” righteousness, which only turns people on the outside off.

So to see the Obamas, who are, if anything, gifted in their groundedness, doing some good ol’ hippie gardening, maybe more people in the cities and ‘burbiest of ‘burbs with a big backyard will do the same, and it won’t be perceived as weird or “earthy.”

Organic gardening and community gardens are nothing new, but they are anything but mainstream in a world of Costco, Sam’s Club, and in an age when everything is in season—always, because it’s shipped in from who-knows-where. You know the workman’s adage that “it’s five o’ clock somewhere”? Same applies with seasons in the food industry.

Our, at least my, previous generalized notion of the White House and its occupants is so standard, buttoned-up, inside-the-Beltway Box, that thinking of Mrs. Obama, the president, their kids, and a group of nearby public schoolers getting their hands dirty as they plant cilantro, chard, and berries, is just wonderful. There’s really no other way to describe it.

Aside from community gardens that have served as glue for neighborhoods, providing much of the same sense of community as a place of worship does, around the country, countless public school districts are engaging their own community gardening projects, not only to instill a sense of agrarian savvy into youths who would otherwise never be exposed to that, but to also underscore the importance of knowing the source of your food.

There are too many programs to name in one Rooflines post, but what are some projects in your area? Let’s hear about them.

This piece originally ran March 20, 2009 on my blog at Rooflines, the blog of the National Housing Institute.

Just Because His Sleeves Are Rolled Up, It Doesn’t Mean He Means Business

2009-03-18T20:43:00.005-04:00

I’m a little late weighing on on this, but this retrial of Jon Stewart v. Tucker Carlson is not sitting well with me.

Countless investors have lost life savings, IRAs, and more “skin” in any game that I’ve ever seen in this economic downturn, and for months, we seemed to accept the fact that while some institutions and individuals were more at fault than others, it was really the fault of many and subsequently everyone’s mess.

That is until last week. That’s when we found Jim Cramer of CNBC’s “Mad Money” to be a less-than-formidable scapegoat, a poster child, if you will, of CNBC’s and the overall business media’s knowledge of “the game” of Wall Street and how they at best, haven’t done their job in properly guiding people through the financial crisis, and, at worst, offered outright misinformation, resulting in massive reductions of personal wealth.

As a journalist, I always welcome heavy media analysis, not only because it gives us the opportunity to better provide useful information, but because it also promotes sustainable communities, inasmuch as an informed public can better make decisions for itself. I am also immediately skeptical when people start blaming the media for things.

But in the case with Jim Cramer, I find I don’t need to engage in that auto-analytic mode. Anyone who has even watched three minutes of Mad Money knows that Cramer, a former hedge fund manager, is a TV personality first. “Useful Information Provider” falls way, way, way down on the list.

CNBC has an average viewership of 300,000 (Bloomberg TV’s average is 10,000, and CNN’s is roughly 700,000), and you can find people tuned in to it in newsrooms and financial advisor offices around the country. People are watching the stock ticker, Market Watch, or even Squawk Box, but when Mad Money (I almost wrote “Mad TV”) comes on, I can’t imagine those 300,000 view Cramer like E.F. Hutton, particularly when he begins throwing around set props, pushing big buttons—things from which little kids might get visual amusement, but sophisticated traders and investors? I might be wrong, but I just don’t see it.

So, when Jim Cramer sat there, with his sleeves rolled up, as is his trademark look, looking like he was ready for a fight, and ate the porridge spoon fed from Jon Stewart, it could be viewed in a number of ways: an admission of guilt, steering watchers to buy stocks of Bear Stearns only days before it went under, an acknowledgment of sub-par financial analysis, a tacit recognition that he was playing “the Game” even when he knew better, or simply as a feeble entertainer unfamiliar with the lashings of a quick-tongued comedian, or, most likely, all of the above.

But none of that matters, I think. Good for Jon Stewart for calling this guy out, but at the end of the day, I think it makes for just another inter-Cable foe; more Premium Package Enmity, like Olbermann v. O’Reilly. While Jon Stewart and the Daily Show provide an invaluable service when it comes to not only entertainment, but also to information dissemination, this battle is another time-waster. Cramer is an entertainer, and frankly, a bizarre target for Stewart. I recall the more useful conflict between Stewart and Tucker Carlson, then of CNN’s Crossfire, when Stewart, using colorful language, criticized the program’s “either/or” delivery of the news. THAT’S the type of programming we need to rally against—the stuff that doesn’t report the news, but takes news, tears it in half, and has it fight itself in a TV studio.

Don’t waste your time blaming the Jim Cramers of the world for the financial crisis, there are much, much, larger fish to fry, both within the media and on Wall Street.

Stewie Sings In The Air Tonight

2009-03-15T12:55:00.001-04:00

Good Times WIth U.S. Senate Wi-Fi

2009-03-12T14:43:00.002-04:00

At the Dirkson Senate Office, when you try to access their wireless network, you have to agree that you've read the following disclaimer:

United States Senate Wireless Network

You have accessed the United States Senate Wireless Network. If you have the proper credentials then you may proceed with your login process. Warning, by moving forward on this system you agree to the fact that you have no privacy on this system and that you will probably be monitored.

Makes you think twice if you really want to check your e-mail, don't it?

NJ’s COAH: Finding Common (and Vacant) Ground

2009-03-11T13:15:00.006-04:00

A version of this post first ran on Rooflines -- the blog of the National Housing Institute -- BΩS

As New Jersey’s Council on Affordable Housing, or COAH, continues to defend its plan to use a growth-share model to encourage towns to build working class and affordable housing, we’re reminded of one thing that became clear a long, long time ago.

Full consensus is going to be hard to reach, but common ground is attainable.

Since everyone appears, at least in public, to share the same philosophy that communities should have socioeconomic diversity, there needs to be some common ground between the builders and affordable housing advocates who argue the new rules will allow suburbs to not live up to their intended housing goals, and those towns—about half of the state’s 566 municipalities—who argue they will be burdened—both financially and spatially—in being required to build far too much affordable housing based on current models.

Most of the remaining municipalities are currently participating in the COAH process, with the Council granting credit for approximately 70,000 affordable units, 36,000 of which have been completed, 14,000 of which were rehabilitated, and 10,000 that were transferred through Regional Contribution Agreements—a since-legislatively revoked method of fulfilling a town’s growth-share requirement where a municipality can transfer funds intended for affordable housing to another town.

It’s been 30 years since the original court decision that put the wheels in motion for the state to establish some sort of affordable housing guidelines, and they’ve been remodeled several times since. The most recent, established in 2004, outlines a growth-share model that encourages 4:1 ratio for market rate and affordable units, as well as one affordable unit for every 16 jobs created.

COAH has said repeatedly that it’s model is a guideline and that it would work with individual towns as they submit their 10-year COAH proposals, but the balking continues, the posturing mounts. Tough economic times only adds superficial logic (often outlined in the breathtakingly uninformed reader comments in various New Jersey newspaper Web sites) to the case that towns can’t afford to build and that the state should not be mandating them to do so.

So the latest, where The New Jersey League of Municipalities, a voluntary organization of towns throughout the state, has accused state officials of withholding materials that include a state-wide vacant land assessment, is just another step in forestalling goals that we should all work for: inclusive communities, workforce housing, not being priced out of your town.

COAH, according to an article in The Star-Ledger, responded in kind with a 130-page response to the challenges, that makes the case for the new rules, arguing that the agency had been reasonable in fielding municipal concerns.

Back in July 2008, when the state refined its latest COAH model, I argued that the Department of Community Affairs, the agency that oversees COAH, and its commissioner, Joe Doria, should go on a state-wide tour, selling the plan at public meetings, much like Gov. Jon Corzine did on his pitch to raise tolls on some key state roadways. Not everyone agreed with him, but there was an element of respect for the outreach tour—an element that he would be happy to re-tap this year as he seeks reelection. But beyond that, I thought that the state should take a real look at rethinking affordable housing:

We need to move away from the property-tax-based funding for social mandates that benefit everyone (yes, even you there, living on the horse farm in bucolic northwest New Jersey). The implementation of an affordable housing policy that works and is reasonable can be funded by more than just property owners.

The developer’s fee—the aforementioned 2.5 percent fee—and the municipal mandate system of funding affordable housing is ludicrous. This is important because it could very well thwart all economic growth in New Jersey with ratable-generating enterprise moving over to places like Pennsylvania.

Hopefully because they were reading Bowie of Suburbia, the state Legislature last month voted on a moratorium for this developer’s fee that exempts projects through July 2010, calling it an impediment to economic recovery, but housing advocates have rallied against the moratorium, saying that a freeze would pose a missed opportunity to generate revenue. The fee, they said, would help to promote that roadmap to more inclusive communities.

Diane Sterner, executive director of the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey wrote in a February 2009 op-ed in The Trenton Times that:

[W]e are all responsible in some way for creating the homes we need so our state can grow and prosper. Residential developers pay fees to build. When private individuals build or purchase a home, they pay a real estate transfer fee. A portion of this goes into the state’s housing trust fund to finance housing development.

Agreed, but in a time when major institutions, particularly nonprofits like hospitals and universities, are also struggling with dwindling endowments, but looking to simultaneously expand and remain competitive in the country, a developer’s fee is ever-problematic. The housing advocate’s argument for a developer’s fee goes back to the fundamental case that fees are needed to encourage development. Yes, but let’s do it by way of:

Creating a value-added tax, like a gas tax that would be used strictly for infrastructure. This can be criticized as a regressive tax, but think of the open space tax that New Jersey voters consistently approve.

We need to get on the stick, and we need to do it now. This economic downturn is scaring a lot of people and it’s only a matter of time before voters are fooled by the shell-game mentality that providing affordable housing is a costly burden for our towns.

Byrne Being Weird On Colbert

2009-03-04T10:33:00.000-05:00

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

David Byrne Pt. 2

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
Joke of the Day

Who Will Lead Highland Park?

2009-03-01T10:59:00.006-05:00

It's always bittersweet when you have a rising star within your own elected local government. On the one hand, it's good that you've got someone on your side who is motivated to make a name for him or herself, while elevating the profile of your town. If all goes well, that person's best interests are interwoven with the best interests of the community.

But when the town becomes too small for that person's aspirations, they move on.

For a long time, this was the case with Highland Park, NJ Mayor Meryl Frank, who, after more than nine years as mayor of this tiny Middlesex County borough of 14,000 whose identity, in addition to tree-lined streets, diverse housing stock, good public schools, and tight-knit community, is defined by its bedroom community status for large nearby institutions like Johnson & Johnson and Rutgers University.

Mayor Frank last week was sworn in as the United States representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. It's not clear how this will affect her mayoral incumbency, but her resignation is likely as she says she will stay on temporarily to ensure a smooth transition to a new administration.

Throughout the 2008 presidential election, Frank, a Democrat, was an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton, and, subsequently, Barack Obama, and raised a lot of money in the process. Her appointment is the product of higher aspirations, and her legacy in Highland Park will be noted. In 2004, she created the Task Force on Ethics and Good Government, which is instituting wide-ranging rules and guidelines to assure clean government in Highland Park. Working with Borough council, she helped to develop Highland Park 2020, a long-term vision for the Borough, that focuses on creating a community that is economically, environmentally and socially sustainable. The plan highlights affordability, conservation and strong community relations, according to the Highland Park Web site.

Her term has also been marked with the ongoing redevelopment effort of Raritan Avenue, Highland Park's main street corridor.

Now Highland Park faces a change in leadership. The process to replace Frank, who is in the middle of her third term, is controlled by the local Democratic Municipal Committee. They will provide three candidates for Council consideration, and Council will then vote on who will carry out her term. This process should be public -- the local Dems should invite the community to participate in the process, as well as encourage Party outsiders to seek the spot -- those less qualified will be weeded out in the process.

I Love myPod!

2009-02-18T22:51:00.000-05:00

Let's Get Serious Here

2009-02-04T11:39:00.004-05:00

Here we go again.

To use a catchy Obama phrase during his run for the high office, it seems like these days, it's _always_ silly season in politics, and the news today of Tom Daschle withdrawing his name as Obama's nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services only continues this pattern.

Now we all must suffer through yet another week-long news cycle as the cable networks unearth every partisan hack for commentary, culminating with Sunday morning's All Star lineup of hacks, pundits, gasbags, and blowhards, reveling in Barack Obama's missteps in his first two weeks in office.

What's worse: it's post-Super Bowl, the quietest time of year for sports, so there's _really_ nothing else on. Tune in, everyone! Let's get ready to talk about really non-substantive stuff. It's not like there's anything else going on: more and more people are unemployed these days, so television viewership's got to be way up.

Let me say this first: Secy. Geithner's and Tom Daschle's apparent inability to manage a personal ledger is truly reprehensible and there's really no excuse. While there is an argument to be made for the expeditious installation of a Treasury secretary in Geithner, despite his tax problems, Daschle should have been dismissed the moment he acknowledged his problems in unpaid taxes.

Why? Because we can't get caught up in the forever silly season of politics right now. Even though Tom Daschle is an ardent supporter of President Obama who was tapped to push through his health care policy -- an area where other leaders, Obama said in December, have failed:

"Our leaders offer up detailed health care plans with great fanfare and promise, only to see them fail, derailed by Washington politics and influence peddling."

Well, if this part of the Obama agenda is not derailed, it's certainly delayed -- and things are supposed to be urgent.

Here's a very incomplete list of what we need to be doing:

* Passing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and working out fundamental differences in how to stimulate an economy in continued decline

* Working to improve the housing crisis

* Closing the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay

* Withdrawing troops from Iraq and dealing, finally, with Afghanistan

* Dealing with Israel-Palestinian relations

* Fixing HUD

* Implementing sound urban policy

* Implementing sound transportation policy

And the beat goes on and on and on. This list is about the same length as silly season, which is, apparently, forever. I'm only watching Lehrer and will hold my nose through Sunday: say no to Morning Joe, swim through the Olbermann and Maddow snarky sludge, wade through Will, march past Mitchell, gallop over Gregory, take cover from Cokie, and shy away from Schieffer.

In fact, just keep walking sirs and ma'ams. There's nothing to see here this week.

Shovel Your Walk?

2009-01-28T21:54:00.001-05:00

Here's a legal scenario: one of the kids who shoveled my walk (for $3) actually slipped and fell down my stoop steps after her was "hired" as a day laborer. He was fine, thankfully, but if he were hurt on the job, how am I, the property owner and employer, responsible?

Raiding the Family Jewels

2009-01-08T09:37:00.002-05:00

It's not like I need to chime on the Bernie Madoff scandall: everyone else has already, and I consider myself lucky that I'm poor enough to not have been hurt by this Ponzi scheme, but I am strangely fascinated with the media coverage of it all.

My day job requires me to read the Wall Street Journal everyday to follow the markets, particularly the housing markets, and this has been big news for Murdoch & Co, for obvious reasons, but I'm most amused by a recent headline from Crain's New York:

Prosecutor: Madoff raided family jewels

Ain't that the truth?

Those Damn Penny Pinchers

2009-01-06T16:43:00.003-05:00

The headline just below the fold in today's Wall Street Journal could have just as easily been a clip from The Onion:

Hard-Hit Families Finally Start Saving, Aggravating Nation's Economic Woes

The lede is features an Idaho couple that has recently reduced their credit card debt, opened a savings account, and cut back on taking their children out for dinner. They've even created something of a co-op with other families in purchasing bulk goods at what is presumably a nearby big box store.

For the economy, it's death by thrift.

But this same thriftiness, embraced by families across the U.S., is also a major reason the downturn may not soon end. Americans, fresh off a deacadeslong buying spress, are finally saving more, and spending less--just as the economy needs their dollars most.

Americans are not known for their frugality, at least not the last few generations following those who came of age in the Depression Era. I can tell stories of my grandfather, a Russian immigrant, who monitored the amount of toilet paper his children used and made them walk on the outer rim of the carpet so as not to wear out the main part. Serious stuff.

And while we're not going to see a return to that type of behavior any time soon, and while the no-money-downers will still suck in willing consumers who just don't have the longview to keep from spending beyond their means, the Idaho couple, the Capps, will likely represent a shift in American families. After all, with gas prices at their lowest point in years after hitting peak in Summer 2008, the auto companies are signalling their worst sales in decades, with Toyota showing a sales decline for the first time in its 70-year history.

Maybe, just maybe, Americans are getting the point, and this type of long-term, pragmatic spending will result in a lasting, sustainable economy -- one that is not based on debt.

In Defense of Rutgers

2008-12-17T10:38:00.009-05:00

In Defense of Rutgers

I was listening to WFAN the other morning and there you had Boomer Esiason, a former star QB for the Bengals and the Jets, talking about how even though New York (New Jersey, really) has two first-place football teams, you wouldn't know it based on the media coverage.

There's something about this area that makes us supremely cynical and pessimistic, even when things are going well.

But this is not the case with Rutgers and, specifically, Rutgers football -- the Scarlet Knights. New Jersey has rallied behind the football team of the State University of New Jersey. New Jersey was, in fact, crying out for a good football program. Something we can hang our hats on when we say why we're proud to be New Jerseyans.

Now on gameday, there's unity and pride for school and sport. Undergrads, grads, and alumni are interacting in ways they never did.

But the Star-Ledger and some in the New Jersey Legislature are not having any of it. They point to impropriety, they point to scandal and corruption, they point to misappropriation of funds, and their arguments are weak at best, and destructive at worst.

Today, a group of dedicated fans, alumni, faculty, and staff, launched an information campaign to basically set the record straight about Rutgers. That group, assembled through Internet message boards and a Facebook group called I Got Rutgers' Back, of which the Bowie of Suburbia is a member.

The group, which organized only three weeks ago and raised upwards of $10,000 from over 200 individual donors in that time, is an indication of the hunger for a successful RU, both athletically and academically. But with RU's increased success, particularly since the Scarlet Knight's first bowl game in 2005 and now-fired RU Athletic Director and Political Fallguy Bob Mulcahy, the school and the athletic have fallen under increased scrutiny from the Ledger. And it ain't been good.

The group takes specific aim at the Ledger for a December 7 report, "Rutgers Football: A Game of Secrets", which claims that:

In the past five years, as Rutgers hiked tuition, eliminated six other varsity sports and canceled classes to cut costs, the university more than doubled annual spending on football, from $7.5 million to $15.6 million.

The obvious implication here is that is that money was moved from other areas to fund football, and that's patently untrue. The subsidy that RU actually provides football is less than it was five years ago, when the Knights went 4-7 in 2004. Increased spending has been offset 100% by increased revenue stemming from, what else? Increased quality of the Rutgers football program.

Further, the Star-Ledger distorted the findings of an Athletics Review Committee, heavily suggested impropriety in the November 20 report, "Report Says Rutgers Failed To Properly Oversee Athletics Department":

The Rutgers athletic department was allowed to become a virtually independent operation within the school - bending rules, answering to no one and spending freely.

That's the LEDE! If you were reading this with no prior knowledge, you would immediately conclude that this is a corrupt, back-room dealing, club. Only paragraphs later, the article acknowledges that the report found Mulcahy was not involved in any "wrongdoing," but that the University, in an accelerated attempt to improve the football program, moved too quickly and that oversight was lost. That's a legitimate gripe, but fortunately, that lack of oversight did not result in corruption, scandal, or mismanaged. In fact, the Athletics Review Committee audit found the program to be transparent, well run, and was producing dividends.

The report does call for:

Establish a director of compliance/ethics
Signatory authority for contracts
Review and approval of sponsorship agreement policies and practices
Review and approval of high-level employment contracts

Like I Got Rutgers' Back says "Athletics could have done bad things and nobody would have caught them, but fortunately they actually did great things."

Other areas of concern related to the Star-Ledger coverage included Coach Greg Schiano's alleged contract stipulation that offered an "out" if the stadium expansion were not completed (not true), and a Schiano salary subsidy from Nelligan, the school's sports marketing agency that was labeled as a "secret side deal." This kind of contract arrangement is so common in collegiate athletics.

The Ledger also characterizes the Rutgers Stadium expansion as mismanaged, and that bonds couldn't be sold as a result. Any superficial examination of large-scale development projects in the current economy -- institutional, medical, corporate, or otherwise -- would show just how difficult it is to get a project completed. But with all of that said, the first phase of the project was completed on time and on budget, the second phase as been scaled back in an acknowledgment of the economy, but will still provide increase revenue generators in the 11,500 additional seats

Star-Ledger should have known better, or if they did, they chose to avoid it, cynically looking for scandal.

Edison, NJ: A Lot of Dough for A Little Talk

2008-12-06T11:10:00.008-05:00

For those of you who don't know, Edison, NJ, named after the esteemed inventor, is the fifth-largest municipality in the state with a population of roughly 100,000. It's a huge, sprawling expanse of a township, composed historically of pieces of older townships. As most things in New Jersey, it used to be miles of rolling hills and farmland and now it's mostly built out. There is no central downtown (an unincorporated section of Edison known as Clara Barton, comes close, but offers little in the way of a vibrant downtown), you can only drive from here to get there.

That said, Edison is a desirable place to live for its schools, proximity to transit and New York City, budding Indian population, and family-oriented communities.

Oh, and there was recently a revolution in local government there.

A Wha??!! Yes, a revolution. It was a big deal. Edison, along with New Brunswick and Perth Amboy, was one of a dying few localities in NJ's Middlesex County that was still run by an entrenched and corrupt Democratic machine. In 2005, Democrat Jun Choi, a former senior official at the state's Department of Education, beat Democrat George Spadoro -- a long-time mayor who was part of his party's political machine -- in the Democratic primary. It was huge. Two years later, Choi (who, at 34, was the youngest mayor ever to be elected in Edison) campaigned successfully to get elected his own slate of change candidates to Township Council.

Challenges abounded in Edison, from a campaign to build a new high school to how to redevelop a massive expanse along U.S. Route 1 that was the site to the local Ford plant. There was, and still is, promise in Edison under Choi's progressive leadership. Choi was among the first New Jersey officials to support President-elect Barack Obama, while most of NJ's old-guard Democrats fawned over Hillary Clinton (Clinton won NJ handily in the presidential primary), and set a bold agenda for the township.

There have been hiccups along the way, though. In summer 2006, an incident between an Indian man and the police set off a high level of racial tension. Choi sided with the police, though called for an investigation of the officer (who was later cleared) and was criticized for it. The PBA president called for Choi's resignation, but that call was largely dismissed by newspapers and residents alike as part of the "old Edison guard." One local paper actually called for the PBA president's resignation because of his actions

And while Choi has taken bold stances, he comes off as arrogant often times, in curt responses to questions over his style of governance, and the choices he makes in the name of progress. A local paper, The Home News Tribune, reports that the township's communications director, hired in 2006 with a handsome $65K yearly salary has enjoyed a 38 percent salary increase and now makes $90K a year -- an exorbitantly high wage for someone in the communications field that only oversees an assistant, and not a whole department.

In a time when the average Edison homeowner pays roughly $6,500 a year in taxes and New Jersey localities are under pressure to build state-mandated affordable housing, and are limited to only 4 percent annual budget increases as the Legislature lamely tries to address the state's misguided property tax system, Choi, a reformer in his own right, needs to make sure this doesn't happen. Further, he needs to steer clear of arrogantly defending it.

Hell, I'm an experienced editor. I will happily take that job for a mere $70K/year. Mayor Choi -- are you listening? While I'm not a resident, I live right near Edison.

Food Banks: Another NEO Casualty?

2008-11-30T03:16:00.000-05:00

Last week, when a prominent and long-standing central New Jersey soup kitchen went to the newspapers as a last resort to inform the public that demand was up, donations were down, and that it would have to cut back on meals, the immediate response was overwhelming. Donations, totaling upwards of $7,000 poured in almost instantly, the full meal service was restored, and there was a happy ending just in time for the pre-Thanksgiving headlines. The support was touted as a “Thanksgiving Miracle.”

But what happens to places like Elijah’s Promise—that central Jersey soup kitchen—when it’s March, or August, or any other time when holiday spirit cannot be tapped? It’s just another characteristic of this New Economic Order. Americans are spending less, and have less disposable income. At the same time, not-for-profit organizations like Elijah’s Promise, face the daunting challenge of carrying out its mission with fewer dollars and more demand.

Of course, it goes without saying that this is not an isolated incident. While foundation support for nonprofits has yet to take a major toll, there is the looming threat of a sustained decline in charitable giving, putting the hurt on nonprofits everywhere.

Whereas not-for-profit services might decline with diminished funding, the demand for food banks increases in tough economic times. AP reports:

The Greater Chicago Food Depository, the city’s food bank, has seen a 33 percent increase in food pantry demand from July to September of 2008, compared to the same period last year, said spokesman Bob Dolgan, “Our network is strained right now,” Dolgan said. “Our most successful pantries … are having to turn people away.”

And to make matters even worse, those who were donors or volunteers at food banks in years past are now clients. Food, sadly, is one of the first “luxuries” to go—before gas and electricity, according to Paul Ash, the executive director of the San Francisco Food Bank, who appeared Wednesday on PBS’ NewsHour. Last year, his organization distributed more than 27 million pounds of food.

Ash explains:

Well, it bites worst at the end of the pay period, so just depending on how someone is paid. We always see more people showing up to a pantry if the distribution is in the last few days of the month, or the, you know, 13th, 14th, 15th of the month, just before someone can expect their paycheck.

Food is the one thing that you can just parse out your dollars very, very slowly. And so that’s why you end up running out of food toward the end of the middle of the month.

The other penalty there is you don’t buy the giant economy size. You have to buy the small size, so your dollar doesn’t go as far. So there;s a lot of penalties to living paycheck-to-paycheck and trying to stretch your dollars out for food.

The food stamps program, and other federal nutrition programs do not limit the number of participants, those programs do not offer sufficient support to feed a family for a month. As a result, more strain is placed on food banks, which suffer from falling donations.

No Choice But to Age In Place

2008-11-22T23:45:00.000-05:00

Aging in place for some is the ultimate ideal. Elderly individuals, with their faculties in tact, and who are physically sound, stay in the houses where they raised their families, and remain in the communities where they have roots, paid taxes, and have an historic reference.

A community with a sound housing policy would ideally provide low- and moderate-income housing for aging seniors so that they can downsize, while remaining in their community. For residents of greater means, market rate senior housing, replete with wide doorways, limited services, and near town amenities is, or should, be an option.

But with the New York Times Saturday reporting that aging in place might, in fact, be a burden, this whole ideal is going out the window.

Welcome to the new economic order. With every passing day, as housing values plummet and the level of unsold houses approaches a one-year extent. Older Americans can no longer sell their houses to downsize—never mind downsizing within their own communities. They can’t downsize anywhere, presenting a potentially frightening prospect for people—stuck in their homes.

According to The Times:

Facilities that have watched their waiting lists wither and their occupancy rates fall in the last year are now scrambling to bring people through their doors. Some assisted-living centers have called in real estate agents to teach prospective residents about online advertising and how to clean and preen their homes for showings. Others have set up programs with banks to provide bridge loans to homeowners, or are discounting apartments and offering low-interest loans.

“It is part of the hidden problem of the recession,” said Larry Minnix, president of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging.

Talk about aging in place. But in these cases, it’s not by choice.

Bag Here, Bag Now

2008-11-08T17:22:00.001-05:00

In Amsterdam, at a Super de Boer, imagine my surprise when I had to pay for a grocery bag because I didn’t bring my own. In the U.S., I buy those biodegradable poop bags for my dog, so I don’t need the plastic grocery bags. I bring canvas to the store, etc. Yeah, I try to be “green” when I can. I think more and more people these days do.

But when I left the Super de Boer, I was amazed. I don’t live in an area, or a state, for that matter, that would employ such a progressive-minded initiative. I do know that New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has been on a lengthy campaign to get people to recycle their plastic grocery bags, or bring their own from home, but like Europe, in an ever-shrewd way to use taxes (or fees, in this case) for the public good, Bloomberg is now proposing a bag fee. Joe Biden, eat your heart out—now here’s a tax that we can feel patriotic about.

According to The New York Times:

City officials estimate that the fee could generate $16 million a year, a figure that Mr. Bloomberg would no doubt appreciate, given the lingering and concussive effects of the global economic crisis on the citys economy.

The article continues:

If the proposal passes, New York City would follow the lead of many European countries and become one of the first places in the United States to assess a so-called plastic bag tax.

It’s a fantastic plan, and every city should engage in such bold plans, but does it go far enough? In New York City, cigarettes approach $8 per pack, and guess what? Smoking is way down. A study by the city’s health department in 2007 indicated a 20-percent decline in smoking since 2002. Why? A combination of strategic advertising, a smoking ban in public places like bars and restaurants, and that cig tax were all attributed to that decline.

New York City, in 2006, also banned artery-clogging artificial trans fats at all restaurants. Why? Because public health is in the utmost interest of any government (and not just public health that keeps a locality from getting sued, like bad sidewalks, etc.)

So what’s my point? There are always going to be the “keep your laws off my trans fat” people, but isn’t one of the roles of government to protect the citizenry, from both exogenous and endogenous forces? I think so. And here’s the other thing: the city’s real intent is to not make money from this fee. The intent is environmental: people would stop using plastic bags, and any subsequent revenue from a bag fee would dry up. Further, $16 million is a mere whiff of New York City’s $50 billion municipal budget. This ain’t about more money to line the pockets of the folks at City Hall.

But it’s always baby steps with these laws. The cig tax was slow to increase; no one noticed a flavor difference when their food lacked trans fats; and, alas, the bag tax is too small, and needs to hit the consumer. We’ve squandered three decades of environmental warnings, and these are issues our local governments can control. Just like implementing aggressive recycling plans, plastic grocery bags are things of the past we need our local governments to help to drive home that message.

The Times article notes that following Ireland’s implementing its 33-cent bag tax in 2002, plastic bag use dropped by 94 percent. Ninety-four percent. Now that’s the stuff!

The article quotes local grocery store owners saying that customers would be outraged by paying for bags. Perhaps, but how long would it take for a customer to start bringing a bag? Once? Twice? It wouldn’t take long.

We don’t have long. Bag here, bag now.

NJ Needs an Affordable Housing Tax. Period.

2008-09-22T12:36:00.001-04:00

At least we’re talking about an affordable housing mandate (even if that talk is in its third decade).

OK, now that’s out of the way, the affordable-housing-as-mandate discussion in New Jersey is a mess.

In June, when the governor here signed into law a bill that would eliminate Regional Contribution Agreements—a tool used by some towns to wire funds covering their affordable housing obligations to nearby, typically poorer, urban, areas—it was viewed as a triumph by housing advocates because of its anticipated impact on helping to reintegrate neighborhoods, staving off so-called golden ghettos, and providing housing for lower-income residents in even the wealthiest of communities.

The Legislature also passed a measure that would levy a 2.5 percent fee on the assessed value for non-residential construction or improvements. Opponents say that fee is far too small, covering only a portion of a construction project’s affordable housing requirement, leaving the town to cover the rest of the cost.

So the state, with its 566 towns, could not fully come to terms. That’s why the New Jersey State League of Municipalities is challenging the bills, along with some 230 towns that have joined the fight. Conventional wisdom mostly said that any regulations put forth by the state’s Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) would be amended, but implemented at some point, but it now appears we could be sent back to the drawing board.

On September 15, The Star-Ledger reported that one town’s challenge—Medford Township—would challenge COAH’s rules with the state’s Council on Local Mandates—a powerful state agency whose rulings cannot be overturned by state courts. Medford’s Republican Mayor (yes, this is largely a partisan issue—he is running for state senate) and the township says COAH’s regulations could cost towns roughly $6 million statewide and then cites a 1995 amendment to the state constitution that bans certain unfunded state mandates, the Ledger reports.

This is more than a legal dance—it’s tactical maneuvering that could successfully curtail the implementation of sound affordable housing policy in a state the desperately needs it. While it’s unclear how the Local Mandates council will rule, one thing is clear: the Legislature needs to step it up a notch by:

Creating a value-added tax, like a gas tax that would be used strictly for infrastructure. Gov. Jon Corzine is still pushing his asset monetization plan that would increase toll costs on some of the state’s busiest thoroughfares, but that’s largely a regressive tax for those commuters who have to drive long distances.
We need to move away from the property-tax-based funding for social mandates that benefit everyone (yes, even you there, living on the horse farm in bucolic northwest New Jersey). The implementation of an affordable housing policy that works and is reasonable can be funded by more than just property owners.
The developer’s fee—the aforementioned 2.5 percent fee—and the municipal mandate system of funding affordable housing is ludicrous. This is important because it could very well thwart all economic growth in New Jersey with ratable-generating enterprise moving over to places like Pennsylvania (no offense, Pennsylvania—I’m there often—great commonwealth. We love ya’.)

It’s encouraging that the state legislature here understands the importance of providing affordable housing, but after decades of wrangling, we need to think clearly here, and do what’s got to be done.

The GOParadox

2008-09-05T21:42:00.000-04:00

Despite everything, the Republican Party's playbook still revolves around calling the Democratic platform, Democrats themselves, and even their professions as weak, cowardly, effete, tame, and impotent. No matter that the Republican party INCREASED the size of government in the last eight years, increased spending, increased the deficit, distracted the entire globe with its ill-designed version of a terror war (terror war was necessary, but not this one), has tried to use wedge issues like same-sex marriage and abortion to divide the country.

You didn't hear a lick of the Republican-esque vitriol at the Democratic convention. Almost everyone who spoke went out of their way to honor McCain's service to the country. In 2004, Republicans refuted, avoided, and even dispatched deep-pocketed thugs to discredit John Kerry's service to the country. Republicans have not put "country first" in years, and they're certainly not doing it this year. John McCain's address Thursday night was the most disingenuous, dishonest, misleading 45 minutes I have seen during this election cycle.

Sarah Palin's address, on the other hand was the most honest, accurate depiction of the state of the Republican Party I had seen in years: angry, bitter, vitriolic, sarcastic, dismissive. The only disingenuous aspect of that address was its "toughness": her speech was, in fact, weak, cowardly, effete, tame, and impotent because it simply set out to impose a false sense of impending doom, and to rattle the GOP base by puffing themselves up while putting down more than half the country.

The Best Biden He Can Be

2008-08-23T01:59:00.000-04:00

The test message never came: the media, once again, by way of stakeout, pestered its way to this scoop. After 1 a.m. Saturday morning, and after leaks throughout Friday evening indicated that Barack Obama’s vice presidential finalists were being slowly disqualified from the veepstakes, it’s now being reported that Obama will run with six-term Delaware Democratic Sen. Joe Biden.

Obama’s choosing Biden will present all of the positive and negative effects that the punditocracy can muster up, but picking Biden is certainly more than simply running with a Washington fixture with a quick wit and a progressive bent. He has more foreign policy experience than John McCain, and that’s what we’re going to hear in the coming days.

But what about at home? Biden’s 1994 crime bill was lauded as putting more police on the streets resulting in a reduction in violence nationwide. In 2007, the senator introduced a reauthorization of many of the original elements of the 1994 bill, including the reauthorization of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services; adding 1,000 FBI agents to focus on traditional crime (Biden has argued a drop in FBI resources since 9/11); creating a national commission on crime intervention and prevention strategies; a proposed reduction in recidivism; and not to mention the renewing of the assault weapons ban while closing the gun show loophole.

So while we’re going to hear a lot about a foreign policy balance on the Democratic ticket, let’s ask ourselves what this ticket, with Obama’s community organizing background, can do for American communities?

What Shall We Do? What Shall We Do With All These Useless Houses?

2008-08-21T21:10:00.004-04:00

John McCain could have dismissed his inability to recall how many houses he has as a senior moment, but that would have pointed to his age.

So there wasn’t any way for John McMansion to dig out of this one, but one thing is clear: the McCains have more houses than you or I do, and his inability to count them is not due to a simple forgetful moment, but because of a legitimate clarity issue in how to count separate houses on one estate, what is owned by the senator and what is owned by the financially reticent Mrs. McCain, and how many condos they fused into one giant McCondo-seum.

Fortunately, most of us are privileged enough that we will never, ever have to deal with such pesky clarity issues.

McCain’s staff says he has four houses, but then the watchdogs are saying that he has at least seven. Then again, Huffington Post cites an assessment by Progressive Accountability that says they have 10, with a combined value upwards of $14 million! I’ll tell you, nothing makes me feel more in touch with a presidential candidate than when I compare his or her financial holdings, to my personal financial worth. Now McCain says that I won’t be rich until I reach the $5 million threshold? Man, I have a long way to go.

Barack Obama, who has taken a hit in the polls that pundits say worsened while he was catching rays during the Russia/Georgia conflict, has launched something of a populist attack against McCain to a point where it could push back the much-anticipated text message that I’m supposed to get telling me of Obama’s veep pick. Why would anyone want to hurry the announcement of the potential second-in-command of the Free World when there is political gold to be unearthed from this prospector’s mother load?

Politico quoted Obama on a campaign stop in Virginia where McCain was painted as out of touch:

"Somebody asked John McCain, ‘How many houses do you have? And he said, I’m not sure. I’ll have to check with my staff. True quote: I’m not sure, Ill have to check with my staff. So they asked his staff and he said, at least four. At least four! ...

"If you’re like me and you’ve got one house—or you were like the millions of people who are struggling right now to keep up with their mortgage so that they dont lose their home—you might have a different perspective. By the way, the answer is: John McCain has seven homes. So there’s just a fundamental gap of understanding between John McCain’s world and what people are going through every single day here in America."

To be sure, it’s difficult these days to relate personally with our presidential candidates. These folks generally live in a world that most Americans will never experience. So with that, the “I just want to have a beer with my president” argument off the table.

The questions we need to ask is, with millions of Americans facing foreclosure and with the concept of a sturdy fixed-rate mortgage to some Americans as foreign as that of your spouse being worth $100 million after inheriting a beer distributorship, is McCain in touch with everyday economic issues? How big of a tax deduction are the McCains getting from owning all of these houses? At what point do we call someone “out of touch” with the common man? Is it when he or she needs two hands to count his or her houses, or when he or she can’t count at all?

Bottled Hot Water

2008-08-15T11:44:00.001-04:00

Drilling For Finances From Tax-Exempt, Non-Profits?

2008-08-05T15:26:00.000-04:00

It's tight here in New Jersey.

It's crowded. With 8.7 million people, we are 11th in the country in population, but first in population density in the Union with over 1,100 people per square mile. We're also wealthy -- 2nd in the country -- but you wouldn't necessarily know it by looking at those areas that make us the most densely-populated state in the country.

The Garden State, as it so happens, also as the highest imbalance of any state in the country in terms of what it gives and receives to and from the federal government. According the the New Jersey State League of Municipalities, the Garden State gets back just less than two-thirds of every dollar it sends to Washington.

So there are demands here. There are spatial demands, housing demands, demands for resources, infrastructure, you name it. As such, New Jersey is often at the vanguard in dealing with all kinds of issues facing the nation. The state hits a major stumbling block, however, when it comes to property taxes.

In New Jersey, where we rely on a property-tax-based system to largely fund our public schools and governments, rising municipal costs are taxing people out of towns. The state has mandated a four percent cap on municipal budget increases, and as home values are reassessed and towns are revaluated, property tax rates will adjust -- either up or down. But obviously the worst-case scenario is an increase, so that's what we'll examine.

In 2006, the average tax bill of the wealthy Township of Montclair was $13,547, and that was based on an average home assessment of $252,742. According to NJ.com's "New Jersey by the Numbers," if you equalize that assessment for comparisons with other towns, that $13,547 bill applies to a house worth $624,207. So often is the case that you have a homeowner who can no longer afford the tax-related costs to their homes, even if they were smart and took out a 30-year fixed mortgage.

So what to do? We've increased taxes on the highways, per Gov. Jon Corzine's asset monetization plan to raise tolls on select highways and increase the state sales tax to 7 percent. Both of these can be regarded as regressive as they pose a greater burden on the poor.

So what next? With the New Jersey Legislature in constant "hold on" mode when it comes to the long-anticipated "property tax convention," towns, facing affordable housing development mandates, and approaching complete build-out with little area left to develop tax-ratables, are looking at those who, by law, do not have to pay taxes.

According to the New Jersey Policy Perspective, the assessed value of all property -- buildings and land -- in New Jersey in 2000 was $648.5 billion, and of that, 13.5 percent paid no property tax. Under law, that 13.5 percent was tax exempt. This tax-exempt property is largely composed of public, private and religious schools, state, county, and municipal buildings, churches and charitable institutions, hospitals, and cemeteries. Other partial exemptions include those for water and sewage facilities, urban enterprise zones.

New Jersey's Princeton Borough, a 1.1-square-mile, 12,000-resident municipality lies right smack in the middle of the state, and is a pretty good example of "if it can go wrong, it will." Princeton Borough is a donut-hole municipality -- a town that is physically surrounded by another town, in this case, Princeton Township. Both towns consider "downtown" (Princeton Borough) its downtown, share a school district, a municipal library, and more than a dozen other municipal agencies. In fact, the only agencies the two towns do not share are administration (government), public works, and police.

However, as you might have guessed, Princeton is home to Princeton University, and, alas, most of Princeton University's tax-exempt land lies in tiny Princeton Borough, which is already strapped for cash. About 50 percent of the Borough is tax exempt.

The Borough's annual operating budget is roughly $23 million, and Princeton University, which is the largest employer in the Princetons, and pays the most in what is taxed -- sewers, buildings with full, or partial, tax levies, etc. -- holds an agreement to give about $1 million a year in voluntary municipal funds, used however the Borough sees fit. Princeton University also funds other community projects, adding value to the town-gown relations.

There has long been a tension between the local government and PU regarding these in-lieu finances, but this year, the local Democratic Party has upped the ante, gathering signatures as part of a petition asking if PU pays its fair share.

The petition contends that a resident's property tax levy would drop a whopping 24 percent in the Borough. The average resident there pays in the $13,000 range per year in property taxes. The Democratic Party there is lobbying for local officials to support efforts to negotiate a fairer payment from Princeton University. PU currently pays tax on its commercial property, and maintains voluntary tax roll inclusion for grad and faculty housing where schoolchildren might live, and pay its "fair share" of all taxpayer-supported services.

The petition does not call for the removal of federally authorized tax-exempt status -- granted to all nonprofit educational institutions

According to a report in The Times of Trenton, the university's tax payments in 2006 amounted for about 8.5 percent of the $9.5 million in municipal taxes the borough collected from all taxpayers in 2006. According to the story in the Times, "when school and county taxes are included in the calculation, there was a $27.9 million gap between the $7.1 million in property taxes the university paid in 2006 and what it would have paid if all its property in the Princetons were taxed."

The state legislature has so effectively slept on working with localities in creating a sensible solution to rising property taxes that towns are now taking it upon themselves to drill for oil, er, money in local reserves, rather, $15 billion university endowments, that had been largely untapped, not counting the annual contributions, agreements, and institutional presence. As is the case with so many institution-based towns, the existence of the town is based squarely on the existence of the institution -- is there a formula that quantifies that value?

Other heavily-endowed private institutions like Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. have devised long-term in-lieu-of-tax deals with their municipal hosts. In 2005, Harvard and Cambridge came to terms on a deal that would bring the city more than $60 million over the next 20 years.

But Cambridge, with more than 100,000 people, is the fifth-largest city in Massachusetts, has a far higher annual city operating expense budget, and has far more tax-ratable property than Princeton ever could. So, in effect, it's incomparable.

Just another example of New Jersey being the science laboratory for social progress, but with so much at stake, this issue is far too big for a couple hundred local residents to swallow. The legislature must step in, and step in soon, to find broad-based creative ways to amend what is quickly turning into a statewide property tax crisis.

The Mess In Texas (Houston: We Have a Recycling Problem)

2008-07-30T22:16:00.001-04:00

The New York Times reports that of the nation’s 30 largest cities, Houston, the fourth largest city behind New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, comes in dead last in recycling, turning over a shameful 2.6 percent of its total waste. The Times cites a study conducted this year by my new favorite news source, Waste News, that puts New York City—roughly four times the size of Houston—at the top of the big city recycling list with a 34 percent ranking.

The Times report goes on to say:

But city officials say real progress will be hard to come by. Landfill costs here are cheap. The citys sprawling, no-zoning layout makes collection expensive, and there is little public support for the kind of effort it takes to sort glass, paper and plastics. And there appears to be even less for placing fees on excess trash.

Houston Mayor Bill White appears to pride the his townsfolk’s rejection of the recycling “trend.”

We have an independent streak that rebels against mandates or anything that seems trendy or hyped up. Houstonians are skeptical of anything that appears to be oversold or exaggerated.

And Mayor White supports increased recycling efforts! Of course, there’s hope. White says that Houstonians are amenable to change: “Houstonians can change, and change fast. Thanks for the comforting words, Mr. Mayor.

But how fast is fast? (Vice) President Al Gore’s challenge of achieving 100 percent domestic clean energy within 10 years is visionary, and necessary. The planet has been backed into an eco-corner.

But a comprehensive recycling plan is not only not visionary, it’s doable, and so old school that it’s shocking the city has lagged so far behind. The fact that Houston has so shirked its responsibilities when it comes to responsible waste collection is far more ethically unsound than Ted Stevens’ taking feng shui advice from oil companies.

The Times quotes a local chef who was turned away from a city recycling depot. Why? She had too much recycling material!

They said my truck was too full. There are cultures that just dont get it, and, unfortunately, Houston is one of them.

Recycling is the absolute least we can do as a society in resource reduction for sustainable living. The eco-mantra “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is not crafted for cadence, rather, its words are listed in order of importance.

Houston’s recycling rates are appalling because the complexities of the planet’s environmental strife are so great, that recycling, the low-rent, feel-good, easiest possible way to take part in the environmental movement, should be rote for big city governments. You don’t need a ten-gallon hat’s worth of eco-knowledge to know that.

We now know that there is a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months, increasing the melting pressure on Greenland. Hold this up next to the fact that of Houston’s 340,000 households, fewer than half have recycling bins, with roughly 25,000 households on the waiting list for bins and you see that we must urge our local governments and look at the big and small pictures, including the implementation of regular curbside programs that handle recycling.

According to the EPA, in 1999, recycling and composting activities kept about 64 million tons of material from ending up in landfills and incinerators. The country’s current recycling rate, about 32.5 percent, has doubled over the past 15 years.

Further, only one curbside recycling program existed nationwide 20 years ago, but by 2006, about 8,660 curbside programs had sprouted up across the nation. As of 2005, about 500 materials recovery facilities had been established to process the collected materials.

So where’s Houston? With only a fraction of the households of New York City: 162,000 as compared to NYC’s 3.2 million, Houston’s program is not mandatory, as opposed to New York’s mandated program. Also, just a detail of note, all of New York’s city vehicles that hand recycling operate off alternative fuels. Houston’s do not.

All throughout New Jersey, smaller towns are working with consultants in finding ways to devise a sustainability plan conserve energy, reduce carbon footprint, and subsequently save money in the long term by way of resource reduction. Highland Park, Princeton, Montclair are just to name a few. And they are light years beyond recycling, conducting green community audits, and addressing transportation needs to reduce car traffic and pollution.

Governments need to be pressured to devise plans that have long-term environmental and financial benefits, and Houston, thanks to the Waste News, appears to have a long, long way to go.

By the way, the Times reports that Houston cannot afford more recycling bins for residents who don’t have one. Natch.

In New Jersey’s Hub City, A Push to Change Government Gets Big Government Resistance

2008-07-23T23:04:00.000-04:00

Editor's note: This piece was originally posted by the author at the blog site, www.rooflines.org

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In the 1970s, New Brunswick, NJ was struggling.

Like other New Jersey cities experiencing the hangover of race riots of the 1960s, the schools were in decline, white flight began to set in, and all of a sudden, the Hub City, as it’s called, that was home to the world headquarters of pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson and Rutgers University was in serious trouble.

But there had always been hope. In the summer of 1967, as peace was shattered throughout cities in the Garden State, New Brunswick held fast, no blood was shed, and the peace was preserved. Then-mayor Patricia Sheehan, a 33-year-old widow and mother of three actually went out on patrol with the police, appeared with local clergy, and made it known—in person—that whatever happened in New Brunswick, her incumbency, part of a so-called “New Five” ousting 27 years of a previous administration, would watch over the city.

That resilience and sense of hope was instilled in the residents, and in 1975, New Brunswick Tomorrow, a partnership of public and private sectors, was organized. The following year, The New Brunswick Development Corporation, a private, non-profit organization designed to serve as New Brunswick Tomorrow’s implementation partner for economic development (and is still the city’s ostensible redevelopment arm), was created, and a city was on the move again.

Johnson & Johnson announced it would stay in New Brunswick in 1978, housing its headquarters in an I.M. Pei-designed campus, near the Rutgers University campus in a run down segment of the downtown.

While it can be argued that, once upon a time, concerned residents needed needed bold, do-it-itself government initiative to revive the city, the residents, as is the case in any locality, have always been the lifeblood, though city government did not always reflect that. There had already been a problem with the extreme transience of this community of 50,000 residents, whose tens of thousands of students passed through with few staying to raise their families in the city, and the changing immigrant population—for example, a once Hungarian neighborhood is now a vibrant Hispanic area—is changing the face of the city.

New Brunswick, being in the geographic center of the state, was, for a long time, at the center of New Jersey’s infamous corrupt Democratic Machine. Mayor John Lynch, who served as mayor from 1979 to 1991 and is the immediate predecessor of the current Mayor James Cahill, is currently serving a three-year jail term immediately preceding the current mayor.

To be sure, not all are corrupt, but there are so many tributaries that link New Brunswick government to the larger state Democratic Machine (the municipal attorney, William Hamilton, a junior grade Navy lieutenant before receiving his JD from Georgetown in the early sixties, and an overall decent man, was briefly the Speaker of the State Assembly in the 1970s) that it could take up an entirely separate article.

But back to Mayor Sheehan, who marched with police under the threat of race riots in the 1960s. Her daughter, Elizabeth “Betsy” Sheehan Garlatti, is currently the New Brunswick City Council president. Garlatti, the director of Finance & Research at the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education, was appointed—as is often the case in machine politics—to a vacant city council seat in 2004 and has since won reelection by way of the 3,000 or so party insiders and municipal employees who actually vote in New Brunswick.

Because the Democratic Party has effectively shut out the primary process, various residents have run hopeful campaigns on an independent ticket, but have always failed miserably. Forget about Republicans. They hardly exist here.

One way Council has been able to hold power is by way of the at-large Council system that was established in the 1970s. New Brunswick is divided into wards, but none has direct ward representation.

This is nothing new, of course, in so many local governments, but a recent grass-roots push to change that government structure has begun to garner some attention.

A group, Empower Our Neighborhoods, last month filed a petition with the city clerk’s office to advocate for a ballot question that would change the current form of municipal government from an at-large system to a ward-based system, as well as increasing the number of seats on Council from five to eight.

But as is the case in cities where government is threatened, on July 2, the New Brunswick City Council passed a counteracting ordinance to push the citizens’ initiative off the ballot, and replacing it with a Council-crafted initiative that calls for creating a study that would examine the need to change government.

Knowing that they have at least 3,000 votes, and that Rutgers University students rarely vote, Council would entertain this question, it would fail, and Council could claim that it reached out to the community, and the community decided that it did not want to change government.

A legal battle could ensue that would determine whether the community or the City Council had first initiated a legal proceeding on that ballot question, but experts at Rutgers’ Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy appear to think Empower Our Neighborhoods is in the right.

Attending a New Brunswick City Council meeting is interesting. Based on what you’ve just read, you might think this is a contemptuous lot, but it’s not. They are good people who will speak to you after meetings, but seem averse to criticism, particularly when they stock Council chambers with municipal employees to attend the public meetings. At least two are dual office holders (Council Vice President Joseph V. Egan is a long-time state Assemblyman and Blanquita Valenti serves on the county governing body), and one, the aforementioned Garlatti, has bloodlines in city government.

All but one were born and raised in New Brunswick, and the one that wasn’t—Valenti—came to New Brunswick in 1956 from Puerto Rico and in 1971 became the first Hispanic appointed to the New Brunswick Board of Education.

These are community folks, no doubt about it, and their commitment to the city was never in doubt (though there are plenty of people who make strong cases to the contrary). This is not evil empire stuff: it’s simply a case of a city government that has apparently lost its way, forgetting about the fundamentals that make a city tick, like when Garlatti, and incumbents Jimmie Cook and Robert Recine cited scheduling conflicts for not being able to participate in a pre-primary forum co-sponsored by Empower Our Neighborhoods and the local NAACP chapter. New Brunswick has undergone an unbelievable downtown renaissance in the past 10 years, with an arts, culture, and culinary scene that is unparalleled in the state, but the schools still suffer (it’s an Abbott district), the residential neighborhoods near town are largely unsuitable for quiet, secure family living because of the rampant off-campus student housing situation. Absentee landlords let their properties deteriorate, broken glass, drug dealing, and homeless in neighborhood parks is the norm. Again, not surprising for so many cities, as isn’t the government’s resistance to this grass-roots effort, if not frustrating—but that doesn’t make it acceptable. If the folks at Empower win this battle, it would go to show that a once-impenetrable system can be changed, and that, just like Mayor Sheehan displayed during her courageous outreach efforts in the 1960s, residents are indeed the lifeblood of any locality.

It’s an Affordable Housing Victory, But How Do We Win Over the Towns?

2008-07-23T22:57:00.000-04:00

Let's get one thing clear: at least in New Jersey, we're _having_ the affordable-housing-as-mandate discussion. The fact that so many taxpayers, elected officials, and housing advocates in the Garden State are committed to implementing some sort of affordable housing set-aside as development and jobs increase is a good thing.

That said, it's time to realize that a uniform housing rule might not be the way to go.

On Thursday, Gov. Jon Corzine "signed into law":http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/07/gov_jon_corzine_signed_legisla.html legislation that is being touted by proponents of the bill as a major step forward in ensuring that representation from all income brackets can be part of the same community.

In addition to creating an affordable housing trust fund, the new law also eliminates RCAs, or Regional Contribution Agreements, which are typically used by wealthier localities who send their affordable-housing requirements by way of a financial contribution, to, most often, a nearby poorer community. Naturally, critics of RCAs claim that all towns, not just rich ones, have moral obligations to supply affordable housing within their borders.

The RCA elimination is a hallmark of the incumbency of Democratic Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr., and the bill signing took place in Mount Laurel Township -- the namesake of the original landmark lawsuit that resulted in a State Supreme Court ruling requiring all towns to provide affordable housing. What made the event all the more symbolic was that Corzine & Co. brandished their signing pens at the Ethel Lawrence Homes, named after one of Mount Laurel's original litigants.

In order to finance affordable housing, the bill also mandates a 2.5 percent commercial developer fee that is gauged by the value of new construction. The fee is expected to raise about $80 million per year and has the support of the New Jersey Builders Association, a trade association. The group has also endorsed Corzine's plan to increase affordable housing and apartments by 100,000 units by 2018.

At the bill signing, Roberts touted the amendments:

bq. New Jersey's affordable housing laws have failed to live up to the promise of providing home for low- and moderate-income residents while having the insidious side effect of concentrating poverty in our inner cities. [T]he state's almost barren affordable housing landscape from one of lost opportunities to one of hope and promise for thousands of families.

As Rooflines contributor "John Atlas writes":http://www.rooflines.org/1032/new_jersey_regional_coalition_wins_affordable_housing_victory, RCAs have commonly been charged with concentrating poverty in the inner city and with perpetuating segregation. This is mostly indisputable, but towns are still trying to wrap their brains around the new bill. In New Jersey, where home rule is, sadly, still the rule, some localities are balking.

New Jersey's Council on Affordable Housing, or COAH, an arm of the State Department of Community Affairs in June enacted its latest regulations as part of the ongoing Mount Laurel agreement. In those regulations, developers must provide one affordable unit for every four market-rate units built. Further, for commercial development, one affordable unit must be built for every 16 new jobs created by commercial development.

Towns notwithstanding, academic institutions and hospitals are not very pleased with the latter regulation.

But by way of the New Jersey State League of Municipalities, "161 towns have thus far contributed more than $80,000 to help finance a legal challenge":http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-11/121618294437120.xml&coll=1 against COAH's rules.

The challenge is not directly related to the bill Corzine signed last week, but it does point to a fundamental difference in philosophy between the Legislature and more than 20 percent of the state's 566 (or 567 depending on who's counting) municipalities. Opponents of the latest affordable-housing rules worry that costs associated with housing requirements would be levied upon the taxpayer. A League lawyer told _The Star-Ledger_ that COAH's calculations were "fatally flawed," and that they should be "thrown out," citing worries that towns would be forced to pay for affordable housing. Under the regulations, towns would have to make sure developers comply.

Moreover, there is the matter of workforce housing. If these mandates were only for workforce housing, that would be a different story, but the affordable housing law requires towns to market affordable housing affirmatively -- meaning _anyone_ who qualifies is eligible for the housing -- not just people who work or have lived in the town for a generation -- but also people who qualify from elsewhere. We should be meeting our local needs first, and then market housing affirmatively. Have a waiting list, have a local town preference, and then move forward.

Now what about ethnic and racial diversity? It's immensely important, but poorer people -- no matter the ethnicity -- who work within the community should have the preference for local affordable housing. It makes sense environmentally, it makes sound transportation sense, it makes sound smart growth sense.

While the League's complaint will not be heard until the fall, I maintain that the state legislators and other proponents of COAH and the recent Corzine bill should travel the state, recognizing these concerns, while explaining the vast social and long-term economic benefit of housing low-income and working-class residents close to where they work.

Just like Corzine and Roberts held a symbolic bill-signing in Mount Laurel to make clear the importance of the housing bill, they need to, at the very least, make clear why this is important for residents who worry -- like the blue-collar workers who can't afford to live near their places of employment -- that they too will be taxed out of their neighborhoods.