11/13/14 - This finally came on line almost half-way through
November. Things are getting back to "normal" in the
way the city delivers news.
Once again, the mayor turns his back on the taxpayers who
have to fund his grandiose and expensive plans designed around
himself and his wealthy friends. While he is running for governor, he
figures he might as well make some changes that will run out the
riff-raff poor people who don't really belong here. After all,
they won't be able to afford to live in those "upscale"
residential buildings he has talked investors into backing.
Instead of improving the two large public urinals we call train
stations, he wants "massive sustainable growth" in the
number of commuters who come here to urinate and take the trains
to New Yawk.
Being a new resident of East Orange himself, our new and
inexperienced mayor failed the "History of East Orange"
test in calling the new Sussex Avenue gym (excuse me - fitness
center) the first of its kind, having missed Gold's Gym and
others that passed through here and failed. I'm sure the new
owners of "Planet Fitness" were not encouraged to study
the reasons why similar ventures failed in East Orange, and they
are probably wondering where all their potential customers went
after the first few party grand opening days.
It's not that he has bad ideas for the city; they are mostly
good ideas. It's just that he has no business sense about
implementing them, no experience in the business of making
money rather than taking it from taxpayers. Then he
surrounds himself with people who know about spending money, but
not much about earning money, like those "organizations and
artists" who are "more than eager to use the arts as a
tool for building our community." More likely, they just
want a piece of the pie that they see him dishing out to his
sycophants.