Christie Coming to Monmouth To Sign FEMA Letter

By Art Gallagher

Governor Chris Christie will be at the Monmouth County Hall of Records this morning for the purpose of signing a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency requesting disaster aid for storm releated expenses resulting from the blizzard this week.

He will be available to the press at 11:30am in the Freeholders Meeting Room.

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Mulshine’s cat must have pissed in his Cheerios

Fortunately, The Star Ledger also has a real journalist in addition to the mad ranting blogger

By Art Gallagher

When we last visited Paul Mulshine he was preparing to blame Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno if his cat pooped on his rug.  Mulshine’s cat must have peed in Paul’s Cheerios and drank his last beer.  The dipsomaniac expositer has been on a bender since.

First Mulshine said Guadagno should stay in Mexico because the roads were bad in Ocean and Monmouth Counties as he successfully made his way to the Edison studios of News12.  He said the roads were bad in the Republican counties because Guadagno and Governor Christie left the Governor’s office in the hands of Democratic Senate President Steve Sweeney.

After Mulshine found out why Guadagno is in Mexico, she and her brothers are spending probably their last Christmas holiday with their father who is suffering from advanced cancer, that was OK with him.  Then it wasn’t OK with him.  Kim’s clan should have spent the holiday in Iowa, where they are from, instead of going to Mexico.   Mulshine better hope he keeps his Star Ledger gig, he won’t qualify for America’s next emerging profession, end of life counseling.

In his latest rant, Mulshine demonstrated that he doesn’t qualify as a storm cleanup expert either.  He writes as if he’s an expert.  His seven hours of shoveling and failure to get to the store to get kitty litter are his qualifications.  Paul said:

The effort in the coastal counties was nothing short of pathetic. Though this snow was deep, it was very light – as I can affirm after seven or so hours of shoveling it.

Just a few good passes with a plow would have cleared key state highways at the Shore.

Instead, many of those  highways still had just one lane open the day after the storm.

Worse was the lack of coordination. State, county, and municipal roads were all plowed by separate crews. One road would be just fine, till you turned onto another that was barely touched.

Paul is right.  The snow was deep, and fortunately light.   The reason the snow was so deep is that we got too much of it too fast.  Just a few good passes did clear it, on Sunday, and then it snowed some more covering up the area that had just been plowed.  I know, while Paul was shoveling and cleaning up cat poo, I was plowing.  Then my plow broke, as did many many others that I witnessed at the repair shop today.   This storm was historic.  30 inches and wind-blown drifts in less than 24 hours. New Jersey is not equipped to clean up this type of a storm quickly.  Nor should we be because they are so rare.  Syracuse and Buffalo are equipped for these types of storms which occur in those cities every year.

One would expect a guy who covers New Jersey government and purports to be an expert to know why there are different jurisdictions clearing different roads in the same communities.  Coordination is a great idea and might even work in the private sector if unions weren’t involved.  But in New Jersey government their would be fights over which entity would pay the overtime and which union would get the overtime.

Mulshine related his personal snowstorm.  Just like hundreds of others did in the comments on the app and nj.com websites and who called into News12 while Paul was in the studio that he managed to get to in the horrendous conditions.   One would expect better from a professional journalist and opinion maker.

And better we got from the Star Ledger’s Mike Frasinelli. Reading Mike’s article I learned that despite Mayor Cory Booker’s ability to simultaneously handle a snow shovel and an IPhone Newark is more messed up over the storm than Monmouth and Ocean.  The reporter witnessed two men threaten each other with gunfire over a parking spot and then start shoveling together.   There’s the making of a reality TV show that I would watch.

In addition to getting into the streets, Frasinelli talked to men who worked overnight clearing the snow.  He spoke to James Simpson, the State Transportation Commissioner who explained the Route 18 and other State Highway problems.  Rather than neglect as Mulshine would have you believe, Route 18 was impassable because plow trucks were breaking down.  9 or 10 trucks broke down clearing the highway.

I guess I knew that Neptune has five state highways running through it.  I just never thought about it until I read Frasinelli’s fine article.  175 abandoned vehicles would certainly complicate a clean up.  Those vehicles wouldn’t have been abandoned if it hadn’t snowed so hard so fast.

Read Frasinelli’s article if you want a good perspective on the storm.  

Or just take it from me.  What happened was we got too much snow too fast.  Christie and Guadagno being here would not have resulted in a faster clean up.  Even if they were here, their political opponents in the media and a few idiot legislators would have tried to rile you up and score political points.

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Hysterical Hyberbole: Comparing the Blizzard of 2010 to Hurricane Katrinia

By Art Gallagher

There are few pundits in the mainstream media and the blogosphere who should take the rest of the year off.   Forget the blizzard.  Some of these guys should pray for a power outage to stop themselves from killing their credibility on the Internet.

Two sites I like so much I give them live feeds here on MMM, Gannett’s Capitol Quickies and InTheLobby are suggesting that Governor Christie’s absence from New Jersey during the blizzard of 2010 will do to his administration what Hurricane Katrina did to George W. Bush’s presidency.

John and John, you guys should have followed Christie’s lead and taken the week off.

Christie will be back in New Jersey tomorrow.  The weather will be in the 50’s and raining on Saturday.  The snow will melt and Christie will launch the year with his 2011 agenda.  By this time next week, no one will be talking about the blizzard except mayors who will be choking on the overtime bills.

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So what went wrong and who is at fault?

 It snowed too much too fast.  That’s what went wrong in New Jersey this week.  New York too.

It wasn’t a personal snowstorm, yet naturally many, if not most, people relate to the aftermath of a storm out of their personal concerns.   The numb minded media, especially the Asbury Park Press editorial board, who is once again is living up to their Neptune Nudniks moniker, granted a full page in the print edition to selfish rants, 12 pages on their website, contributing to an online frenzy of wind-bagging. 

The Nudniks are contributing to directly to the frenzy with yet another editorial premised on inaccurate information and assumptions.  They say the storm was predicted days in advance.  Hogwash.  Forecasts as late as Saturday night were predicting snow falls in Central Jersey in the 12-18 inch range.  It wasn’t until just a few hours before the storm hit that any forecaster was talking about accumulations of 25-30 inches with 55 mph winds.   Folks in Buffalo or Syracuse might be expected to be prepared for the type of storm we got, but the truth of the matter is that New Jersey’s various governments don’t have the equipment or the personnell to handle the this type of weather quickly.   That is why the clean up is continuing now, 48 hours after the snow stopped falling.

The Nudniks started their editorial rant accusing road crews of “surrendering” to the storm.  

I was out Sunday night to plow my properties.  The DOT crews were out.  The visablity was terrible.  It was dangerous to be plowing.  It was snowing too hard too fast.

If they were not still out there cleaning up, I would suggest those crews dump truck loads of snow that they surrendered to at APP headquarters in Neptune.  Cancelled subscriptions should suffice for cooler heads. 

It snowed too much to fast.  That is what happened.  There have been lots of rumors and comments that there have been job actions and sick outs in some towns and maybe the state.  Given how well Monmouth County’s crews performed vis-a-vis many towns and the DOT, you have to wonder.  Investigations should take place and corrective action taken where appropriate.   However the APP should be tracking down the validity of those rumors rather than wind-bagging that road crews “seem to have” quit on the storm.

The media driven brouhaha over Governor Christie and Lt. Governor Guadagno being out of state at the same time is as absurd and insulting as the Nudniks’ assumption that road crews quit.

As published elsewhere and confirmed by MMM, Guadagno and her brothers are spending what is most likely their last Christmas holiday with their father who is suffering from Stage 4 prostate cancer.  The trip was planned and booked months ago with Christie’s approval.  Shame on the pundits and politicians who have been trying to score points over Guadagno’s absence.

Once the news about why Guadagno is “on vacation” at the same time as the Governor gets around, watch he feeding frenzy on Christie step up.   I’m looking forward to his first press conference back.  I hope he shames the mindless numbskulls of the press.

There’s little going on in Trenton this week.  That’s why it was a good week for the Governor to take his family to Disney World.   Guadango’s situation made the decision to take a vacation delicate.  Senate President Steve Sweeney’s good character made the vacation doable.  But various pundits and political hacks won’t care.  Let the Christie kids give up one more thing because their Dad is tough to lay a political glove on.

Does anyone really doubt that Christie would have returned to New Jersey given the “state of emergency” if it was possible?  The airports were closed. They are just opening today.

Christie’s presence would not have made a difference in how the snow was cleaned up, or not cleaned up.   His leadership from the bully pulpit would have made a difference though.   He would have told the media the truth. It snowed too much too fast.  We’re doing the very best that we can and we’re working about the clock, he would have said.  He would have done a much better job than New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg did when he told NY that everything is OK and that they should go shopping.  Christie would have told people to remain calm and safe; to look out for the elderly and disabled.   And the media would have had something responsible to write about, rather than create a frenzy over the fact that it snowed too much too fast.

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With county roads clear, crews assist state

County, Manasquan OEM rescue dozens stranded on Route 18

FREEHOLD, NJ (December 28)– With Monmouth County roads showing blacktop one day after the snow stopped falling, county road crews have been deployed to assist the state. This afternoon, four county tandem trucks with snowplows and heavy equipment began clearing beleaguered Route 18.

Meanwhile, the county Office of Emergency Management (OEM) and Manasquan OEM rescued about two dozen motorists who had become stranded on Route 18. A convoy of Army trucks Manasquan normally uses for tidal flooding was dispatched Sunday night and rescued 12 to 18 people. The same convoy was deployed last night and picked up another 11. Route 18 had not been plowed.

On Sunday and Monday nights, county snowplow operators also cleared roads assisting Jersey Central Power & Light Co. personnel who were responding to power outages.

“County roads such as Routes 524, 537, 547 and many others are showing blacktop today as a result of the work county road crews have been doing since 10 a.m. Sunday morning,” said Freeholder John P. Curley, liaison to the county Department of Public Works and Engineering. “The county’s public works and engineering crews do an excellent job keeping county roads safe and drivable.”          

Monmouth County’s Public Works crews have been working since 10 a.m. Sunday morning when they began applying salt brine to county roads in advance of the predicted snowfall. The salt brine helps prevents snow and ice from bonding to the road surface, making plowing that much easier after the snowfall. As a result, most county roads showed blacktop today.

Monmouth County is responsible for about 1,000 lane miles of roads in the county. The county has 115 trucks outfitted with spreading and plowing capabilities. About 200 personnel were working to clear the snow from roadways as a result of this storm.

“One of the challenges with this storm has been the wind,” said John W. Tobia, director of the county’s Department of Public Works and Engineering. “The one-two punch of the steady 10 to 15 mph winds and gusts of more than 40 mph have been undoing some of the road work, but we have been diligent and have cleared the county roads – most of them are down to blacktop.”

“We began gearing up for this storm on Saturday,” Tobia added. “We opened up our snow room to monitor the storm’s progress and we began dispatching crews from the county’s nine highway districts on Sunday morning.

At that time crews began applying the liquid salt brine. Then, before the snow actually started falling, the crews began applying rock salt treated with magnesium chloride.

“The key was to keep the ice and snow from bonding to the road surface,” Tobia said. “Some lanes were slushy instead of iced over. That’s generally the first step before the plows come by and push it all aside.”

According to the National Weather Service, snow and windy conditions began in Monmouth County late Sunday morning and produced a higher than average snowfall overnight Sunday into Monday morning. Acting Gov. Steve Sweeney declared a state of emergency in New Jersey due to the blizzard that moved through the state during that time.

Monmouth County concentrates its efforts on county roads first and then works to assist municipalities with their plowing needs. Through shared service agreements, county road crews helped clear roads in Howell, Wall and Upper Freehold townships. They also helped plow the National Guard Armory in Red Bank. The towns reimburse the county for any resources used.

A number of towns also purchase magnesium-treated salt from the county at a lower cost.

This is the third year the county has been using the salt brine combined with magnesium chloride-treated rock salt. The salt brine and a pre-application of treated rock salt prevent the snow and ice from bonding to the roads, and the treated rock salt is environmentally friendly. It does not burn the grass or other roadside vegetation nor does it corrode the trucks or the steel bridge spans.

The new rock salt is much more efficient than the old rock salt, which was very corrosive to bridge structures, roadside vegetation, the roadway itself and trucks and equipment, Tobia said.

“We have found that magnesium chloride-treated rock salt is much more effective and, therefore, there is a savings in man hours and material,” he said. “We use approximately 30 to 50 percent less material and reduction in spreading trips, depending on the snow event, for the same result. By reducing the number of trips, we are reducing costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

As a result, there have been far fewer telephone calls from local police departments about trouble spots, Tobia said. Typically, when police dispatchers call to report icy conditions – usually on bridges or curved roadways – the county dispatches additional trucks to perform some spot treatments.

“County highway personnel set the standard and example on snow and ice control operations,” Curley said.      

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Road Crews Working Around the Clock to Clear Snow-Covered Roads

 Mayor Declares Local State of Emergency

Township road crews continue to battle one of the most severe snow storms in recent memory with a goal of reaching all township roads by midnight on Tuesday, said Mayor Gerard P. Scharfenberger.

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SENATOR JENNIFER BECK STATEMENT ON ROUTE 18 SITUATION

Senator Jennifer Beck (R-Monmouth, Mercer) provided the following travel information from the New Jersey State Department of Transportation regarding the situation on Route 18 in Monmouth County due to Sunday’s storm:

            “The New Jersey Department of Transportation is mobilizing all available resources and will work continuously to clear Routes 18, 34 and 35. To obtain status reports or find out if a road is open or closed, call 511 or go to www.511nj.org for real time information about the storm cleanup efforts.

            “I urge everyone to call the above number or access the above website to determine the safest travel route for Wednesday morning’s commute.”

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Mulshine: It’s Guadagno’s fault if his cat poops on the rug

By Art Gallagher

Paul Mulshine says he will blame Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno if his cat poops on the rug.  Really, he said that.

Mulshine’s cat usually poops outdoors, but the usual spot, probably on a neighbor’s property, is snow covered and the pussy won’t go where it usually goes.  Mulshine wasn’t prepared for the storm.  He couldn’t navigate the snow covered roads to get kitty litter so his pussy would have a warm place to do it.

Guadagno is at fault because she’s on vacation out of state at the same time Governor Christie is out of state, leaving Senate President Steve Sweeney in charge as Acting Governor.

Mulshine speculates that Guadagno vacationing at the same time as Christie could be the end of her political career.  He quotes Rick Shaftan as saying that “nothing will screw up your poll numbers more than snow.”  Shaftan, who is famous for talking to Mulshine and for running Steve Lonegan’s 2009 gubernatorial primary, noted that former New York Mayor John Lindsay lost the 1969 GOP primary due to mishandling a snow storm.  Lindsay was reelected on a third party line. 

If Shaftan, Lonegan, Mulshine and the ideologues were in charge of the NJ GOP, like they want to be, a third party candidate could get elected in New Jersey too.

Mulshine and Shaftan speculate that Guadagno wants the GOP nomination to run against U.S. Senator Bob Menendez in 2012.  Yet another example of ideologues who can’t count. 

If the NJ GOP mounts a top tier talent challenge to Menendez in 2012 we’re in deep trouble as a nation.  Barack Obama will be on the top of the Democratic ticket in 2012.  The only way a Republican is going to win a state wide race in 2012 is if Obama is unelectable in New Jersey.  If that is the political environment in 2012 the economy will be in worse shape than it is now.  Obama’s poll numbers are over 50% in NJ now, as bad as things are.

Mulshine and Shaftan have a strange bedfellow in windbag Senator Ray Lesniak who called in from Florida to criticise Guadagno and Christie for leaving Sweeney in charge of cleaning up the snow.

Sweeney assured Christie he wouldn’t create mischief while keeping the Governor’s seat warm.  If Christie didn’t trust Sweeney to keep his word, other arrangements would have been made.  If Sweeney breaks his word, other arrangements will be made in the future.  

The constitutional purpose of the Lt. Governor’s office is to prevent one person from controlling two-thirds of the state government, as was the case when Dick Codey was Governor and Senate President after Jim McGreevey’s resignation and when Don DiFrancesco held both offices after Christine Whitman’s resignation.  The current banter is nonsense.

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Senator Wants “Anti-Snow Dumping Act” As Part Of The Tool Kit

Senator Donald Norcross is the sponsor of the Anti-Snow Dumping Act (S1924). The bill would prohibit the common practice of plowing snow off private land and dumping it onto public areas, where, he says, it can become a major public safety hazard and result in additional costs to taxpayers.

We need a state law for that?

What about snow that public workers plow onto private land?  

What about the homeowners and tenants whose driveways are blocked by thousands of pounds of snow by public plows?  What about businesses that are inaccessable after the plows drive by? 

This is an issue that should be handled on the local level, by ordinance or common sense.  We don’t need a state law for it. 

Norcross said he wants to give local law enforcement and public works departments “straightforward and simple tools to stop the wasteful and selfish practice” of snow dumping.  Local law enforcement already have simple straightforward tools; guns and badges.  Public works guys have radios to call the guys with guns and badges.

Unfortunately, Norcross’s bill passed the Senate unanimously on December 13.    Joe, Jennifer and Sean!  What were you thinking?

Hopefully the bill will melt in the Assembly.  Huh!   Well, hopefully Governor Christie will veto the bill and make fun of it at his next town hall meeting.

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Tomorrow’s Another Day

By Art Gallagher

This storm and the accompanying road conditions are by far the worst I’ve ever witnessed.  Roads throughout the bayshore, even the State Highways that have been plowed repeatedly are barely passable, if passable at all.

Today was one of those days not to take your plans too seriously, even if you thought you were prepared.

I was prepared, so I thought. 

Yesterday morning I went to my office to get my little pickup truck, hook up the plow and headed home to watch the Jets lose and the Giants get embarrassed. 

Once it was clear there was no coming back for the Giants I went out and plowed the driveway and drove back to the office to clear the lot.  My truck and plow are small and this was going to be a big storm. Best to get ahead of it.  In the hour it took to get home from the office, crawling behind the DOT contractors clearing Route 36, the driveway was covered again.  I plowed it again and called it a night.

This morning started out as expected.  Looking out the window I could see the winds were still very strong.  The white caps on the bay were more ferocious than I’d ever seen before. None of the streets in downtown Highlands appeared to be cleared.  A few brave souls were trying to dig out their cars to get to work.  Today was going to be a long day, but there was no rush at 6:30am.  Today was going to be a clean up day, not a business day.  There was time to tweak Paul Mulshine and the ideologues.

It was about time to clean off the truck and clear the driveway.

I live atop the bluff in Highlands and share the driveway with my neighbor.  As is usually the case after a snow storm, Mrs. Neighbor is the first out and shoveling.  She shovels where she knows I am going to plow in a half hour or so.  I stopped questioning why last winter; it is just what she does.  Her teenage boys join her after a little while.  Then I come out, warm and clean up my truck and plow.  When I’m about done plowing Mr. Neighbor comes out, takes a survey and if need be cleans up what is left with his 30 year old 14 horsepower rear wheel drive Toro tractor and plow.  That’s the routine.

So far so good.  I leave the house and greet the boys.  I shout down the driveway to Mrs. Neighbor to take it easy as I’ll be down the hill with the plow momentarily.  The truck is warming up, I’m scraping the ice and snow off the windows when the unexpected happens

. 

Mr. Neighbor, like a gladiator entering the arena, exists his garage straddling his 14 horses and heads down the path his wife and boys had cleared.  He rides the tractor right past me without so much as a glance, as his intense glare was on the task ahead.   He gets to the end of the clear path, enters the snow and promptly stops.  He is stuck.  It would have been funny, if I was not on the wrong side of the tractor with a plow that would have easily cleared the driveway had he waited five minutes.

There was no moving the 14 horses. The tractor would not go back up the hill.  While trying to push the tractor up the hill, the chains on the tires were ripping into the driveway we got repaved a year or so ago.  The best bet was to dig a clearing for the tractor off to the right so that I could get by with the plow and clear the driveway for everyone, just as I would have done already had Mr. Neighbor only waited five minutes.

My little truck with plow, left. Mr. Neighbor's stuck tiny tractor, center. The Neighbor family clearing a spot for the stuck tractor, background.

Finally we get the tractor out of the way and I cleared the lower driveway.  Now the tricky part.  I always go back up the driveway in reverse with the plow.  Otherwise I would be plowing snow uphill into my house and into Mr. and Mrs. Neighbor’s house.  Its tricky because I need to get some speed going to get up the hill without getting stuck in ice and without damaging any of the cars parked in the snow or either house.  Today it was trickier because I had to navigate around the tractor, which Mr. Neighbor was still sitting on for some reason.   I over compensated for Mr. Neighbor and slid off the driveway.  My truck was half on the driveway and half on a drop off to my front lawn.   Mr. Neighbor smiled for the first time this morning.

My little stuck truck, left. Mr. Neighbor's tiny stuck tractor, right. Plowed lower driveway, background.

I called a tow truck operator who I had run against for borough council twice (note to Gene and Ed if you’re reading, it often works to be civil with people who you disagree with) who showed up with in an hour and had me back on four wheels within 10 minutes of arriving.  I looked up the driveway.  The Neighbors had managed to move one of their vehicles caddy corner into the place where I had hoped to get to so that I could clear the upper driveway.  Over two hours had already passed and I’d only done half of what I’d planned.  If only Mr. Neighbor had waited five minutes. Time for me to take care of my office lot and the friends who I promised I would help out.

The roads were horrible. I was able to clear, partly, one friends lot.  None of the roads to Sea Scape Manor were passable.  Even if they were, I might be able to get down their driveway and not get out.  I had to cross the Azzolina Bridge before I could turn around to get back into Highlands.  Sea Bright looked like a ghost town, except for the abandoned vehicles at the base of the bridge.  A Volvo with its lights on and a National Park Service truck, complete with plow, both of which appeared to be parked.

Abandoned vehicles at the base of the Azzolina Bridge

Route 36, Leonardo section of Middletown around 2PM

Route 36 at about 4pm. Highlands on the left, Middletown on the right.

Ralph St, Highlands at about 4PM

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