Hey Guv! Here’s a business assistance plan: Get the frickin power on!

3-5 Days Without Power Is Devastating to Seasonal Businesses

Hey Governor Christie!   Even though it makes you seem like a Democrat, I appreciate where you’re coming from with your Hurricane Irene Business Assistance. 

Those $500K lines of credit while waiting for insurance proceeds will come in handy for many, but let’s be real, this is a subsidy to the insurance companies.  Issue an executive order that the insurance companies must pay the interests on those loans and the claims will be paid faster.

If those banks we bailed out were lending, we wouldn’t need this program.  I don’t expect you to fix that problem until you are President.  Thanks for stepping in now.

By the way, Governor, your did a great job this weekend.  You still are.  The business assistance plan is needed, and it is wonderful that the Lt. Governor is out at the shore campaigning for people to come back for the rest of the season (rest of the week.)

BUT THEY WON’T COME BACK IF THERE IS NO POWER!

I know you have a lot on your plate. Did I mention that you’re doing a great job?  I also know you’re talking to CEO’s of the public utilities companies, because you said so during one of your briefings before I lost power.  When you’re talking to the CEO of First Energy, that guy in Ohio, tell him there are thousands of seasonal businesses and seasonal employees serviced by his JCP&L subsidiary that are counting on this week and this coming weekend for a large portion of there annual income.

In Highlands, the small town on the Shrewsbury River where I live, we have 23 restaurants and all of their employees who would rather be earning this week than applying for loans or unemployment benefits.

The lack of information coming from JCP&L to the public is unacceptable:

That a lowly blogger can find out that JCP&L is telling OEM that we’ll be without power for 3-5 days before the main stream press knows is an indictment of both the press and the utility.

It seems to me that JCP&L’s response to outages has been wanting the last few years.  I appreciate the magnitude of Irene, but I wonder if they’d be doing a better job if they weren’t owned by an Ohio company.  Two business owners mentioned to me today how much better the service was before JCPL’s Belford location closed.  We’d wonder about that less, and make less noise about it, if the lights go in the bayshore today.

3-5 days without power at this time of  year is devastating to seasonal businesses and their employees.  It’s like pulling the plug on the week before Christmas for Macy’s.

Governor, you got the Jets-Giants game switched to tonight, but no one will be watching the game at bars in Highlands.

I know you can influence that guy in Ohio’s priorities.  Please do so.  Monmouth County businesses need the lights on.

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Highlands Kicks Off The Summer Season With Ceremonial Ribbon Cutting For New Bridge

By Art Gallagher

The Highlands Business Partnership was joined by the Mayor and Council, Senators Joe Kyrillos and Jennifer Beck, Assemblywomen Mary Pat Angelini and Amy Handlin, Freeholders John Curly and Amy Mallet and about 200 members of the community to celebrate the completion of the new bridge that spans the Shrewsbury River between Highlands and Sea Bright with a ceremonial ribbon cutting.

During the ceremony, the Bayshore Marine Task Force, a cooperative of Bayshore area first responders who provide marine emergency services, provided a water display with their equipment.

The ceremony was followed by a two hour cruise on the river and Sandy Hook Bay hosted by SeaStreak and catered by Highlands restaurants.

Mayor Frank Nolan declared, “Highlands is open for business!”  Nolan noted that business in Highlands, home to 22 restaurants within one square mile, was off 40% during the three summer seasons that were impacted by the demolition of the 75 year old drawbridge and the construction of the new 65 foot high fixed-span structure.

Old Highlands-Sea Bright Bridge. Photo Courtesy NJDOT.

Senator Joe Kyrillos read a letter from Governor Chris Christie which said in part, “today’s event effectively kicks off the first summer season at the Jersey Shore that vacationers and day trippers will be able to use it (the new bridge). I join with the legislators and community leaders present today in applauding the New Jersey Department of Transportation for completing this project on-time and under-budget.  The bridge has made it easier for people to experience what Sandy Hook has to offer, including all of its small businesses that make vital contributions to our State’s rich economy.”

Jay Cosgrove, Vice President of the Business Partnership and an owner of Bahrs Landing expressed the gratitude of the business owners to their loyal customers who battled difficult traffic conditions to quick the establishments afloat during the bridge construction.

New Highlands Bridge. Photo Credit Jay Cosgrove, Bahrs Landing

Kyrillos said, “This bridge is of incredible importance to the residents of Monmouth County, as well as the many tourists and visitors from which our regional economy benefits,” Senator Kyrillos said.  “The old, moveable bridge spanning the Shrewsbury River was in the poorest condition of all moveable bridges in New Jersey.  We are fortunate to replace this critical infrastructure. It is a beautiful bridge and more important it is safe and secure and will be of service for generations to come.”

Senator Jennifer Beck said, “We’ve been watching the progress of the construction of the new Highlands Bridge over more than two years,” said Beck, “and it is exciting to see it concluded just in time for the summer beach season, when thousands of people, from New Jersey and beyond, come to visit the shore. Also, as a sponsor of legislation that would name this span in honor of my friend and mentor Captain Joseph Azzolina, which has already passed the State Senate, I have a personal connection to this bridge, and I look forward to seeing the legislation pass the Assembly.”

Beck asked those present to call Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver and ask her to post the bill naming the bridge for Azzolina for a vote.

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Little Holds Her Ground

By Art Gallagher

Declaring that it was not a partisan issue but an individual decision, Highlands Mayor Anna Little again joined the two Democrats on Highlands Council in approving a amendment to the Highlands PBA contract, over the objections of her Republican successor, Council President Frank Nolan, and her Republican predecessor, Councilman Rick O’Neil.

In introducing the resolution to the public, Little distributed the statement she posted on her facebook page over the weekend.

Little said that the new agreement would result in a saving of $500,000 to Highlands taxpayers vs. a net savings of $34,000 had the resolution failed, which would have resulted in layoffs of three police officer.  During her remarks, Little admitted the numbers in her statement were her “beliefs” and the result of assumptions regarding police overtime of $18,000 per month provided by the Police Chief.  She admitted that her numbers had not been certified by the Chief Financial Officer.

Little addressed the penalties in the new agreement only after Nolan brought them up.  Nolan asserted that Little’s calculations were off by at least $300,000, which she disputed.  Nolan argued that the council should not accept the penalities knowing that there will very likely layoffs necessary that will trigger the penalites.  At that point Little scolded Nolan for speaking out of turn regarding Executive Session matters that council had not agreed to make public.

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All Eyes On Highlands Tonight

Will Anna Little End Her Term As Highlands Mayor As A Christie Republican or As A Corzine Democrat?

Dramitization. Neither Anna Little nor Jon Corzine really look like this.

By Art Gallagher

Tonight in Highlands we find out if Anna Little has come to her senses or if she really has forsaken any future in the Republican Party.

In case you missed it, on December 1 Little inexplicably returned to Highlands from the campaign trail for the 2012 congressional race to join her Democratic colleagues on the governing body in approving a hastily drawn labor agreement with the Highlands PBA that undermines the plans of her Republican successor as Mayor, Council President Frank Nolan.

Her actions have lead many of her recent supporters, including yours truly, to question who Little really is. Others have been saying, “I told you so.”

Is Little the “Christie Republican” she campaigned for Congress as, or is she a political opportunist “Corzine Democrat?”   Did she vote with the Democrats on December 1 to give herself some time to study the agreement  before making her final decision with the vote that will occur tonight?  Will she make the tough, yet potentially unpopular choice to reduce the size of government and save taxpayers money, ala Governor Christie, or will she hamstring her successor like Corzine did to Christie in 2009 when he made a hasty deal with the state workers union out of political expediency.

Early indications are that Little has left us for the leftists.  Late Sunday night, apparently in response to my post this weekend, Will The Real Anna Little Please Stand Up, the Mayor posted a grossly inaccurate and incomplete justification of her support for the PBA deal on her facebook page.  “Fuzzy math on facebook,” is how one former supporter described it.

There are two major items missing from the “Fuzzy math on facebook” piece. 

1) The penalties included in the agreement, payable by Highlands taxpayers to members of the Highlands PBA, that could run anywhere from $60,000, to $150,000 should layoffs become necessary in the next 18 months.

2) Little knows that Nolan has started conversations with Middletown about a shared services agreement for police that could potentially save Highlands taxpayers high six figures or more, and return Highlands to solvency, for many years to come.    This new deal complicates a potential shared services agreement and reduces the savings should it occur. 

Democratic Councilman Chris Francy, who promised regionalization in his unsuccessful campaign for Mayor last November, said “Its only $60,000,” when asked to justify his vote for  the agreement on December 1st when he knows about the potential shared services deal coming in 2011.    Maybe Little is thinking the same way.

Hopefully Little will come to her senses tonight.

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Will The Real Anna Little Please Stand Up

By Art Gallagher

Has anybody seen the real Anna Little lately?   I haven’t seen her in months.

I’ve been intentionally restraining myself from writing about Anna Little since election day.  We have a long history.  Given that history, I offered her inner circle, which despite perceptions to the contrary I am not a member of, a private critique of what worked and what didn’t work about her congressional campaign.  If not for our relationship, I just would have written my observations as I have after every election since I started this blog.

Little’s recent actions as Mayor of Highlands, my hometown, and the decision she will have to make next week over a labor agreement with the Highlands PBA compel me to treat her as I would any other public figure and write my observations with the candor I’ve been known for, yet have been withholding in her case.

When I started preparing this piece, it reminded me of the long running TV game show To Tell The Truth which ran in various forms from 1956 through 2002.  The show featured a panel of four celebrities who were charged with correctly identifying a described contestant with an unusual occupation or experience.  The “real” contestant and two impostors won the game if they fooled the panel.  The real contestant was sworn to tell the truth when answering panelists’ questions.  The impostors could lie. The game was over when the host said “Will the real X please stand up?”

The more I worked on the piece, the more I realized that To Tell The Truth didn’t fit.  There were more than two impostors and they all inhabited the same body.  Maybe Sybil is a more appropriate analogy.  I don’t know that the psycho drama fits, but the multiple personalities and characters may be the majority of Little’s remaining supporters. Her Army is quickly becoming a figment of her imagination.

I think the real Anna Little is the woman I’ve known for almost 10 years.  She’s been a principled public servant who would fight to do the right thing.  She would fight for an ideal, regardless of the power and resources of her foes, winning and losing political battles, with scars.  Often she produced improbable results.  She always landed on her feet and emerged from battle with a smile.  She was uncompromising to the point of being a pain the ass, but she was usually right.

The real Anna Little started the year as a Tea Party mama grizzly with charm.  Tri-City News publisher Dan Jacobson called her “Sarah Palin with brains.”  Her stump speech for the CD-6 congressional primary was musical and inspiring. It hit all the patriotic notes and inspired the best in her audiences.  While she was challenging the establishment, she positioned herself as a uniter, promising the local and state party leadership that win or lose the primary she would rally her Tea Party supporters behind the Republican ticket. 

Little delivered on her unity promise, partially, when she supported Joe Oxley for reelection as Monmouth County GOP Chairman hours after her stunning and improbable primary victory over Diane Gooch was official.  However, she only went so far in uniting the troops.  She never healed the primary wounds with the Gooch camp.  There was griping and sniping from the Little camp throughout the general election campaign that the local GOP was not doing enough for her. She let that fester.  While there was public unity with the Monmouth and Middlesex leadership, Little repeatedly snubbed the Union County GOP leadership.  For now, let’s just say that Little’s horrendous showing in Plainfield was not solely the result of Frank Pallone’s superior ground game in the city.

The “real” Anna Little would not let those wounds fester.

Once she got her bearings in place for the general election, Little positioned herself as a “Chris Christie Republican” rather than a “Mama Grizzly.”  This was not a Sybilesque malady, but smart political strategy.   Christie had won the 6th congressional district in the previous election and his popularity was strong among the constituencies Little would have to win over in her quest to unseat Pallone.

When Little is on her game, her communications skills rival Christie’s and Palin’s.   However, as the campaign progressed the inspiring stump speech she consistently delivered during the primary was often replaced with a defensive justification of her candidacy that fell flat.  At home she would tell her audiences how much the national GOP and PACs in Washington loved her, as if the campaign was about her and as if her audiences cared.   In Washington, she would tell her audiences how loved she was at home.

She was on her game and at her very best when among her enthusiastic supporters.  Her performances at the debate at Temple Shalom in Aberdeen and at the health care forum in Red Bank were extraordinary.  However, when in the presence of those who challenged her and without her “Army” to back her up, Little was often strident and argumentative. Her appearances with NJN’s Michael Aron, before the editorial boards of the Star Ledger and Asbury Park Press and one on one versus Pallone on News 12 are examples of when she was not at her best and needed to be.

Where was the “real” Anna Little?

Behind the scenes, Little actively alienated herself from long term supporters who would frankly tell her the truth about what was working and not working.  It was as if she took constructive criticism from team members as personal attacks.  The “real” Anna Little wouldn’t do that.  She would argue and debate with trusted team members and then make a decision.  The Anna Little that showed up during the general election campaign turned her back on her best local advisers and surrounded herself with “yes” men and women and people who did not know the district.  She’d gone from a Palinesque Tea Partier, to a Christie Republican, to a Nixonian paranoid.

As the campaign reached its critical peak in mid-October, Little introduced yet another personality.  She took a hard right turn and morphed into a Mike Huckabee Republican, only without the cornball charm.  The fair tax, abortion and strict Ron Paulesque constitutionalist philosophy were not issues to emphasize during the last weeks of a general election campaign. Not when she had polling data that indicated a moderate Republican could defeat Pallone.  She was pandering to her Right to Life supporters who were upset with how she handled the life question during her NJN appearance with Aron.

Despite these problems which were grumbled about behind the scenes among Tea Partiers and Regular Republicans alike, Little’s political stock was flying sky high, even after the polls closed and she lost by double digits when most observers were expecting a nail biter.  In the final days of the election Monmouth County politicos were rooting for her victory because they didn’t want to have to compete with her in the event of a vacancy in the State Legislature after redistricting.   Win or lose, she was expected to be a force to be reckoned with in Monmouth County politics.  

In perhaps the fastest fall from grace since the Howard Dean scream, Little squandered torched that hard fought for political capitol before she got off the stage at her Shore Casino headquarters on election night.  Apparently concerned about insulting either her Tea Party supporters or Regular Republicans who she never truly united, Little insulted both in her concession speech which was short on humility and gratitude and included an announcement of her 2012 candidacy for congress in a district that hasn’t been drawn yet, and the formation of three new political organizations, including one called “Anna’s Army” which she apparently presumed all of her hardworking supporters would just sign on for without any acknowledgement of what they had just finished doing and sacrificing.   Did she expect to lose?  How else could she have planned and even named these three new organizations within two hours of the polls closing?   One television reporter commented on the air that Anna Little just wants the limelight. 

Was this the “real” Anna Little?  Did she have me fooled all these years?  Was I the one who misunderstood her when I argued with others that they didn’t really know who she was?  Maybe so.

This brings me to the present and why I’m writing this piece that has been eating me up inside since November 2.

I can support the Tea Party Mama Grizzly, the Christie Republican or the Huckabee Republican.  The Nixonian paranoid is tough to deal with, but I’m Irish too and have dealt with such passive aggression for 52 years.   I could forgive the election night performance and help her recover some of the political capitol she squandered.  But I can’t support a Republican Mayor who is turning into a Corzine style Democrat as her latest character.

On December 1^st Little sandbagged her Republican colleagues on the Highlands Council.  She showed up unexpectedly and joined the Democrats on the council in approving a hastily drawn labor agreement that will either needlessly increase the costs of Highlands government or handcuff her successor in managing Highlands budget like Jon Corzine did when he made a hasty deal with the state workers unions on primary day in 2009 so that Vice President Joe Biden would join him on the stage for his campaign kickoff. Corzine’s deal prevented Governor Christie from laying off state workers during the first year of his administration.   Little’s deal probably won’t prevent layoffs in the Highlands Police Department.  More likely the deal will end up costing Highlands taxpayers between $60,000 and $150,000 over the next two fiscal years.  Little knows this.

The payoff for Corzine’s expensive sellout was clear. What Little thinks she accomplishing, after assuring her Republican colleagues that she was with them, is a mystery.  Maybe she’s delusional enough to think that her actions will win her union support in her hypothetical rematch with Pallone in 2012.  Hopefully she just had a bad night and didn’t realize the consequences of her actions, despite her words to the contrary that evening and since.

Fortunately Little has a second chance with this one.  The PBA agreement has to be voted on again on Wednesday December 15^th.  Little could miss the meeting, which means the agreement would not carry on a 2-2 vote. Or one of the Republican Littles could show up.  For the sake of Highlands taxpayers, I hope the Little Corzine does not show up.

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Little Government Returns To Highlands

By Art Gallagher

After being absent from Borough of Highlands Council meetings for much of the year due to her congressional campaign, Highlands Mayor Anna Little swept into the Council’s public meeting last night in order to vote with her Democratic colleagues to prevent police layoffs.  Little skipped the Executive Session in lieu of attending holiday parties sponsored by the Northern Monmouth Chamber of Commerce and the Monmouth County Affiliated Republican Club.

Little voted for a resolution offered by Democratic Councilman Christopher Francy and seconded by Democratic Councilwoman Rebecca Kane to amend the PBA contract to accept concessions by the police union in exchange for penalties to the borough should there be layoffs through June 30, 2012.

The police have given up a 4.25% salary increase, retroactive to July 1, 2010, have offered to accept comp time in lieu of overtime payments, and have agreed to join the rest of Highlands employees in having their health insurance transferred from the borough’s contract with Horizon-Blue Cross to the NJ State Health Benefits Plan, in exchange for a no layoffs pledge through June 30, 2012.

Should there be any police layoffs through June 30, 2012, the borough will make cash payments to all members of the PBA for the conceded salary increases and for overtime incurred, under the proposed agreement.

Highlands Chief Financial Officer Steven Pfeffer told MMM that the salary and overtime concessions would save the borough $90,000 in the current fiscal year through June 30, 2011 and another $60,000 in the following fiscal year. The Borough is saving $300,000 by transferring all of its employees to the state health benefits plan, according to Pfeffer.

Republican members of the Council, Frank Nolan and Richard O’Neil voted against the resolution.  Had the resolution failed, 3 police officers would have been laid off, resulting in a savings of at least $250,000, according to Nolan.

Nolan will succeed Little as Mayor on January 1st. O’Neil is Little’s predecessor.

Nolan and O’Neil are in the early stages of negotiations with Middletown to share police services with Highlands.  Should the two municipalities enter an agreement that has Middletown taking over policing Highlands, the savings to Highlands taxpayers would be reduced by the penalties the Borough would have to pay to the PBA members.

The deal with the Highlands PBA must be ratified by its members and be approved by the Council again, presumably at the December 15th meeting, before it will take effect.

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Weekend @ Monmouth

There’s plenty to do in Monmouth County this weekend after door knocking and canvasing for your favorite candidate. Greg Kelly @ Monmouth County Life did the leg work for you.

The MoreMonmouthMusings best bet for this weekend is the Highlands Business Partnership’s Oktoberfest in Veterans Park for 2PM-10PM. Great German food from Bahrs , the best beers from Shore Point Distributors, and fabulous family entertainment.

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Vote For Ryan Britton On November 9!

Highlands poltics is never boring.

Back in April the Highlands Democrats failed to file the petitions on time  to have their candidates names on the primary ballot.

As is frequently the case in Highlands, there is an Independent running this year for the only municipal office on the ballot, mayor.

His name is Ryan Britton and apparently he doesn’t know what day the election will be held on.

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