Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

The end of the malaprop administration

I’ve been thinking about Barack Obama’s decision to have a poet read at his inaugural — about what it means for language and the nation (and not so much about the poet, Elizabeth Alexander, whose work I unfortunately have not read) but was having some difficulty putting it into words. I think this comment from Christian Wiman, the editor of Poetry magazine, in The New York Times sums it up best:

“After eight years of mangled and manipulated language, and the palpable effects of that in the real world, it seems like any gesture toward clarity of expression and dignity of life is welcome,” Christian Wiman, the editor of Poetry magazine, said in an e-mail message.

“In a way, the poem itself is not the point,” Mr. Wiman added. “I would guess that a president-elect decides to have an inaugural poem in the first place not in the hope of commissioning some eternal work of art, but in order to acknowledge that there is an intimate, inevitable connection between a culture’s language and its political life. That Obama wants to make such a gesture seems to me a pure good — for poetry, yes, but also for the country.”

Let debate on mergers happen

Republicans have done a good job of painting the consolidation question into a political one in this state, with conservative writers like Paul Mulshine and Republicans in the state Legislature accusing supporters of trying to eliminate Republican strongholds.

And that is unfortunate, because the question of whether small communities like Jamesburg, Pennington, Hightstown and many up in Bergen County should exist as independent municipalties needs to be explored.

Dennis McNerney, Bergen County executive, is a staunch advocate for exploring consolidation — his state of the county last year focused on his plan to use Bergen as a model county to see if savings could be had from consolidations and shared-services arrangements.

That speech prompted Gov. Jon Corzine to appoint McNerney to the the Local Unit Alignment, Reorganization and Consolidation Commission.

But McNerney, thanks to an archaic and undemocratic state Senate tradition, is unlikely to join the panel anytime soon — if ever.

As Charles Stile reported last week, Gerald Cardinale — a Bergen County Republican — “can use ‘senatorial courtesy’ powers to blackball a gubernatorial nomination from Bergen County,” a tactic he plans to use agaisnt McNerney because he believes the Democrats “will simply rubber stamp ‘preconceived’ recommendations to merge smaller towns with larger ones.”

“I don’t want to take one little chance on somebody with a preconceived notion shoving down taxpayers’ throats that they have to join together and take the risk of paying more than they are paying,” Cardinale said. “That person [McNerney] has a preconceived notion that I consider to be ill-conceived.”

Of course, Cardinale is doing exactly what he fears McNerney will do — acting on a preconceived notion to prevent the open discussion of reforms with which he disagrees. I doubt Cardinale would be opposing McNerney if he was a staunch opponent of consolidation. Nor do I believe the Bergen County senator is calling for a panel made up of people who have given little thought to the issues they will be asked to address.

McNerney deserves a place on the consolidation panel sitting across from some equally staunch opponent of consolidations. That will create the friction needed to light a fire under the issue and get some real answers.

Then again, I really don’t hold out much hope for the merger panel, given that it was defanged during the legislative process, transformed from a commission with real power into an advisory panel that can be ignored — which is, I fear, the preferred approach in both houses of the state Legislature.

In any case, there is something wrong when one member of a 40-member legislative body can scuttle a gubernatorial appointment. There is nothing courteous about that kind of tradition at all.

Hanukkah O Hanukkah (finally I) light the menorah

Day four, Hanukkah. and I finally remembered to light the menorah. I'm feeling a bit guilty — with Christmas in the air, I probably should be more concientious about it. Especially when you consider that this is a holiday about identity, commemorating the “historic victory of the Maccabeans following a three-year long uprising against the ruling Assyrian-Greek regime” and a defense of Jewish identity and sovereignty.

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Holiday cheer

A quick wish to my readers and readrrs of the Princeton Packet's 11 newspapers: Happy Hanukkah and merry Christmas!

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A hand up and a hand out are needed

Though more and more people are struggling in this failing economy — the Crisis Ministry of Princeton and Trenton, for instance, reports that it served 1,400 families in October — there is a core group that had been struggling even when we were experiencing what Wall Street had been painting as good times.

Consider these figures from the Mercer Alliance to End Homelessness:

On any given day in Mercer County, over 1200 people experience homelessness. (Homeless Resource Advisory Council, HRAC, COC 2008

Homeless survey snapshots from February 2002 through August 2004 by HRAC show 3 relatively consistent numbers of sheltered homeless in Mercer County: See links to recent surveys. (2003 Survey) (2004 Survey)

Over the course of a year, more than 3,000 men, women, and children in Mercer County receive services in the homeless system. (Mercer County Homeless Resources Advisory Council (HRAC)

Approximately 20% of homeless children do not attend school regularly. (National Center on Family Homelessness)

Homeless children are 3 times more likely than other children to have emotional of behavioral problems. (National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty)

Homeless children are twice as likely to experience hunger than non-homeless children. (National Center on Family Homelessness)

That’s why a concerted effort to battle homelessness is needed, including income supports and expanded support services, an aggressive effort to build more affordable housing and universal, single-payer healthcare that takes medical bills out of the equation as one of the leading causes of bankruptcy and homelessness.

In the short term, however, legislation that recently passed the state Assembly — A3101 — and awaits a Senate vote could help. The legislation, called the “County Homelessness Trust Fund Act,” would allow the state’s 21 counties to create to

impose a surcharge of $3 on each document recorded with a county, for deposit into a county homelessness trust fund, five per cent of which may be used annually for administrative costs related to the administration of the fund, and the remainder of the monies in the fund may be used solely for the operation of a homelessness housing grant program established in order to provide:

for the acquisition,construction, or rehabilitation of housing projects, or units within housing projects, that supply permanent affordable housing for homeless persons or families, including those at risk of homelessness;

rental assistance vouchers, including tenant and project based subsidies, for affordable housing projects or units within housing projects that provide permanent affordable housing for homeless persons or families, including those at risk of homelessness;

supportive services as may be required by homeless individuals or families in order to obtain or maintain, or both, permanent affordable housing;
and

prevention services for at risk homeless individuals or families so that they can obtain and maintain permanent affordable housing.

Grants awarded by the governing body of the county shall be used to support projects that:

measurably reduce homelessness;

demonstrate government cost savings over time;

employ evidence-based models;

can be replicated in other counties;

include an outcome measurement component;

are consistent with the local homelessness housing plan; or

fund the acquisition, construction, or rehabilitation of projects that will serve homeless individuals or families for a period of at least 30 years or equal to the longest term of affordability required by other funding sources.

The trust funds, according to the NJ Advocacy Network to End Homelessness, would “leverage … scarce funding” and “help thousands of families and individuals in New Jersey move into permanent housing.”

States across the country have helped localities dramatically reduce their homeless populations by enabling them to fund the implementation of local plans to end homelessness through local Trust Funds. In these states, this has resulted in a reduction of costs to the public sector and community. A recent example is the King County Homeless Housing and Services Fund, created when the Washington State
Legislature passed the Homeless Housing and Assistance Act of 2005 (ESSHB 2163) establishing an additional $10 document recording fee dedicated to funding homeless initiatives. This year this assisted more than 200 low-income, homeless individuals and their families will be able to move into stable housing where they can receive the supportive services they need to maintain that housing. The goal of the legislation in
Washington State was to reduce homelessness by 50% in ten years.

The same results can and will happen in New Jersey.

The Senate Community and Urban Affairs Committee endorsed the legislation by a 4-0 vote, with one abstention. It now awaits a vote of the full Senate, where it is likely to pass.

In the meantime, do what you can to help out groups like the Crisis Ministry, the Mercer Alliance, Coming Home in Middlesex County and all of the other groups working to aid those in the direst of need.