H.I.T.S.: HEARD IN THE STREET. . .
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Laddie a gold-digger?: Well, Laddie digs gold... City Clerk Laddie Wyatt has added another accomplishment to her list -- she designed Council President Ray Blanco's new business card. The most striking element on the card is the gold embossed seal of the city. You can be sure card envy will soon be in full bloom -- expect to see the shiny seal soon on a card coming to you. Your tax dollars at work...
...speaking of gold-digging, what's up with the Somerset County Library system? Seems they have moved to break the long-standing reciprocity agreement between the Plainfield Public Library and the North Plainfield Memorial Library, which is part of the Somerset County system. For more years than anyone can remember, residents of the neighboring towns were able to use their library cards to borrow from each other's libraries. No longer. Plainfielders wanting to use the North Plainfield library will have to ante up $135 dollars for the privilege. Coming the other way across the Green Brook will cost North Plainfielders in the neighborhood of $30. North Plainfield's loss...since the Plainfield collection is much richer than any of the various branches of the Somerset County system, where a large percentage of the books -- 70%? - 80%? -- are the same from branch to branch...
I met Tony Grey on Tuesday, when I was returning the Dreamweaver software (link will take you to story) to City Hall. He's the new hire responsible for the city's website and the cable TV station, PCTV-74. I spoke with him about the importance of getting a message to the public on the cable station's phone (753-3301) so people can figure out how to get programming to the station. Craig Smith was part of the conversation, so I hope you can see some movement on this point. Meanwhile, if you haven't checked the city's website recently, you owe it to yourself to stroll on over and see what's going on. Though Tony has redone the front page, the inner pages still bear the design imprint of John Di Pane, the city's recently retired former webmaster. Take a gander and give me your thoughts...
...You will find some interesting news on the front page that you may not have seen elsewhere -- like the Mayor's '100 Day Report' event -- but the page suffers from an unsteady hand with the palette and fonts, and some greenhorn mistakes such as not giving the page a title (it shows up as 'index.html' if you hover over it) and a clear need for spell- and grammar-checking before posting. One real kvetch: The design/management notice and email address on the front page. The city should issue a city email address at once and take down the private one. It looks too much like someone using a public site to fish for private business -- a no-no. Who is watching out for this small stuff, which creates such a big impression? Here's my first impression: though green, Tony seems earnest. There is no reason for any of the city's public 'faces' -- web, cable or print -- to look less professional than they have in the past. We'll see how things turn out...
Lastly, the SID's quarterly magazine, Positively Plainfield, arrived in mailboxes on Monday. I hope the SID board will tell the consultant- turned-coordinator, David Biagini, that the world is watching and he needs to tighten up. There is a lot of good info, but some sloppiness. On page 14, Director Al Pittis' name is printed over and illegible. The story on surveillance cams is great, but do we really need to see pix of the horse ride from December? Surely, something SID-wise happened in between then and now? The SID is paying good money for his services and the magazine should be flawless...
...as are all my humble opinions...
DISCLAIMER: In the interest of fairness, any person identified in a H.I.T.S. post who believes he/she has been portrayed unfairly or that the information about him/her is untrue will have the opportunity to respond in this space.
(Click to enlarge)
Laddie a gold-digger?: Well, Laddie digs gold... City Clerk Laddie Wyatt has added another accomplishment to her list -- she designed Council President Ray Blanco's new business card. The most striking element on the card is the gold embossed seal of the city. You can be sure card envy will soon be in full bloom -- expect to see the shiny seal soon on a card coming to you. Your tax dollars at work...
...speaking of gold-digging, what's up with the Somerset County Library system? Seems they have moved to break the long-standing reciprocity agreement between the Plainfield Public Library and the North Plainfield Memorial Library, which is part of the Somerset County system. For more years than anyone can remember, residents of the neighboring towns were able to use their library cards to borrow from each other's libraries. No longer. Plainfielders wanting to use the North Plainfield library will have to ante up $135 dollars for the privilege. Coming the other way across the Green Brook will cost North Plainfielders in the neighborhood of $30. North Plainfield's loss...since the Plainfield collection is much richer than any of the various branches of the Somerset County system, where a large percentage of the books -- 70%? - 80%? -- are the same from branch to branch...
I met Tony Grey on Tuesday, when I was returning the Dreamweaver software (link will take you to story) to City Hall. He's the new hire responsible for the city's website and the cable TV station, PCTV-74. I spoke with him about the importance of getting a message to the public on the cable station's phone (753-3301) so people can figure out how to get programming to the station. Craig Smith was part of the conversation, so I hope you can see some movement on this point. Meanwhile, if you haven't checked the city's website recently, you owe it to yourself to stroll on over and see what's going on. Though Tony has redone the front page, the inner pages still bear the design imprint of John Di Pane, the city's recently retired former webmaster. Take a gander and give me your thoughts...
...You will find some interesting news on the front page that you may not have seen elsewhere -- like the Mayor's '100 Day Report' event -- but the page suffers from an unsteady hand with the palette and fonts, and some greenhorn mistakes such as not giving the page a title (it shows up as 'index.html' if you hover over it) and a clear need for spell- and grammar-checking before posting. One real kvetch: The design/management notice and email address on the front page. The city should issue a city email address at once and take down the private one. It looks too much like someone using a public site to fish for private business -- a no-no. Who is watching out for this small stuff, which creates such a big impression? Here's my first impression: though green, Tony seems earnest. There is no reason for any of the city's public 'faces' -- web, cable or print -- to look less professional than they have in the past. We'll see how things turn out...
CSI: Plainfield... speaking of 'greenhorn mistakes,' whoever put out the last-minute slime piece against Pat Barksdale and Rasheed Abdul-Haqq (you do know they were the top vote-getters, right?) made a bunch. Let's take our scalpel and slash right in....Have you been following the Rev. Rick's riffs on Schools Superintendent Paula Howard? This past Wednesday he was chiming in to get another dig in. Word in the street has it that his jazz-like loquaciousness is fueled by his pique at the school district's not giving his wife, the Rev. Gloria, a principalship...
...First, the timing. Getting political mailers into mailboxes at the right moment is like skipping stones across a pond: angle, velocity and spin make the difference between a stone that skips and a sinker. When and how the mail is dropped help make a skipper or a sinker. My copy and my neighbor's arrived the day after the election, though some got it on Monday. One sinker.
...Second, mailing it from Newark. A mailing house using a Newark postal permit had to deliver the piece to the regional facility, with the potential for slowing things down. Experienced mailers use a local lettershop which sorts and bags the pieces and delivers them directly to the local postal stations. I have had bulk mail pieces turn up in people's mailboxes the day after dropped. Not this one. Another sinker.
...Third, wasting the 'front' page, the one with the address. Greenhorns don't know how to put a message on this page that tells the mail carriers this piece must go out to the postal patrons at once. A sinker, yet again.
...Fourth, mailing too many pieces. Each piece costs money -- probably in the range of 22¢ or so. That can add up. Experienced campaign professionals use collapsed mailing lists, usually called a 'household' list -- what you get when it says 'Postal patron' or 'Our friend at...'. It's a difference of thousands of pieces. You do the math. Sinker? You bet.
...Fifth, the slime worked against the senders, rather than for. See my analysis of the falsehoods in the piece and pictures of the piece's individual pages. Thousands of people saw my pages and heard the robot phone message that the For The Kids team put out Monday evening. I can tell from my email traffic that people are fed up with baseless negativity. Another sinker for the slimers.
Who did it? I don't know, but I have my suspicions. As the Romans used to say, 'Cui bono?' -- who benefits? Nan Anderson and David Graves ran decent, low-budget, low-profile campaigns. If they had the money, why wouldn't they do positive pieces on themselves? Far more likely it was the Logan-Leach, Lovely-Brown, Wilkins team's backers. They -- and their backers -- had the money (think headquarters, signs, multiple mailings), the motive, and the opportunity. In the end, with all that huffing and puffing and all that money spent (guesstimating $7-8,000), they spent about $100-$115 per vote to get Logan-Leach elected. Another sinker?
Lastly, the SID's quarterly magazine, Positively Plainfield, arrived in mailboxes on Monday. I hope the SID board will tell the consultant- turned-coordinator, David Biagini, that the world is watching and he needs to tighten up. There is a lot of good info, but some sloppiness. On page 14, Director Al Pittis' name is printed over and illegible. The story on surveillance cams is great, but do we really need to see pix of the horse ride from December? Surely, something SID-wise happened in between then and now? The SID is paying good money for his services and the magazine should be flawless...
...as are all my humble opinions...
DISCLAIMER: In the interest of fairness, any person identified in a H.I.T.S. post who believes he/she has been portrayed unfairly or that the information about him/her is untrue will have the opportunity to respond in this space.