PT is 1. Blasts from the past.

*

(Nov. 2005: City Administrator Norton Bonaparte
and Director of Administration and Finance
Ron West review online auction results.)

PT is one year old -- Dan started posting on Thursday, November 3, 2005.

What was the news on Day one?

The city was preparing to offer its FIRST ONLINE AUCTION of Bond Anticipatory Notes (BANs) -- quite a novelty in New Jersey last year. But not even considered newsworthy by one of the dailies, which led to the birth of PT to promote the notes sale and other City news in an independent channel. That first story is here ("Plainfield offers $11.7M notes online, a first").

On Friday, November 4th, PT reported the successful sale ("Online notes auction goes without a hitch").

(Click on image to enlarge.)

PT even posted a screen shot (above) showing the bids received, the interests rates bid, and the winner -- Zions Bank of Utah. Do you even know what interest rate the most recent auction fetched or how many bids there were?

Also, on the 4th, there were posts about PCTV Ch 74's broadcast of the taped League of Women Voters forum and an announcement of the kickoff of a meeting sponsored by the UEZ, the SID and the Chamber of Commerce to outline the Holidays 2005 marketing emphasis.

So what's changed in the past year?

Well, another online BANs auction got everyone's attention -- but for a much different reason. This one was pulled off WITHOUT PROPER PREPARATION as an EMERGENCY measure to rescue the City from going into DEFAULT on its FINANCIAL OBLIGATIONS and WIPING OUT ITS HARD-EARNED CREDIT RATING.

The cable crew evinced no interest in the League of Women Voters forum.

As for the Holidays 2006 merchants' marketing effort, PT has not heard of any preparations yet.

Ah, transparency! Ah, progress!

-- Dan Damon

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