“In starting my campaign website in 2004, I developed a site that was very specific in detailing my vision for a new Newark. I did so as too many candidates for political office, specifically in Newark, run for office without specifically stating where they stand on the issues and what they plan to do once in office. Likewise, once candidates become officeholders/elected officials, they do not state what they will fight for and what they will be fighting for over their term of office.

In my attempt to be held accountable for my proposals, this section of the website reminds voters of the West Ward about what my stands are on the issues and the issues I vowed to work on during my four years in office based on my campaign website. As I stated the, please hold me accountable for results.”

NEW COVENANT

• Abolishing of the use of city owned and taxpayer sponsored perks which include cars, cell phones, pagers, expense accounts and junkets

• Institute term limits and forbid by legislation and charter amendment the city council and the Mayor from serving more than three terms.
• Implement campaign finance reform by capping the amount a candidate for mayor and city council can raise and spend to win an election; establish maximum spending figures
• Apply to state for Newark to be a demonstration city for publicly funded municipal elections
• Implement a ban on city contractor donations to candidates for municipal office and reform pay to play policy of our city
• Re-institute the hearings of citizens portion of the regular city council meetings to give citizens the right to free speech to question, criticize and get information from their elected officials during their public meetings at the highest level allowed by state law
• Strengthen, reform and introduce recall, and initiative and referendum provisions to empower residents to have a stronger voice and power over their government
• Require developers who seek major zoning variances, tax abatements and special tax credits and cuts to disclose contributions, on their requesting applications, made to local officials within the last two years
• Require each councilperson to have a little city hall in the neighborhoods that functions during the weekdays from 8:00 to 4:00; must be operated by members of the councilperson's official staff
• Forbid travel, hotel lodging, meal purchases, gifts, etc. from corporate and/or lobbying interests
• Require the city council President to make an annual State of the City address on the legislative priorities for the upcoming year and an end of the year Report Card Address regarding the success or failure of its implementation and the reasons why
• Use city colleges and universities as a resource for policy analysis, studies, initiatives and solutions to our city's problems, such as the Cornwell Center
• Mandate that if city officials can fire employees who do not live in the city, that that legally supported position is uniformly applied to the Administration as well and all waivers for the Mayor's appointees and employees should be retroactively abolished
• Support congressional candidates (House and Senate) that will amend federal law and by constitutional amendment give the right to vote back to felons after they have paid their debt to society and complete parole successfully, like South Africa has done. City elected officials must also lobby for prisoners not to be counted by the census in the township in which they are incarcerated, so that those areas benefit from increased populations and the urban communities ( Newark ) lose precious federal and state aid
• Ban fund raising on public property
• Require open price competition for professional contracts
• Institute a Municipal Campaign Code of Ethics that will include mandating all candidates to clearly state their qualifications, goals and ideas for office and refrain from mudslinging, completion of finance disclosure forms and placement of them in all city public libraries and city clerk's office and forbidding the posting of political signs on public property and mandating all candidates to assume responsibility over all workers, volunteer or paid, that represent the candidate
• Stop the use of federal Community Block Grant funds, which are used to benefit lower-income residents and prevent urban blight, for big politically beneficial projects and concentrate those funds for neighborhoods and non-profits organizations that are not politically connected

CITY COUNCIL OVERSIGHT

• Make the city's annual budgetary fiscal calendar the same as the state of New Jersey 's as part of an overall comprehensive overhaul of the city council's fiscal and budget policies (more to come on this later);
• Establish formal procedures for the acceptance of "late starter" legislation sent by the Administration that is based on its use in very special and/or emergency situations only;
• Establish formal procedures for the acceptance Administration sponsored temporary appropriations that mandates specific details be given to the city council regarding the spending plan in a reasonable amount of time before a vote is required;
• Mandate that the Administration provide an annual report on City Services that will measure city agency performance and provide the public a measurement to gauge what the city is accomplishing with taxpayer dollars. The report should include city customer's surveys to judge resident satisfaction;
• Mandate an independent audit of all city departments and functions every two years and use of the State's offer for no cost audits on a yearly basis;
• Mandate a comprehensive review of the municipal code and all related municipal laws every five years. This process should be a nonpolitical economic and technical analysis and should focus on systematically getting rid of outdated and unneeded regulations that often impose costly restrictions;
• Pressure the Administration into reversing its policy of keeping directors and supervisors from talking to council members and allowing all communications to go through one administrator for all policy questions. The policy is ridiculous and is indicative of an arrogant and unresponsive Administration that does not respect the legislative branch nor the residents that elected them
• Establish procedures to effectively conduct oversight and review of all Administrative agencies
• Require all city departments to quantify the successes of their past spending practices and priorities so that performance based budgets can be created starting next year. Accountability comes only by developing a measurement of success
• Annual audits of the small business loan program to prevent a repeat of its abuses and debt accumulation when it was initially closed down in 1994

EDUCATION

• Advocate full compliance with the Abbott v. Burke (Abbott V and VI) decisions;
• Empower parents to choose the appropriate educational option for their children. This means supporting the development of charter schools, tax funded public/private scholarships, private scholarships, home schooling and means tested parental tax credits;
• Provide information regarding all options available to parents;
• Provide funding to support after school extracurricular activities and programs for students that cannot currently be financially provided by the Newark school system. This funding can come from doubling the existing recreation budget for the city
• Base neighborhood development around the new synergy and construction of the new schools. We should surround the new schools with plans for new afterschool and recreation programs, arts and cultural activities and small businesses
• Push the state to incorporate drug education into the health curriculum of all public schools
• Encourage mentoring, advising and resource relationships between the city schools and the surrounding colleges and universities by initiating a program of "Mentors Upon Demand," based on the youth employment model of Washington , DC in the '80s;
• Set up entrepreneurial opportunities for school youth by working with the school district to contract with healthy snack vendors within the school and use the profits to set up businesses, i.e. students designing, marketing, and selling school paraphenalia and school uniforms for profit

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

• Creation of Business Improvement Districts (BID) in the neighborhoods. City government should provide matching funds for these districts modeled after the special improvement district downtown. The BIDs will be based on the main thoroughfares of the city ( Springfield Avenue, So. Orange Avenue , Bloomfield , Clinton , 18 th , Avon , etc.) and include the businesses on these commercial strips. The local businesses would pay into a fund and would, in turn, have more power over their marketing, appearance, outreach and job creation. With support, financially and with increased municipal services, they could thrive in a more improved environment that could fund privately staffed sanitation, security, tree planting and other improvements. In many cases, the real key to spurring economic growth in the community is simply the improvement of the delivery of basic government services. Budgets can be approved by the city council and state government;
• Encourage the start-up of businesses that meet the needs of the neighborhoods' consumer market instead of haphazard stores that come and go. The city should regularly collect data on the consumption patterns of inner city residents to enable retailers and service providers to make informed decisions about inner city markets;
• Based on that data collection, the city must market and seek small and large new and cutting age businesses and industries to locate and start-up in Newark based on the amenities and attributes, such as micro-breweries and alternative energy creation companies. The city must gear all training programs to meet the demands of these new businesses so we can also provide them with a trained workforce
• Encourage federal and state governments to align tax policy to encourage new and continuing investments in inner city locations such as investment tax credits and zero capital gains tax on new equity investments in inner city companies and subsidiaries. Tax exemptions for start-up companies and businesses with less than $5,000 in gross receipts;
• Encourage "cluster" business development in the neighborhoods. Clusters are geographic concentrations of interconnected firms in a particular field that compete and cooperate. By encouraging simbiotic related businesses, that rely on each other and support each other mutually, long term business development is promoted and business longevity within the community is enhanced;
• Cut licensing fees on small businesses. To give a tax break to small businesses sends an important signal about the city's desire to create a healthy environment for small businesses;
• Eliminate licensing fees entirely for home based businesses to encourage growth and encourage reformation of zoning, health and safety and business taxation laws to benefit home based businesses;
• Create an ombudsman for small business that will make sure that all city departments know that municipal policies and regulations should be interpreted so that the presumption favors new businesses;
• Review and eliminate economic barriers to small businesses. The city council must mandate that the Administration conduct a comprehensive analysis of all laws and policies, from licensing to taxation to zoning, and identify those that create unnecessary barriers to entrepreneurship. Unnecessary or excessive regulations should be repealed, modified or suspended.
• Establishment of counseling and promotion centers for community business assistance in each ward and through council little city halls
• Impose strict timelines on the agencies that consider zoning requests;
• Revise city's payroll tax. The city council must use payroll tax to fund economic development within the neighborhoods as well as the BIDs throughout the city. An occupations tax is a fee paid by everyone who works in the city of Newark , whether they live here or not. Administering a tax on those that work here and dedicating those monies to neighborhood business development and other inner city problems would allow downtown created monies to benefit the community as a whole.
• Allow the BIDs that hire neighborhood residents to keep some of the sales tax revenue they generated
• Push state for tax free zones in chronically depressed areas; no income, property or sales taxes. This policy will also apply to businesses as well.

CRIME AND PUBLIC SAFETY

• Establishment of a joint civilian/police complaint review board with full subpeona power for four years that will become a purely civilian complaint review board appointed by the Mayor and the city council thereafter. Eventual progress to a fully elected board, staggered every two years
• Encourage the Administration to make the police department provide a systematic and comprehensive community policing plan as part of the next budget approval process;
• Encourage the Administration to make the police department provide a comprehensive plan with the collaboration of community groups and the county prosecutor's and sheriff's departments to combat the growing gang violence problem before it mirrors the size and breadth of the LA gang problems of the 90's;
• Encourage the Administration to make the police department provide a plan to deal with quality of life issues within the neighborhoods as well as downtown. Efforts such as confiscations of DWI conviction's cars should be encouraged
• Fund more abandoned building demolition and apply for the state funds that are currently available, but have never been applied for by the city to get rid of buildings that are used to store and hide drugs and as crack houses
• Deal with the gang problem as it really is, a community problem. The police force must not only work with a;; institutions to provide youth to adult alternatives and opportunities, it must provide an accountability tool to measure its successes in the law enforcement sector of dealing with the gang situation.

HOUSING

• Utilize and expand upon the existing urban homesteading law in the city, which has never been used. Urban homesteading would allow the city to confiscate abandoned properties and turn them over at a nominal cost to low and moderate income persons who wish to live in them;
• Require a significant portion of publicly owned residential assets to be sold only to resident owners or non-profits who will use public properties for low income housing;
• Use revenue from repealed property tax deductions for low income housing development;   Permanently extend the low income housing tax credit and ensure that tax credits build affordable low income housing;
• Advocate that the Federal National Mortgage Corp. and the Government National Mortgage Association match underwriting standards to borrower income levels in Newark ;
• Lobby for a state and national Rental Housing Standards Act, which would establish minimum standards for the upkeep and management of rental property. The process must start in the city, then the county, the state and then the nation;
• ONLY vote to confirm municipal judges named by the Administration that will interpret landlord/tenant law to give residents the right to withhold rent and apply it to repairs when the landlord fails to meet basic standards of habitability;
• Establish special mediation programs within the municipal court and superior courts to mediate disputes more effectively and quickly between landlords and tenants;
• Create a Housing Trust Fund to provide capital for investment in neighborhood revitalization projects that will increase the supply and affordability of new and rehabilitated housing units;
• Enforce aggressive code enforcement regulations and make budget increases to fund more housing inspectors. The city council must ensure that paperwork is reduced regarding the required steps for enforcement;
• Encourage renovation alongside new construction;
• Assist the low income landlord that is a good landlord. City policies should aid and assist good landlords and employ their assistance in identifyng policies that will reform the system and attract more good low income landlords to pursue ownership opportunities
• Initiate annual audits of the Newark Housing Authority to prevent the promotion of a culture of neglect based on previous independent consultants' review of NHA practices. While many units of public housing do not currently meet federal housing regulations, the city council must be a check to make sure that problems are not ignored, tenants are not charged for repairs (a violation of federal regulations) and inspections are done and their findings acted upon
• Support the Newark Coalition for Low-Income Housing's policy to require the creation of a new unit of housing for each one that is razed or destroyed
• Ensure that the NHA uses all of their rental subsidy certificates and vouchers intended to help low-income tenants who need affordable housing
• Make habitual violation of building codes a criminal offense
• Develop a real plan for the creation and provision of market rate and luxury condominiums, houses, co-ops, and downtown college living spaces for students to live on campus. The city must increase its professional class and provide living conditions on par with our competition in Jersey City and Hoboken
• Mixed use artistic housing must be set aside for our local artist community

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

• Require every major new private development in the community (residential, commercial or industrial) to file a community impact statement with the Contract Review Board describing in detail the potential impact of the development on the community, costs and benefits
• Guarantee that the updating of the Master Plan will be community based and not downtown corporate based. The city council and the Administration must advocate community organizations developing their own master plans for their goals and to integrate them into the city's plan. The community must be the most important contributors to the city's Master Plan for the 21 st Century and not outside or corporate interests. We should follow the inclusive model that was established when the city of Newark conferred with the community to develop our Empowerment Zone application. The city must address the future of housing, schools and green space in any Master Plan
• Ensure that the city Master Plan guarantees every community close access to certain basic facilities such as an elementary school, a library branch, a 24 hour health provider, a community meeting location, recreation facilities and adequate public transportation
• Grant city bank charters for periods of five years only with renewals based on the bank's performance in meeting its obligations to the community
• Remove existing barriers to the establishment of community development credit unions and other cooperative banking enterprises to empower the community with more financial savings and borrowing options and opportunities
• Establish a "Front Porch Alliance" like the city of Indianapolis . The front porch is the meeting place on every block, the ideal location for child recreation and supervision and the ultimate outpost for crime detection and prevention. The Front Porch Alliance would serve as a link between city government, churches and other houses of worship and neighborhood groups with the underlying assumption that different communities require individualized solutions to their problems. The Alliance would solicit proposals from community groups suggesting ways that the city and these groups can work together to improve local neighborhoods. It would be the recognized city advisory group that would work hand in hand with the proposed Neighborhood Councils
• Scrutinize the larger community based organizations' grant of city funding and require all CBOs to disclose all employees, consultants and program providers by name and residence. The city council should also scrutinize CBOs' finances and hiring practices
• Grant more funding to smaller and newer CBOs with the necessary expertise, but that also offer innovative ideas and problem solving and are not as politically connected. As the city grows, so must the number and competency of all city based CBOs
• Provide additional dollars to the City Clerk's Office to sponsor seminars in the community and to educate residents about the powers, responsibilities and duties of the city council and the administration and to whom to properly seek redress of problems

RECREATION

• Invest more funds to improve and repair existing facilities, especially swimming and aquatic facilities
• Encourage the establishment of partnerships with neighborhood block associations, community based organizations, the school district and the churches for programming and the development of non-traditional recreation offerings such as SAT prep courses, after school homework assistance, entrepreneurship and young parenting classes, etc.
• Coordinate the delivery of recreation opportunities and activities with other recreation providers throughout the city, such as the Boys and Girls Club, small intramural and little league teams. City coordination has been abysmal and is the leading reason for disjointed and bad recreation delivery
• Create a Youth Council and allow it to have a direct influence and say over the recreation budget, its implementation and its annual oversight

YOUTH

• Institute a Junior City Council, modeled after a similar program in Texarkana , Tx., that will allow youth leaders to have a voice in the affairs of government in their city. The council would mirror the Newark City Council and have four at-large members and one member from each of the five wards. Members would be between the ages of 12-18 (eligible applicants must be age 12 prior to the election and not older than age 18 prior to the election) and would be elected by secret ballot. All public schools would participate in the balloting which would occur on the same day as the school board election. Private and parochial schools would also get one male and one female representative bringing the total number to 11. Their responsibilities would be to represent Newark youth by implementing ideas, addressing concerns, organizing projects that benefit youth and establishing a relationship with organizations that will aid youth related activities. The council will also facilitate and conduct monthly Teen Summits or junior town hall meetings using Robert Rules of Order. The city clerk's office will serve as the council's support staff. They will also have an advisory power in terms of the municipal budget generally and the recreation division's budget specifically. Each term will be one year and each member can only serve three consecutive terms.
• Coordinate with the administration the increase of summer youth employment. The city must create real jobs publicly, develop a process for their creation of jobs in the private sector and with community based organizations. The city should also assist small businesses to create jobs in the neighborhoods. Tax credits should be given for industry that provides meaningful work experience for our young people, instead of tax abatements for just relocating here
• Increase the amount the money given to entrepreneur and investment clubs such as the Junior Entrepreneurs Club from MOET and for academic enrichment programs. The city must provide entrepreneur opportunities for young people, such as designing, marketing and selling high school sports paraphernalia.

REAL DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT

• A central location for vendors to set up shop downtown. They should also be allowed to sell their wares in push carts, but subject to a uniform regulatory process that will keep all parties adhering to the same laws and penalties for noncompliance
• That "vendor strip" should also be extended into the neighborhoods
• Commission independent audits of the arena build-up to determine if there are cost overruns and escalating costs
• Conduct a real assessment of the economic impact and benefits of the arena. The Newark Alliance's, a party with a vested interest, estimate of 13,800 jobs in the face of every major arena expert's opinion that not even a tenth of that amount of jobs has ever been created at any arena must be investigated and reviewed for its truth and honesty.
• Develop a plan with the Administration a plan for significant minority participation in all aspects of the development, including construction, consulting and marketing opportunities