Case in point: this past Friday, August 20, the City Parks and Recreation department had a concert at the Levitt Pavilion. It was part of the “Levitt Live” summer series. The band was called “Trey Eley Experience”. A reliable source told me that the band’s payment was $1,000.00. The sound company gets paid around $500.00. Plus, there are additional costs involved like park staff, electricity and, of course, the band’s “rider”.

So the stage is set – a beautiful night this past Friday, giant open pavilion and a lawn that can seat thousands.

My source tells me there were fifteen people in attendance.

Fifteen.

But wait! It gets better. Around ten of the fifteen in attendance were Mayor Linda Thompson and her entourage (including her personal security detail).

SIDEBAR- In case you haven’t noticed, much space here hasn’t been given to the general disarray of the City of Harrisburg lately, rather, I’ve tried to focus on the areas that I’m 100% certain about. In this case, how to promote a concert.

And looking at the Levitt Live! website, I wasn’t surprised to see a number of cancellations. And the 2010 Summer Concert series still says “To Be Announced” (Today is August 23…when, exactly, will the Summer Concert Series be announced?)

It doesn’t take a Wall Street consultant or analyst to advise the city on how best to spend it’s entertainment and marketing budget. All it takes is a phone call.

Linda: stop wasting our money and start hiring the people who know what they’re doing.

Oh, and by the way- when is the Kipona Music schedule going to be announced?

My whole life, I’ve taken the abuse of lame, regurgitated, unoriginal and downright misinformed jokes and misconceptions about my home state, New Jersey.

“The Armpit of America”

“The Turnpike Stinks”

“What Exit?”

“Jimmy Hoffa”

And recently ,things haven’t gotten much better with the mindbending television shows like “Jersey Shore” and “Real Housewives of New Jersey”. The worst of the worst of New Jersey are highlighted nightly on MTV and E! while the rest of the country looks on in horror while actually believing that these idiots on television fairly represent the general population of The Garden State.

I say this as a born and bred Jersey Boy. I was born in Passaic, raised in Northeast Jersey – Bergen County – and went “down the shore” as a kid. Every summer my grandparents would get a house in Ortley Beach from Memorial Day to Labor Day and we’d go down for eight or ten days at a clip. We played skee ball and pulled the slots on the boardwalk and “watched the tram car, please” and ate Zeppoles and pumped our fists before it was in fashion.

We’d also vacation in the Poconos. A week or so a year we’d head out Interstate 80 and get our version of wilderness in. “Look kids! A deer!” and lightning bugs aplenty.

But when I reached the ripe age of nineteen, I’d had enough. I wanted to explore. I moved – albeit hastily – to Hartford, Connecticut and lived there for a couple of years. From there, it was Suffolk County on Long Island. And then Toronto, Ontario (that’s in Canada for my readers in Perry County). Jaunts to the West Coast and everywhere in between. But as I got older, I realized – there ain’t nuthin like Jersey.

Yeah, sure, people are polite in other places. And sure, maybe the politicians are less corrupt. And those of you in the back talking smack about la Cosa Nostra..you bettah watch-a you mouth! ‘Cause if there’s one thing that defines a good majority of Life in New Jersey – it’s the Italian-American population.

We went to Roman Catholic church every Sunday and feared the shit out of God. We prepared for Confirmations and Bar and Bat Mitzfas. And every Labor Day weekend, a highlight of life in North Jersey was the Lodi Feast.

It was sorta funny to read the articles by Elana Altman writing for the Patriot News the past couple of days. Most hysterical, though, had to be the comments on the drivers – she got a quote from – get this – a seventeen year old kid from Camp Hill who said “They’re bad drivers,” because, who better to ask about the quality and skill of drivers in the most densely populated state in the country than a seventeen year old kid from Camp Hill.

Bad drivers? How ’bout this – you stick hundreds of thousands of people onto a few highways in one of the most affluent and economically stable sectors of the country – all with a million things going on and different places to go – and then tell me how YOU’D drive. The argument that people from Jersey are “bad drivers” holds no water in my book. It’s not that we’re BAD drivers – we’re OFFENSIVE drivers. And not “offensive” in the Andrew Dice Clay sense of the word. We’re OFFENSIVE in the New Jersey Giants rushing for a touchdown kind of way. You HAVE to be shooting the hole or driving three moves ahead when competing with tractor trailers and thousands of other people with places to go and things to do that are just as important as yours.

Really, New Jersey drivers are some of the BEST in the world- and Pennsylvania drivers just can’t keep up. Don’t believe me? Let’s go for a ride some time. I’ll show ya.

Look, I realize Jersey has it’s flaws. But there’s a good reason for all of them. You complain about the smell? Well, where do you expect to get your gasoline or plastics from? They have to come from somewhere. And speaking of smelly highways- you Pennsylvanians have nothing to talk about when it comes to smelly highways. Have you driven 283 to or from Lancaster when they’re laying manure on the crops?

And speaking of toxicity- there’s this nuclear power plant called “Three Mile Island” that you may have heard of.

Oh, and the Susquehanna River ain’t no gem of clear water either – especially considering how often the beach on City Island closes because of e-coli breakouts.

SO yeah, take your jabs at Jersey. We can take it. We’re used to it. But don’t whine and bitch when we bite back. Because if it weren’t for Jersey – the “Armpit” of America – you douchebags in the rest of the country wouldn’t enjoy Springsteen or Bon Jovi or Frank Sinatra or Sabrett Hot Dogs or Jersey Tomatoes or The Statue of Liberty or street names in the game Monopoly or Danny DeVito or Jason Biggs or Jack Nicolson or John Travolta or Paul Simon or the electric guitar invented by Les Paul in Mahwah or a plethora of other things.

But hey, keep bustin’ balls. We can take it. Not like you whiney Pennsylvanians crying about your Phillies and crappy governor and most expensive turnpike in the country and Ben Rothelisburger and Poison and Fuel.

Actually, if what I’m about to do has the same effect as what happened when I found The Hold Steady, my friends are going to hate J Roddy Walston and The Business in about a month.

You see, they’re not gonna hate J Roddy because they’re not a massively awesome rock and roll band, rather, they’re going to hate J Roddy Walston and The Business because the new record is all that I’m going to listen to and play for a long, long time once I get it this coming Tuesday, July 27. (It’s streaming on Spinner right now)

But that’s what we do, isn’t it? Don’t we scream it from the rooftops and evangelize on streetcorners and blog and tweet and facebook and hire skywriters to tell everyone about this awesome new band.

I thought that The Hold Steady ruined music for me. Simply because they set the bar SO FUCKING HIGH that most other new bands that I have heard since simply haven’t done much for me. That is, until J Roddy came along. We ran a short “Indie At The Abbey” series a couple of years ago that our friend Joe at Instrumental Analysis put together. J Roddy was on the wishlist for that but a date never materialized. That was when I got my first taste of the Rod. However, it wasn’t until over two years later seeing the boys open for The Hold Steady at The Recher Theater in Towson that I got the first addictive injection of this band.

It’s just straight up, down and dirty, high and mighty, wet and sloppy, fat and happy, dark and dirty, foot stompin, fist pumpin, head banging, beer swillin rock and roll music.

Oh, and Rod plays the piano – but it’s not really piano rock. Though the “dinka-dinka-dinka-dink-dink” of Used To Did is simply as catchy as any jingle I’ve ever heard and it’s a natural show-closer (and usually is).

Look, I can go on and on about this band. And I likely will over the coming months. But their new record comes out on Tuesday. It’s on Vagrant. They’re playing the Khyber in Philly on Tuesday night, Baltimore at the Ottobar on the 31st is the hometown CD Release show. And from there? Sky’s the limit.

I’ve found the new kings of bar rock – and they are J Roddy Walston and The Business.

Another misguided, megalomania-showing move by MFN LDT.

The woman isn’t qualified to make a decision like that. Not after six months on the job. And certainly not with the ongoing turmoil at the Harrisburg School District.

Police in schools (especially schools in an urban, inner-city environment) aren’t uncommon in the post-Columbine days. Even before the Colorado massacre, city police regularly patrolled the hallways of some of the more aggressive schools.

Because schoolchildren whose parents don’t care about what they do at or away from school tend to bring things like guns and knives to school – thereby requiring a police presence to deter bad behavior.

If it’s true that Thompson DID order the police out of Harrisburg schools, then this woman just got six times crazier in my book.

Can things get any worse?

You betcha.

Please do your fellow citizens a favor and share this link. It is, by far, the most in-depth explanation of the quagmire we’re in that you’re going to read anywhere.

It is time to go directly to the citizens of the city and region instead of the political officials providing sound bites for the media. My intent is to shed some light, provide some facts, and identify, from my perspective, the issues and players in our financial crisis.

1. The debt is actually around $283 million. There is also a risk the Authority could be liable for an additional $25 million if it loses the CIT litigation. The revenue from the incinerator, after operating expenses, has been unable to pay debt service. So, the city’s taxpayers, as primary guarantor of the debt, must come up with money to pay the debt service to the bondholders. Since the city is essentially broke, the county, as secondary guarantor for about half the debt, must come up with the funds. If the county defaults, then the bond insurer makes the payments to the bond and note holders. And any entity that makes a payment wants to be reimbursed eventually.

2. There are basic solutions to addressing that debt. Come up with $283 million and retire the debt or come up with $50 to $100 million to reduce the debt so it can be restructured and more manageable. Of course, how to do that is the big issue. Sale of the incinerator could bring in anywhere from $75 million to $180 million- if someone will purchase it. Leasing the parking garages apparently could net up to $100 million. There you go, done deal. Sell incinerator for $180 million and use parking lease proceeds of $100 million and we can go back to our lives. Easier said than done. A more realistic scenario is to pay down the debt by $50 million to $100 million and look to the state financing authority to provide leverage in refinancing or restructuring the outstanding amount. Neil Grover and City Controller have put forth their concepts for reducing the debt. The rest of this post will identify the parties and how I view their respective interests. My intent is to provide transparency without revealing the substance of draft documents being negotiated and better inform the taxpayers so they are able to participate in this discussion. Let’s look at the parties and their interests and issues:

3. Harrisburg Authority- does not have a quorum, can not conduct business. Wants to lead, but has little leverage. The authority staff is competent and the incinerator operator has the facility up and running rather smoothly. The issues are financial not operational. The Authority wants to pay contractors (unfairly being held hostage), fix turbine blade (to generate up to $1 million additional revenue in electric sales), repair steam line (possible $4 million in revenue), increase receipts and revenue (get higher paying waste from outside county), decrease operating expenses (find solution for ash disposal). A proposed amended budget that you haven’t seen reveals it may be able to start paying between $7 and $12 million annually in debt service. Current debt load too high- debt service is approx $22 million annually.

4. This year’s dilemna- $35 mil due in December because authority, city and county kicked the can down the road in 2007 by borrowing to pay debt service for 2007 and 2008. if that amount is refinanced, expect an additional $2 million in debt service.

5. This year’s budget for debt service includes amounts to reimburse the county, city, covanta and bond insurer. So far this year, on behalf of the authority, the city has paid $637,500, county has paid $1,126,254 and the insurer has paid $425,193. Payments from the debt service reserve fund this year total $5,074,733. All of those payments must be reimbursed or replenished. And, about $10 million in debt service is left to be paid before end of year (not including the $35 million notes).

6. City has limited resources to back up its guarantee. What should the city do? Are the recommendations from management consultants enough to deal with this financial crisis? Is there the political will and leadership to put the parking garages and other assets into play? Can the residents sustain a tax increase? Taxes did not increase in the city over the years because these financings typically would kick a few million to the city’s general fund so taxes would not go up.

7. County refuses to raise tipping fees to raise additional revenue for authority, won’t cooperate in enforcing flow control costing authority up to $600,000 annually in revenue, insists on additional $4.90/ton being added to tipping fee to go to county’s office of solid waste, requires its own engineer, financial consultant and attorneys to oversee authority (and get reimbursed by authority).

8. Covanta wants to be repaid on the $22 million it has put out to fix the Barlow mess. It has not been paid the last two quarterly installments of $637,000. So, Covanta will not release any more funds to pay contractors who did work (about $2.2 million).

9. AGM the bond insurer. Publicly has stated it will not reduce principal or interest on the debt. will not allow use of the $3.6 million from the Barlow settlement to be used to pay contractors or fix turbine blade until city comes up with a plan.

There are all kinds of legal issues involving the rights and remedies of each of these parties. The county has sued the city and authority for reimbursement of the money they have paid and wants the court to order the city to budget for the debt service and raise taxes or sell/lease assets. Covanta has put forth a list of its terms it wants in a forebearance agreement. AGM has put forth its terms for a forebearance agreement. The forebearance agreement initially was to buy time to enable the city to come up with a plan, but now the document is turning into the outline of a plan, which explains why it is taking so long to finalize. The authority can only sit on the sidelines until it gets a quorum.

So that is a status report on where things are as of now. Will the mayor and city council continue the stalemate over adding at least a third member to the board? Who will provide the necessary leadership to make the unpopular recommendations to do some combination of leasing or selling assets, raising taxes, raising tipping fees, asking the state to assist in restructuring the debt and/or allowing the filing of chapter 9, or even sell the water system or sewage treatment system?

At least you now know what we know. We promise to keep you informed and hopefully hold public forums on these issues.