The A-Team is your team By Jim Keady There are a small number of people in our community that want you to be afraid of voting for the A-Team in the upcoming City Council election. They want you to think that voting for our team is too much of a risk.
You know what is too much of a risk? Continuing to have an overall crime rate (triple the national average) that has not effectively changed in the twelve years that the incumbents have held power. The fact is that when you aggregate murders, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, thefts, auto thefts and arson the crime rate in Asbury Park has remained alarmingly steady for the entire time Forward Asbury has held office. Why? Because they have buried their heads in the sand on these issues. Do you want to ensure that your business, home value, your children, etc. remain at risk? Do you want another twelve years of shootings, gang violence and drugs? Then vote for anyone BUT the A-Team on May 14th. However, if you want to limit risk with regard to crime and you want to start feeling safe walking our streets, then the A-Team is your only choice in this year's election. Every member of our team has dealt effectively with engaging marginalized urban youth in our personal and/or professional lives. No other team running can say that. We have the ideas, the experience, and most importantly, we are committed to making our city safe for everyone. You want to talk about risk? Let's continue to have an unemployment rate that is 40% higher than the national unemployment rate. Let's continue to have 30% of our citizens live below the poverty line with another 20% just above it. Let's continue to have our median household income remain at $31,000 a year (the state average is $68,000 a year). Yes, we have a lot of poor people in Asbury Park and you know what? Poverty breeds crime. You want to address this risk? You need to do two things consistently create living wage jobs in our city and connect people to living wage jobs outside our city. Who is going to do it? Forward Asbury? They had twelve years and have failed miserably. The only team with a plan for lowering the jobless rate and increasing household income for our residents is the A-Team. We will focus massive amounts of energy on establishing Asbury Park as the premier tourist and entertainment destination on the East Coast. With dynamic city-wide event programming we will bring tens of thousands of tourists to Asbury Park fifty-two weeks of the year. There was more than $40 billion dollars spent on tourism in NJ in 2012. We can easily capture 5% of that and bring $2 billion dollars into our local economy. Steady programming and steady revenues leads to reduced risk for businesses, which leads to increased investment, which leads to more jobs, higher incomes, etc. Shall we go one more round on the question of risk? How about driving our city into an effective state of bankruptcy? We are broke. The Forward Asbury team has spent recklessly, they hocked every city asset they could for pennies on the dollar, and they more than doubled our city's debt in their twelve years in power. As far as the running of the day-to-day operations at City Hall, there is no managerial oversight and no effective fiscal controls. For God's sake, there are city employees who do not even have job descriptions. Who is going to dig us out? The A-Team is, that's who (start A-Team theme music here). We will tap into the resources that are immediately available to us to get the job done. What are these resources? Our residents. We have dynamic professionals in our city who have the skill sets and experience to effectively advise us on these management and fiscal matters. They only need to be asked and empowered to do so. We are asking them regularly on the campaign trail and many of them have already pledged their commitment to help us on this front. Through these women and men we will have more diversity of ideas and energy to effectively manage tax dollars and streamline city operations. Practical professional experience, increased numbers of stakeholders, diversity of skill sets Guess what this does? That's right, it decreases risk. Let me spell it out for you as clearly as I possibly can. If you want to reduce the risks of crime, poverty, joblessness, mismanagement and wasteful spending, there is only one team to vote for in the May 14th Asbury Park City Council election. That is the A-Team. You will find us on the ballot as follows: # 13 Remond Palmer #14 Duanne Small #15 Dr. Nora Hyland #16 Daniel A. Harris III #17 James W. Keady Peace, Jim Keady ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: asburypark-dig...@yahoogroups.com asburypark-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: asburypark-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/