camden

Standing in front of the Walter Rand Transportation Center, waiting for a bus. At 10 on a Saturday night. In downtown Camden.

Creepy. Many strangers. On occasion, someone would ask me for money, but otherwise nothing threatening ever occurred. I still felt the need to be wary.

Camden is universally known as a small urban cesspool across the Delaware River from Philadelphia and, shortly before Jan. 18, 2011, was ranked the second most violent city in the United States. I have frequently visited southern New Jersey and even lived in nearby Oaklyn for a year. Like many people, I studiously avoid Camden whenever possible.

Since living in downtown Philadelphia, I often took day trips to New York City by taking the bus to Camden so I could pick up the River Line train to Trenton, a 30-mile trip costing $1.35 each way. The main alternative is a commuter train that runs from center city Philadelphia to Trenton costing $9 each way; in Trenton, passengers transfer to a New Jersey Transit train to Manhattan’s Penn Station.

On Jan. 18, Camden Mayor Dana L. Redd laid off 168 police officers and 67 firefighters, respectively half and one-third of the two departments.

Two days later, 20-year-old Anjanea Williams was fatally shot at 2 p.m. on the 1700 block of Broadway when a man whose face was concealed fired in the direction of Williams and some of her relatives, authorities told a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter. What brought this on is still a mystery, but Camden’s residents are bound to become more vulnerable to crime.

Certainly, I wonder about the wisdom of passing through Camden late at night to save transit money.

When Camden police officers and firefighters lost their jobs, Camden County Prosecutor Warren Faulk said in a statement, or understatement, “Losing so many officers will make our task of putting dangerous people into prison through convictions and pleas more difficult,” as quoted in the Inquirer.

The Inquirer catalogued a long list of factors: budget mismanagement by both state and city officials; a 50-year decline in home ownership and taxable businesses; a low tax-collection rate; costly services in a city with a century-old infrastructure and a poor population; a recent state takeover that forbade tax hikes and offered tax abatements to new development; and various costs due to personnel factors.

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“I came in full of idealism - I was going to change my city,” Mayor Bill Finch of Bridgeport, Connecticut’s most populous city, told a New York Times reporter. “You get involved in government because you want to do more for the people, you want to show them that government can work and local government, by and large, really does work for the people.”

Instead, Finch caved to the same forces as other mayors, laying off 160 city employees. Mayors throughout the nation, gathering in Washington during late January 2011, testified to similar nightmares of cutting services, sending city workers to the unemployment lines, raising taxes and bracing for declining tax revenues and aid reductions from their own states, according to The New York Times.

The 200 mayors pressed their federal agenda as they visited President Obama and members of Congress, urging more spending on transportation and retaining the Community Development Block Grant program.

Many of these mayors expect their state governments to withhold more funds rather than help them since most states face moderate to devastating deficits. Among our largest states, California, population 36.9 billion, faces a $25.4 billion deficit; Illinois, 12.9 million, $15 billion; Texas, 24.7 million, $13.4 billion; and New Jersey, 8.7 million, $10.4 billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, as reported in The New York Times.

Four states - Alaska, Arkansas, North Dakota and Wyoming - are not projecting shortfalls, according to the study.

Massachusetts will hold back $116 million from higher education and $115 million from human services if Gov. Deval Patrick’s $30.5 billion budget plan is adopted by the state House and Senate, The Boston Globe reported.

Birth control and other family planning services would be cut by 21 percent and school health services would be reduced by 16 percent. Two state prisons would close, space to treat 160 mentally ill patients would be eliminated and 900 state government jobs would be abolished, all of which is aimed at closing a $1.2 billion budget gap.

A proposed 27 percent cut to programs for newborns and young children with disabilities spurred swift protests from advocates for early intervention programs. “In all my years in politics I’ve never seen such a shortsighted decision,” said Senate Majority Leader Frederick Berry a few days later, according to the Globe.

These services cover occupational, physical and speech therapy for children from birth to 3 years old with developmental delays. The Globe explained that children with autism and cerebral palsy are among those eligible for services, and advocates say more than half of those in early intervention avoid needing special education services when they reach school age.

Existing programs, funded by the state at $29.4 million this year, provide services for more than 30,000 children, advocates told the Globe. They claimed that Patrick’s proposed reduction to $21.5 million would abolish or reduce services for up to 15,000 children.

Children in New York state who are blind, deaf or severely disabled - whose education has been financed by the state for more than a century - are the focus of proposed cuts that could close 11 schools which serve 1,500 of these children. Gov. Cuomo’s budget would expect local school districts to fund schools for these children and receive partial state reimbursement later, according to The New York Daily News.

Cuomo’s plan would abolish all up-front funding to three schools in the Bronx, one school each in Queens and Brooklyn and six other schools serving such children.

“The students who come to our school are some of the most vulnerable people in the state,” Frank Simpson, superintendent of the Lavelle School for the Blind in the Bronx, told the News.

Advocates claim it will take too much time to obtain the money, which will be a $14 million reduction from $112 million yearly.

Critics of the various budget cuts charge that public safety is being jeopardized. Philadelphia is attempting to save $3.8 million on firefighter overtime by closing three stations on a rotational basis each week so firefighters from those stations can substitute for others who are sick or are on vacation. When two children died in a fire in the city’s Olney section, questions were raised if firefighters would have arrived earlier had one nearby firehouse not been closed under this policy that day.

It would be a stretch to draw conclusions. The firefighters who responded were stationed at a firehouse 1.2 miles from the scene, and the closed firehouse was a few blocks closer. How many firehouses are even 1.2 miles away from the average fire scene? However, the potential for such an outcome cannot be minimized.

When Claudette Nicholas, 70, perished in a fire in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn on Feb. 11, city and union officials bickered over whether staffing reductions should be blamed for her death. Steve Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, contended that the reductions meant four fewer firefighters were available to operate hose lines in the early minutes of the response, which would compel the FDNY to use more engine companies, according to The New York Daily News.

“Reduced staffing levels in engine companies,” Cassidy said, “threaten civilian and firefighter lives, while in the long run costing the city more than it saves.” FDNY spokesman Frank Gribbon retorted that at least two engine companies arrived within five minutes, which is under the department’s average response time, the newspaper reported.

The budget situation spurred questions from a Brooklyn Democrat, City Councilman Stephen Levin, if reduced finances could be linked to the beating death of 4-year-old Marchella Pierce on Sept. 2, 2010. During a council hearing a month after Marchella’s death, John Mattingly, commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services, claimed that this tragedy “had to do with poor practice,” the NY News reported.

However, ACS still faced projected cuts, and both Levin and Councilman Brad Lander called for said cuts to be held to the same lower level as those for uniformed services.

In Philadelphia, social workers who monitor child abuse and neglect complaints are severely overworked, making it impossible to adequately guarantee the safety of children on their caseloads. This writer speaks from personal experience, and of course is not personally familiar with NYC’s child-welfare agency.

In Evesham Township, N.J., parents raised a concern that schoolchildren may be forced to cross a congested, 45-m.p.h. road to reach school. “How can you put safety below savings?” asked Sharyn Pertnoy Schmidt, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Evesham has already cut 20 positions, frozen staff pay and charged parents for after-school sports, clubs, activities and school trips, the Inquirer reported. Statewide, 5,650 teachers were laid off during 2010 after state aid was slashed by 5 percent.

For 40 years, students were required to spend two days at the 450-acre Camp Schmidt in Prince George’s County to learn about the health of the streams whose waters flow into the Chesapeake Bay, according to The Washington Post. The camp, which hosts 7,000 students each year, could close June 30.

However, the camp’s future was threatened in February 2011 when the Prince George’s County Board of Education voted to slash $1 million from its budget that was spent for eight full-time positions there; it isg part of filling a $155 million gap in the system’s $1.6 billion budget. The Post reported that the board is also cutting 400 teachers and 92 librarians.

Local residents have joined a “Save Camp Schmidt” group on Facebook. “When kids don’t have authentic experiences in the natural environment, we have left blank some of the critical bricks that they need in their educational foundation,” said longtime supervisor of environmental education John J. Neville. “It is hard for young people to understand something like the importance of the Chesapeake Bay watershed when they have never visited a stream.”

Two school board members are personally familiar with the camp. “I went to Camp Schmidt four times with my children in the 1990s,” said Donna Hathaway Beck, board vice chairwoman. “It is more than an environmental experience - it is a cultural experience that speaks to the wealth and beauty of the county.”

Added board member Carolyn M. Boston: “I am very sad this had to be part of the budget this year. I hope that we can find the money to keep Camp Schmidt open.”

Thanks to cuts in school programs in Toledo, Ohio, boxing has emerged as a popular sport. A New York Times article chronicles how hundreds of teen-agers participated in boxing clubs after the school district terminated all athletic teams for middle school students and high school freshmen. Also cut were high school cross-country, wrestling, golf and boys’ tennis teams, along with all intramural activities that include cheerleading and dance teams.

Parents are willing to pay for boxing activities, as nurse’s assistant Tambria Dixson pays $90 monthly to a gym for her three sons. “Paying for it is a struggle,“ she says. “But the kids in our neighborhood who aren’t involved in athletics are getting involved in gangs. So yes, it’s worth it.”

Detroit schools are losing 8,000 students yearly, which automatically results in state cuts of $7,300 in state money each year for every student who leaves. Despite vigorous efforts to control costs, the Times reports, its budget deficit rose from $200 million in 2009 to $327 million in 2011.

School management had proposed shuttering 50 schools because of falling enrollment, but reduced the number to 30 schools after parents and school employees urged that their schools be kept open, according to the Times.

Meanwhile, the district’s 2009 test scores in the national math proficiency test were the lowest in the test’s 21-year history.

Science-minded students in Riverside, Cal., who attend schools in the Alvord Unified School District were denied participation in the district’s annual science fair during the 2009-10 school year because there was no money to hold the fair, according to the New York Times. Grey Frandsen, president of the Alvord Educational Foundation, was incredulous about this and said he would seek out sponsors.

“Here in Southern California, our economy has been decimated,” he said. “The science and technology fields are some areas of bright hope.”

The Times account reports that science fairs nationwide have been jeopardized because sponsors have withdrawn support and some schools have cut back on extracurricular activities. Two major science fairs in the St. Louis area have lost corporate donations, and the statewide competition in Louisiana was nearly canceled in 2010.

Paula Golden, director of the Broadcom Foundation, argued that students interested in science are needed to compete in the global economy; Broadcom funds a national science competition for middle school students. “Without a body of young people who are innovators and scientists and engineers, we cannot sustain any kind of growth economically,” she said.

Back east, the school system in Scarborough, Me., is confronted with losing more than $1.1 million in state money, federal stimulus funds and other revenue sources, which translates to the equivalent of 12 full-time teaching positions and part-time jobs, according to The Portland Press-Herald.

The Board of Education spent an hour on March 17, 2011, listening to 13 residents, all of whom assailed the proposed cuts. They pointed to how they affect class size, how programs should be upgraded and not diminished and the difficulties caused by activity fees, the Press-Herald reported.

“Children are not like roads,” said Debra Fuchs-Ertman. “They will not remain static over the next few years and they will not get the chance to redo these school years when the economy gets better.”

In Missouri, a county public defender wonders aloud: “Is someone in prison who might have been acquitted if we had had more resources?”

Rod Hackathorn, public defender for a three-county district including Ozark County, adds, “You don’t know. I’m sure that it’s happened, and I don’t know who it has happened to. And that (is) the scariest part of this all.”

Hackathorn’s district was one of two in Missouri to announce in summer 2010 that it was turning down cases because they are overburdened and lack staff to serve all defendants, The New York Times reported. The Times piece noted that nine other districts were taking steps to follow suit, and Public Defenders in other states have either sued over their caseloads or rejected new cases.

In one instance in Missouri, Christian County Judge John S. Waters said, “It flies in the face of our Constitution. It flies in the face of our culture. It flies in the face of the reason we came over here 300 and some-odd years ago to get out of debtors’ prison…I’m not saying the public defenders aren’t overworked. I don’t know how to move his case and how to provide what the law of the land provides.”

The public defender’s office had repeatedly begged the judge to release it from representing a defendant charged with stealing prescription pain pills and a blank check because of its workload. The Missouri Supreme Court subsequently rescinded the assignment pending further court proceedings, the Times reported.

“What you have is a situation where the eligible pool of clients is increasing, crime rates are potentially increasing, while the resources often for public defenders are going down,” said Jo-Ann Wallace, president and chief executive of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.

Public-funded legal defense for indigent citizens charged with serious crimes was required as a result of the 1963 Supreme Court ruling, Gideon v. Wainwright.

However, Missouri’s public defenders office told the Times that $21 million more than $34 million it was slated to receive in 2010 is needed to staff it adequately. That would fund 125 more attorneys, 90 more secretaries, 109 more investigators, 130 more legal assistants and more space.

Mental-health programs have suffered in Washington state as a mid-year cut of $19 million imposed by Gov. Christine Gregoire during fall 2010 resulted in the closing of a 16-bed evaluation and treatment center and a 30-bed ward at a state hospital, David A. Dickinson, director of the state’s Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery, told the Times.

Previously, the state reduced Medicaid payment rates to mental health providers, and Gregoire, a Democrat, and called for new reductions of $17.4 million in the next two years.

The Times also referred to mental-health cuts in Arizona, Kansas, Iowa and Mississippi. At least $2.1 billion has been taken from state mental health budgets in the three fiscal years prior to 2011, according to the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors.

Michael J. Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said adult day treatment centers have closed; funds for outpatient counseling, medications and family support services have been taken away; case managers have lost their jobs; and more than 4,000 beds in psychiatric hospitals have been eliminated, according to the Times.

Referring to her state’s mental-health programs, Gregoire said, “This budget does not represent my values, and I don’t think it represents the values of this state.”

In the Pittsburgh suburb of Ross, Tyler Boyer told a Post-Gazette reporter that he waited 70 minutes for a bus on March 28, 2011, the first weekday when severe cuts in bus service went into effect. He said four packed buses passed him until he joined with others to carpool downtown.

For five years, Kara Griffith caught a 7:27 a.m. bus in New Kensington each day to her job as a financial consultant in Pittsburgh, but on March 28 she had to start arriving at the stop at 7:05 a.m.

“The buses are packed. It’s standing room only. Some buses will pass you up,” she said. “For what I pay each month for a bus pass, and I get this kind of service? You raise your rates but give us poor service?”

One day earlier, Allegheny County’s Port Authority eliminated 29 bus routes and reduced service on 37 other routes while laying off 180 drivers and other employees. The authority blames a $55 million deficit on the loss of state funds.

Interestingly, a case could be made that Pittsburgh‘s Point State Park - first the site of Fort Duquesne and then Fort Pitt - indirectly inspired the creation of America. In 1754, then-Lt. Col. George Washington led colonial troops toward that site to ensure erection of a British fort to control the waterways where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet to form the Ohio River.

Along the way, Washington’s troops fought French soldiers in a brief battle at a spot known as Jumanville Glen. The engagement triggered events leading to the French-Indian War, which led to King George III’s demands for taxation to pay for the war, which resulted in the Revolution.

No doubt that Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and the remainder of America’s founders would feel proud and fulfilled that a great country evolved from a task that originated with them. However, they would probably be aghast to discover that an important city like Pittsburgh would be stripped of basic services like its bus operation.

Not to mention all the other cities, schools and towns that have been devastated in the wake of this recession.