MATT KATZ / Staff
Chelsea, Mass., City Manager Jay Ash gets a "Taste of Chelsea" during a fund-raiser. The city has improved significantly since the state took it over, and it offers crucial lessons for Camden.
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The turnaround of Chelsea, Mass. - in just three years - is in stark contrast to the Camden failure.
Last of four parts
CHELSEA, Mass. - At Teriyaki Yummy, an Asian fusion joint that opened this year, city manager Jay Ash introduces himself to the owners. He looms over the front counter with a 6-foot-7 frame and a smile wide enough to match. "Hi, I'm Jay, I run the city," he says.
Around the corner at Tequila's, Ash hops into a booth and invites the female foodies beside him to write restaurant reviews on the city Web site. Call the blog the "Three Divas," he says.
By the end of the night, as part of a charity tasting event at 14 mostly new restaurants in downtown Chelsea, a postindustrial city across the Chelsea River from Boston, Ash has sampled Middle Eastern baba ghanoush and Salvadoran horchata juice.
Two decades ago, having new eateries here (particularly without mobsters or illegal slot machines) would have been unthinkable.
But after becoming the first American municipality to lose democratic rights since England ruled the land, Chelsea - now led by its cheerleader, Ash - is back, financially and democratically. Vacant factories have become lofts, an industrial waterfront has attracted Bostonian hipsters, and public schools have become city assets.
Chelsea stands in stark contrast to another city that sits in the shadow of a major American metropolis and endured decades of industrial job loss, political corruption, and pervasive crime before being taken over: Camden, N.J.
The 1991 state takeover of Chelsea inspired the 2002 state takeover of Camden, officials in both states say, but while Massachusetts tackled political and bureaucratic reform, New Jersey funded studies but changed little. While Chelsea got a modern government receptive to citizen concerns about good schools and safe streets, Camden is a broke, bureaucratic nightmare with poor schools and a persistently high crime rate. While Chelsea's officials actively sought market-rate housing developments and businesses that hire unskilled labor, Camden still lacks middle-class housing and jobs.
And while Camden's takeover continues after seven years, democracy in Chelsea returned ahead of schedule, in three years.
Still, it's not too late for New Jersey's poorest city. A new governor and new mayor are coming in, and if politicians reevaluate control of Camden in the coming months, as they have vowed to do, Chelsea could serve as a model for Camden's next chapter of recovery.
Underlying issues
"Camden is not alone. There are cities across the country that have Camden's problems," said Howard Gillette Jr., a Rutgers-Camden history professor who wrote the 2005 book Camden After the Fall.
"But there's a combination of problems in Camden that have exacerbated all of the underlying structural issues."
In Chelsea, the structural issues were first on the agenda. Four previous Chelsea mayors had been indicted (compared to three in Camden), including one who reportedly sought the job because "the tips were good."
Massachusetts officials eliminated the mayor's position and fired the elected aldermen. The governor, Republican William Weld, appointed a Democratic millionaire-entrepreneur, Jim Carlin, to run Chelsea as a receiver. (In Camden, the government structure remained intact under a state-appointed chief operating officer.)
Carlin, who had only been to Chelsea twice, took a $1 salary and cleaned house, not caring whom he angered. Along with his deputy and successor, Harry Spence, the good cop to Carlin's bad cop, these polar opposites created an urban miracle.
Carlin was a "bull in a china shop," said Ash, a Chelsea native who served in state government at the time, "a terror in a good way."
Carlin and Spence ran up against public employee unions in demanding that dead weight be moved out. They stopped letting employees use 15,000 gallons of gas each year for personal use, and canceled clothing allowances, which most had.
They told the police vice squad it could no longer take all weekends off. And they shut down an illegal strip club where the waitresses were cops' wives who tipped off the owners about impending raids.
At the fire department, the duo reduced paid holidays, sick leave, and overtime, fired several firefighters for labor abuses, and cut the budget nearly in half.
