News events from this last week:
- Escrow Closed!: Mission accomplished! The eagle has landed! On Thursday, the U-T led its item on the Wednesday approval of the Sanders package of Kroll recommendations as follows, “Financial fixes OK’d in principle.”
Why do you guys do that?
The one thing we all agree on is that there were no financial fixes identified anywhere in the mayor’s “plan” of this last week. In fact, that was one of the big problems lots of folks had with the ‘plan.’
The U-T tries too hard to improve the mayor’s image with pandering and fawning articles and headlines that project images of things that never occurred.
It doesn’t help him. I’ll tell you why.
For those that don’t follow such things closely, it would appear from the U-T headline that we had the “we’re saved” party last Thursday after the council “adopted” (accepted? received?) the mayor’s report. We’re done. Whew! Boy, that was close. And, it didn’t hurt too bad; even if we had to pay about $50 million to outsiders and buy $35 million of new computers. We’ll just have to suck it up. But, at least it’s over. The financial fixes were OK’d!
Huh?
Nothing was “fixed.” Certainly nothing “financial.” But more than that, nothing in general.
In fact, virtually nothing was agreed upon.
Donna Frye noticed there were no numbers, and not a whole lot of other implementation information – so she got a woozy déjà vu sense of similar misguided votes “in principle,” which caused her to vote “no.” Atkins wanted to vote yes, and did so ultimately, after painfully (and to her credit, openly) struggling with not understanding what commitments, if any the council would be making if it voted in favor. The rest of the council voted in favor – because they would have anyway, but only after being assured by the mayor that they could change, modify, enhance, reduced or eliminate any portion of the “plan” at any time. Peters was pretty clear that there’s not going to be a “Monitor” unless it comes from the SEC.
Money was not part of the “plan” last Wednesday. So, there were no financial fixes!
I don’t think it helps Jerry Sanders for the public to believe he has things all “fixed” when he hasn’t.
The hard part is still ahead. And, the public won’t be very supportive of the real fixes (real taxes) when they come if the U-T keeps telling us in its headlines the fixes are already in (pun intended).
– PAT SHEA