The Sanders administration’s three biggest faults in its first term, according to the mayor’s speech at the Town & Country Hotel last night:
- “We underestimated the time it would take” to fix the city’s problems.
Several of his initiatives — privatizing city services, seeking concessions from the labor unions, revamping the employee pension system — haven’t materialized or are behind schedule.
As I wrote in the previous “kickoff” post, Sanders is going to play up the city’s problems that existed when he was elected and use that as the reason for shortcomings, such as these delays.
- “We miscalculated the skill sets that were needed.”
This is a possible reference to former Chief Operating Officer Ronne Froman and former land-use chief Jim Waring, who both muttered on their way out the door that they didn’t like the politics involved in operating the city. Waring, in particular, was largely blamed for leading the mayor toward a Sunroad strategy that proved to be political disastrous.
- “We haven’t always achieved in communicating our objectives to the public.”
This reads as if it’s straight out of the mayor’s Sunroad report. Sanders suffered from the disconnect between what his office was telling the public and what it was doing behind the scenes.
It was a communication problem, Sanders said.