It was a careful mix of promise and pain. Among his priorities he outlined are cutting unfunded pension liabilities, reducing unemployment, and balancing the budget.
In order to accomplish those things, Tait called for both ‘kindness and pain.’
The pain, which can be called necessary, will be difficult to do kindly. His plan would reduce city services to the basic level.
But should he accomplish even some of his goals, he’ll forge himself an identity of a political rockstar.
From the Orange County Register:
Fitting that Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait’s State of the City address Tuesday was prefaced by an Anaheim Ballet performance. In the speech that followed, Tait outlined a plan for the city that resembles nothing so much as that delicate but deliberate art form.
His plan calls for kindness but elements of it will certainly cause pain. Pain that may not his fault, but pain nonetheless.
At the same time Tait gave two of his three main goals as reducing unemployment and revitalizing a sense of neighborhood through a prism of “freedom and kindness” – featuring a City Hall that would be less rigidly bureaucratic. He also said the city would have to close a budget shortfall of $10 million and an unfunded pension liability of $700 million by reducing the scope of city services to only the “most essential.”
Read the full article here.