The highlight of Mayor Menino’s State of the City speech wasn’t its admirable theme of enhancing human potential. It wasn’t in the genuinely impressive progress in city development, with 2,000 units of housing now under construction. And it wasn’t in Menino’s trademark medium-sized initiatives, like his networking plan for women-owned businesses.
Rather, the highlight was Menino himself. In his proud, steady walk to the podium, with only the help of a cane, Menino sent a strong signal that he is back of the job after nearly six weeks in the hospital for a range of ailments, followed by another month of rehab. The mutual affection between Menino and the city was visible in his interaction with the crowd, which whooped and applauded at even corny lines like a joke about Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women.” For his part, Menino offered his sincere thanks to all who helped him and stood by him during his rehabilitation. And he showed his graciousness in other ways, too, such as with a comradely tribute to retiring State Senator Jack Hart.
Comments
Since 1997 my property taxes have risen from $820 per quarter to $2100. This is a compound annual increase of over 6.4%. How many taxpayers in the private sector have seen their pay nearly triple in 15 years? Menino has no incentive to perform as he has no credible competition due to the parochial nature of city politics. Without term limits, his power increases while his incentives to improve city operations decline. Menino is running a monopoly with little concern about its performance and even less regard for its costs. He has nothing to fear but even worse, when the media fawn over him as in this Globe editorial, Menino can only imagine he's even more bulletproof than ever. Menino may be a fine fellow, however, as long as he can count on no objective scrutiny and no efforts to actually compare the city's performance and costs with other cities he'll certainly conclude his power is both virtually absolute and beyond question. Maybe some feel 6% annual tax increases are "reasonable" and "fair". But how much longer can this go on with private sector earnings being, essentially, flat for the last five years?
Mumbles is another Massachusetts poster child for term limits. Are you listening, Ed?