McGinn Fails To Bring It- Again

It’s no secret that Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn has struggled since taking office at the beginning of the year.

He upset city council- and a lot of residents when he announced a plan to replace the seawall.

A group of well organized city employees started their own website when the Mayor announced he was going to give them the axe for reasons that were questionable at best.

The biggest blow to the administration came when local political blog Publicola published a damning report about one of McGinn’s top advisors who lied repeatedly about his academic credentials.

His state of the speech last week was so underwhelming, his own staffer told him he looked like an un-made bed. Ouch.

The mayor insisted to a room full of journalists a few days later that the criticism he is getting is not about substance, but about style.

It’s both. Substance and style aren’t mutually exclusive- especially when we’re talking about politicians.

But the mayor says that no one can disagree with the issues the city should be addressing, and that he raised in his speech that wasn’t quite a speech.

But when it comes to those issues, there is no meat on the bones.

Take for example the Mayor’s new Youth and Family Initiative. What the heck is it? Having spent hours doing research and asking his office for more detailed information, I have no idea.

When I had the opportunity to ask him to give concrete detail- he didn’t. Oh he spoke on it, but at the end, I had no more information than before I asked the question.

He did say that there are problems in the city which have not gotten better. He said that the same people have been working on those problems, so it’s time to broaden the base and get more people involved.

I’m all for enlisting new worker bees. But I have to wonder, when is the mayor going to go to those people who have been working and ask them if they even have what they need to do the work effectively?

The McGinn administration seems to take an elementary approach to problem solving. They see something they don’t like or don’t understand and they move to nullify it and replace it with their own agenda.

They have town halls to hear from the people, they have town halls to hear solely from the youth- what about the service providers who work in this city? Don’t they have valuable contributions to this discussion? So far they haven’t even been mentioned.

This is the beginning of a serious disconnect.

The McGinn camp would disagree, of course. They’ve set up community forums and caucuses, after all. The mayor says he wants buy in from the community, and he wants to hear directly what they think needs to happen next.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t he just do that a few months ago on the campaign trail? He held town halls all over Seattle and according to his campaign, got great participation and the direction needed to move forward.

But they aren’t moving. They are town hall-ing. Again.