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WwkVoter, I'm not against any of the general philosophy that, as you say, we all seem to agree on. The issue with Bob is in how he tries to achieve it. He has held elected office [including running for city council mere months after getting named chairman of the school committee] and backed candidates who, to be generous, did not exactly think that negotiation and compromise are the way to resolve the city's issues.

For all his diplomatic talk, Bob wants to starve the existing pension system of revenue and cut benefits to retirees. He wants people to ignore past concessions from the unions. He wants people to ignore the current pension funding programs that are working.

He also wants people to ignore the city council's role in things like refusing to fund a study on OPEB that would address the issue: http://warwickonline.com/stories/raises-approved-but-discussion-centered-on-retiree-costs,103389?

[To be fair, the council also approved contracts that provided individual health plans instead of family policies and reduced the pension liability by some $30 million -- but that also gets in the way of Bob's all-bad-news narrative.]

In other words, Bob has had many opportunities to encourage [and even participate in] coming up with realistic, practical plans to address the issues he's been talking about for years -- instead, he's been crying 'wolf.'

So, the question is less whether Bob's heart is in the right place and more why, after all these years, have his ideas not gotten any results?