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My definition of spin Mr Cushman would be a person speaking out as an advocate for the taxpayers, demanding big time concessions from unions and tougher stances from the City Council and our schools. All while ignoring the fact that said advocate sat on BOTH the City Council AND School Committee and yet these big concessions and tougher choices never seemed to be realized. So what gives? Clearly there is sone heavy lifting involved here.

You can look under the comments when you first presented your plans to the Council and WFD a few years ago, I've been pretty consistent on this topic. We all want and can all talk about giant concessions. How do we get there? They can't be mandated unless the City wants to face a legal challenge. They'll have to be negotiated and those negotiations will require the City to give in on some issues too. That's just the reality of it. Any other talk about "demanding" concessions is not realistic in the present system we are in. It isn't today and it wasn't a years ago when I made the same point.

The reason I bring up your record of public service Bob is because you are living proof that these concessions and major changes are much easier said than done. If it were easier to slash pensions and benefits it would've been done already. I don't doubt that you faced these same issues when you were on the Council and maybe you even spoke out about some of them back then, but if it wasn't easy then it's certainly not getting any easier now. Bob, what are some concessions you would like to see implemented that can actually drive costs down?