Suttle's First Year

If you haven't noticed it in our Suttle Watch (see sidebar), Omaha's mayor has now been in office one year. We obviously haven't been very impressed with his performance thus far but perhaps we are a little biased. We fully expect Suttle to further violate his lower property tax and lower tax pledges with the unveiling of his 2011 budget which will no doubt contain a substantial property tax increase as well as a call for an increase in the wheel tax and possibly a occupation and/or entertainment tax. Suttle calls these taxes a logical way to bring broaden Omaha's tax revenue base. We call it failure to achieve spending cuts and failure to stand up to the police and fire unions.

Having said this, we received our 'Platte Chat' courtesy of the Platte Institute in our e-mail today titled, "Suttle's Campaign Pledges: One Year Later," authored by Alex West. It's perhaps a little less biased in its approach to Suttle's performance than we are. We'll let you decide should you decide to read the whole thing at: http://sn117w.snt117.mail.live.com/default.aspx?rru=inbox&wa=wsignin1.0

However, for the sake of brevity, we'll just give you the summary of the article which reads:

Suttle's record of fidelity to campaign promises over the past year shows mixed results on the economic front. For instance, while he abandoned his campaign stance of lowering property taxes by cutting waste and modernizing city services, Suttle followed through with his commitment to attracting new clean energy companies. Another ambiguous portion of the evaluation is Suttle's commitment to securing enough of the federal stimulus package to pay for the unfunded mandate to rebuild Omaha's sewer system. The process for which, though bleak, is still unfinished. Finally, consider Suttle's inconsistencies in maintaining his commitment to campaign promises. In view of those pledges where Suttle has fallen short, the cynical might say hyperbole is just part of the electoral process, while others might contend that times change and therefore so do the solutions. In any case, voters will need to find contentment in the pledges that are fulfilled, and judge for themselves those incomplete or negated assurances.