Where McMahon Went Wrong

November 9, 2006 by Matt Heckman.

Besides acting like a 2 year old and ripping down signs, Tom McMahon has proved to be ineffective  as Mayor.  There should have been no reason the city wide trash collection bill was voted down.  The problem was McMahon did not present it the right way, and the fact that he did not give the residents that peace of mind, and security that the new plan would be a much better deal.

Now I’m going to say one thing to the kooks on the Eagle blogs including Al Walentis calling voters stupid, pinkos, etc.  You are never going to get ideas out that way.  Mayor McMahon has a chance to save face out of this defeat.  I’m going to give him some free advise where he would have to pay some consultant 50K per year to give him.  So after you read this, you can all thank me for saving the city money in hiring a pointy headed pen pusher to give him the same answer.

Now Tom, and I hope you don’t mind me calling you Tom because I know you read this site.  I know the first thing you want to do is go out there and tell people that they are up shit creak and their taxes are going up.  That would be the worst thing you could do right now Tom.  It would only continue to erode your credibility to the level of The Muhlenberg Police Department, and believe me the mother ship is not going to haul trash.

You need to throw the city wide trash plan back to council with some minor changes.  First you need to communicate, and educate people on how much they will save under such a plan.  You also need to point out statistics of other cities backing up your case.  But the most important thing you need to do when you sell something, is to give your citizens peace of mind, and security that they do have a choice.  You need to go that extra step Tom, and add a grandfathering clause to the city wide trash plan meaning that current residents have a choice to keep their hauler, but any new residents, or owners from her on will have to be part of the city wide plan.  As these private hauler residents see the dollar signs in savings on the city wide plan more people will join in.  In the process it give you time to gradually implement the work load instead of going through the painful process of having to take on the whole process at once.  Getting more comfortable with the plan this way will have less complaints from residents, and more credibility for you.

It’s very simple Tom, and I hope you take it to heart.  Oh and one more thing.  Next time you want to rip something up, have a tee shirt made of voting against the city wide plan, wear it, go to the marvel, dress up like Hulk Hogan, and then rip the shirt while Chief Heim is dress up like Macho Man saying “Dig It”.

Good Luck

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