Dear May­or Nutter,

I vot­ed for you because I thought you best rep­re­sent­ed what the City need­ed. I had my doubts, but thought that you’d be the best man for the job. I felt sure of it when I shook your hand after your vic­to­ry at City Hall sta­tion on my way to work.

A year lat­er I was­n’t so sure. You and I had an awk­ward inter­ac­tion at a Fels event. I asked you about the casi­no. You were upset and gave your rote answer. I don’t even remem­ber it. I tried approach­ing you after­ward not just to explain myself, but to give you a chance to turn on the charm and con­nect with a vot­er. You did­n’t. You tried to avoid me. When I caught up to you, you told me if I did­n’t like the casi­no, I could move. “It’s a big city,” you said.

Anoth­er year passed. You man­aged to sur­vive a tricky win­ter, despite the fact that the streets were in awful con­di­tion. May­ors in Chica­go lose elec­tions over stuff like this. The city streets were an insur­ance night­mare! I know it was record snow­fall, but does­n’t that mean city ser­vices should rise to the chal­lenge in the name of pub­lic safe­ty, or was it enough to don an Action News cap and give us updates?

You have about a year to turn this thing around. I know that the bud­get’s a mess, but you haven’t done a great job of accen­tu­at­ing the pos­i­tive. Going after the libraries was a dumb move, even as part of brinks­man­ship. You lost cred­i­bil­i­ty with the geek crowd from whence you came. You accept­ed an award from the library the night you threat­ened to close neigh­bor­hood branch­es. It sick­ened me and many peo­ple in my neigh­bor­hood. It real­ly hurt those of us who thought that you’d have a greater degree of sophis­ti­ca­tion than your predecessor.

What­ev­er hap­pened to the bul­ly pul­pit? Where’s the pas­sion, man? What did you tru­ly believe in in the first place? Was it all just a pro­gres­sive facade?

You know what? I start­ed writ­ing this let­ter to con­demn your cam­paign. I want­ed to blame you for giv­ing us false hope. But that’s not good enough. I want you to prove me wrong. I want you to wow me in the time you have remain­ing in office. Do you think you can? Do you think you can go to bat for Philadel­phi­ans and show them that you are indeed the bright bulb we thought we elected?

I know your job isn’t easy, but you knew that, too. Don’t just throw these dif­fi­cult deci­sions in vot­ers faces. It’s child­ish. Rise to the occa­sion and show us what you have. We still want to know about your ideas on tech­nol­o­gy, on your plans for the waterfront…heck, tell us more about bike lanes! Show us where you want to go. All hope isn’t lost, but you need to step up and lead. Can you?