We can get all political about the assumptions that were made, who made them, etc. Bottom line is that both sides of the aisle were all in on one or another boom continuing, and both sides were proven wrong.

Places like Stockton had to do the austerity thing in a big way because there simply was no money to pay for all the promises and the State couldn’t back-stop them. So policing, fire, pensions, etc.everything got cut back. Some places are handling their situation better now, like Vallejo, but some still haven’t come to grips with it, like Stockton. Vallejo’s made tremendous use of volunteers to help its situation, but Stockton is about 3x the size of Vallejo, which makes the problems larger and more complex, and Vallejo’s median household income is 50% greater than Stockton.

It is not a pretty situation. And let’s be honest, Braden hasn’t earned a reputation as a deep thinker, so he’s just feeling it, especially because he is very emotional and he’s tried to do a lot for his home town.

And even if he were the cerebral type, the solution to the problems there are not obvious, and they will take a substantial amount of time to discover, implement and see through to conclusion.

Good for him for speaking his mind. I wouldn’t want to live in that dump either. I grew up down the road in Tracy and if I remember correctly (and its been a while) Stockton has always had this stigma, no?