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Fill up the tank and keep your stained hankie handy, Murgatroyd. It is going to be a long, exasperating and rickety ride in the Silbiger jalopy across the piping hot desert of ideas that is Our Town’s City Council.
Naturally, when I say “City Council” in this context — oh, boy, Mommy, another keen idea from our Vice Mayor, may I have one, too? — I am referring to the Sultan of Useless Suggestions.
If I have calculated accurately, the Sultan has 91 more cracks at his vulnerable colleagues before he is term-limited, 91 more meetings, 91 more opportunities to spring new candidates for the Worst Idea of the Century Award.
A Time to be Pro-Choice
Did your grandmother ever buy you a brightly colored pair of trousers for school about the time that you were becoming fashion conscious — and your mother said you had to wear them so as not to hurt Grandma’s feelings?
This is what the Sultan’s weekly ideas feel like when they crash-land on the dais late every — and I do mean every — Monday night.
Would anyone in Kalamazoo like to invite the Sultan to take, oh, I don’t know, an 80- or 85-week vacation in that lovely little Middle Western burg?
He reached into his ever fertile top hat near the needlessly long end of last night’s meeting just as sensible colleagues were packing to go home. While at least three of them wanted to dive under their desks, Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger gifted his fellow gentlemen on the dais with yet another worthless hot air balloon of an idea that should have died with Carlin, if not Lincoln.
Murgatroyd, Find the Source
Does he visit rummage sales on Saturday mornings?
Is he cleaning out his musty attic at home?
Does he troll the gutters for crummy suggestions that failed businesses threw out with the garbage?
Or maybe he creates them in a secret laboratory filled with steaming gasses and unusual noises at a secret East Side location known to locals as the Dr. Jekyll and I Have Nothing to Hyde Building?
At the dreaded end of last week’s City Council meeting, the Sultan went after one of his longtime targets, City Manager Jerry Fulwood, a discussion for the next time.
At the dreaded end last night, he came up with another arresting notion. Or is it that he should be arrested for articulating such a notion in a public forum?
A Socialist’s Agenda?
The Sultan said he would like to agendize a discussion for creating a contraption that would be known as a Community Council. This Power to the People gesture would place ordinary folk at the table with City Hall officials when developers breeze into town with a notion of how they would like to improve Culver City.
Before turning to the majority response, it should be pointed out and underscored that this idea is an integral brick in the Sultan’s permanent campaign to vest all citizens — even flabby-eared liberals — with the same mantel of authority as the professionals have earned. If the Sultan is successful, by the end of his campaign, the Councilmen will be reduced to busboys, shlepping out the garbage. Or will they be hauling it back in?
One More Setback
Councilman Andy Weissman told the Sultan his suggested discussion was premature. He said that if the plaintiff — both men are lawyers — desires wider community involvement, he should encourage the citizenry to participate in the formulation of Culver City’s General Plan during the coming months. With only Chris Armenta siding with the Sultan, the idea mercifully died.
Permit me to correct myself. None of the Sultan’s ideas die. They never go away. They just trudge over to the nearest tree and cuddle up near Winnie T. Pooh until a more propitious time bobs up. Which could be any day.
