I heard it through the grapevine

  Got a call the other day about what's going on at Pacific City Council. Now you may think that gossip is a poor substitute for first hand observation, and that I should go to the meetings myself. But really now, what's left to learn?

More than 40 years ago I joined a group of friends on a tour of Seattle's Fircrest School for developmentally disabled. You only need to visit bedlam once to get the picture. And from what I understand, Monday night's council meeting wasn't as irrational as Fircrest School's residents, but it was nutty enough. Things like Mayor Cy Sun interfering with the council's ability to vet an appointment, insisting that this will take place in a council workshop, where, as I recall tradition, the mayor has no standing other than as a spectator. (Where does he get the idea that HE sets the workshop agenda? How the council does its confirmations is THEIR business.) So he insists that his appointee for some position or another can't speak, even though she would like to. (After he leaves, the council briefly considers whether they should go ahead and vet the appointee without him, but decides to wait.)

Then Mayor Sun tells one irate speaker from the audience he can't hear him no matter how loud he speaks, but he declines to use a hearing device the council specifically purchased to help him with his profound hearing loss. Then he abandons the meeting, leaving the council to muddle ahead without him, and without knowing how he will respond to any decisions they make, because he isn't there, but privately knowing that it wouldn't matter anyway, because whatever he says today won't apply tomorrow.

This is what I call trying to make sense out of nonsense. I could just as easily have held a symposium on Newtonian physics for the residents of Fircrest.

Whether my understanding of the meeting is accurate or not — gossip being what it is — it's close enough. There are some experiences you just want to repeat over and over again — a great steak, lovely music, fabulous sex, a Lay's potato chip.  You want more than one. But fruitcake? Who needs more fruitcake? You know it's always going to taste the same.

One of the last times I talked to Cy Sun he slapped his fist into his palm and said he was going to get rid of all of them. As I look back on that, I thought he was talking about the council, but maybe he was talking about the staff. But would it matter what he meant?

I understand that there is at least one experienced elected official who believes the City of Pacific can muddle ahead even if it loses its insurance after December 31. Nutty as that sounds to me, it's no nuttier than the ongoing charade that transpires at every council meeting.

As it now stands, it seems as if the recall committee will not be able to have its recall election until after the first of the year, well past the time when the city is set to lose its insurance. But if the city can continue to operate past that point, then maybe a recall vote would mean something.

Otherwise, Sun's game plan would seem to be to run out the clock — do just enough to keep from being thrown in jail for contempt, all the while knowing that after December 31 he may well have made good on his plan to fire them all.

If Mr. Sun doesn't succeed in doing the Samson thing—bringing the walls down around his head — he may have provided an incalculable service to the city.

I can even imagine that some day the residents of Pacific will erect a statue to Cy Sun the same way the residents of Enterprise, Alabama, erected a statue to the boll weevil. Here's what Wikipedia says about that:

  

As a tribute to how something disastrous can be a catalyst for change, and a reminder of how the people of Enterprise adjusted in the face of adversity, the monument was dedicated on December 11, 1919 at the intersection of College and Main Street, the heart of the town's business district.

 

For many years, the Pacific City Government needed to be whupped upside the head, and Cy Sun in his own malevolent ineffectual way, has done just that. And the whupping has gone on and on and on and on, just like the Eveready Bunny.

So my question to all the city fathers and mothers of Pacific is this: Have you learned a valuable lesson from this long nightmare? Wanna do this again? I'll bet you CAN eat just one.