I’ve now gone over tomorrow’s City Council briefing agenda, which on the face of things doesn’t seem to promise much excitement, with the notable exception of Agenda Item 7, “Authorize a three-year master agreement for polyaluminum chloride coagulant to be used in the water purification process,” an issue that could potentially bring out some of the anti-fluoridation people from a few years back insomuch as that chloride clearly rhymes with fluoride. Beyond that, I’ll merely note that the attachment detailing lots to be sold by the city’s land bank to the C & C Corporation, as documented in Agenda Item #33, lists properties on the following streets: Camel, Pall Mall, Trojan, and Kool, each of which also happens to be a major brand of condom or cigarette. If one adds in Reynolds, a cigarette company, that’s five out of 16 total streets that share names with smokes or rubbers. Probably this isn’t important, but I want the powers that be to know that I’ll be paying close attention.
To this end, I’ve also begun assigning numbers to letters in accordance with a system devised by the 12th century occultist Rabbi Luria and adding up the values of individual words in each agenda item just in case the Kabbalah can be of any help in figuring out what’s going on with the city’s apparent management of HUD funds. But then I’ve always had trouble with math, just like the people who manage Dallas’ HUD funds (just kidding; the money was obviously intentionally misused, as Jim Schutze at the Observer convincingly demonstrated a few days back).
As this will be my first city council meeting, I also read over the Executive Session Notice detailing those general topic categories that our councilmen have the option of discussing in closed session, outside of public view; these include “the deployment, or specific occasions for implementation, of security personnel or devices.” I was really looking forward to hearing about these badass negotiation bots we have now that roll up on snipers and ask them what their favorite color is and then blow them up with a bomb on a stick while they’re trying to decide, but apparently such things are dealt with in private. Probably the robots have more secret weapons that they want to save for next time, which I suppose is reasonable.
Indeed, tomorrow’s briefing would threaten to be a rather by-the-numbers affair were it not for the fact that Mayor Rawlings will be making his case for a delay on the upcoming bond issue, to the extent that it’s possible to make a case for a move that will have the negative aspect of allowing city streets to deteriorate further in the meantime while not seeming to offer any positive aspects whatsoever, at least as far as actual policy is concerned. My understanding after making some calls to involved parties is that he’ll be fielding some rather blunt questions about this from at least one city council member, as well as a few meandering and no doubt grammatically incorrect queries from several others. I’ll be covering tomorrow’s meeting and calling in reports throughout the day, most of which will be unnecessarily mean-spirited.
