6-6-6 … and the world according to Chairman Coffey.

“I wasn’t aware it was in the hole.”
CM Bill Schmidt, who apparently refrains from reading the Tribune, which reported the demolition fund's shortfall a full two days before the last council meeting.

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With the obvious assistance of the Coup d’Geriatrique’s bureau of advanced abacus greasing and determined data compilation, 1st District councilman Dan “Wizard of Westside” Coffey came into Monday night’s Sewer Wars city council meeting loaded for the proverbial bear, with a nifty selection of new and trendy stock phrases intended to supplement his time-tested selection of ward heeler’s bromides – of which our favorite sleight-of-hand remains:

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

It’s true that CM Coffey waited nearly three hours to say it, but by doing so, he preserved a streak of implausible deniability (by rote) that began nearly six and a half years ago, proving yet again that like a computer-generated Tinkerbell, relevant information continues to daintily elude the councilman’s grasp as the ants march off with Alice’s (and Anna’s) picnic basket.

As a public service, we offer Part One of the August, 2006 edition of NAC’s “Coffey Quotes” (as always, subtitled, “why us, Lord?”)

On accounting principles gleaned from Bazooka Joe U.:
“I’m not going to say I’m a CPA, but numbers don’t lie.”

On Sun Tzu’s masterpiece, “The Art of War”:
“We need to start being pro-active instead of reactive.”

On watching the needles on his LEGO-brand sewer board polygraph:
“They’re telling the truth in one respect, but not another.”

On the difference between overseeing and overlooking, especially when it comes to doggie doo-doo down at Joe Kraft park:
“We don’t have the oversight you think we have.”

On his fabled but criminally ignored history of struggling against the duplexes of unscrupulous developers:
“It’s hard.”

On that best-selling book by Richard Alabama … Mississippi … some damned place down there:
“You have to have smart growth.”

On the critical reaction abroad to his council record of stewardship:
“I’ve been checking with other cities.”

On numerology and the Long March:
“Evidently it’s hard to get a grip on the numbers.”

On the subtleties of semantics (a Socratic dialogue):
D. Coffey: “Sewer credits were promised.”
G. Fifer: I didn’t promise them.
D. Coffey: “Well, they were inferred, then.”

On economics, the Laffer Curve and ensuing laughter:
“You don’t have to raise rates just because inflation goes up.”

But for the prize-winning quotes of the night, CM Coffey must take a back seat to CM Steve “One Song, Loudly Sung” Price, whose trivialization of rape already has been noted in these pages, but who cemented his iron grip on inanity by lamenting:

“I haven’t been invited to no pizza party.”

Later, CM Price asked of two consultants, the city attorney and presumably the world at large:

“How much will you get paid?”

Relevant? Certainly not, but when it comes to CM Price’s insurgency against the attributes of the modern world …

“It’s another hot-bed issue.”