State of the Kochert address: “Ask not what your city can do for you ... no, wait ... here it is … the beatings will continue until morale improves."

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. . . . Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.
--- Maya Angelou

At the first city council meeting of 2007, Jeff Gahan oversaw a peaceful transition of presidential power to Larry Kochert, who was elected on the second ballet following what may have been the single most surreal abstention since the current council came to bat in 2003, this one coming courtesy of Donnie Blevins, who opted out of the first presidential ballot. The result was a 4-4 stalemate between CM Kochert and Jack Messer.

With ominous Wagnerian music queued, and the Gang of Four marching in lock/goose/misstep behind the 4th district’s ever slippery chameleon, CM Blevins could only have been seeking sufficient breathing space to gather his senses and offer a preconceived, laborious mea culpa to the two contestants, which he accordingly did. Seconds later, CM Blevins folded like a cheap canvas camp chair in favor of Shelby Street’s favorite ward-heeling son, who in turn later was spotted beaming autocratically as the Wizard of Westside, Dan Coffey, was anointed vice president of the council for 2007.

Not since the sainted duo of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew have we seen two high ranking public officials of such singular obfuscatory caliber, all of which somehow reminds me of the valuable, yet unrelated, insight contributed by the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s in his eulogy of Nixon, entitled “He Was a Crook”: “Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.”

Thompson's hilarious piece has nothing to do with the council, but you're encouraged to read it.

After a five minute break to organize his first official assault on decorum (see “Montessori” below), our new arbiter of unctuous occupied the council love seat and began dispensing profuse thanks to the academy even as his trigger finger unaccountably began twitching.

“But this is the one I shoot with … no, wait, here it is … this is what America’s all about,” began a predictable torrent of clichés, which included chestnuts like “serve the taxpayer” (make mine medium rare, Chef Dave) and “be courteous to one another.”

Then it was over, and the time came for the public to speak. Oddly, and with grating inconsistency, President Kochert referred aloud to the first speaker by his formal name of “Mr. Duggins” (sic), but for the second citizen, decided instead to use her more familiar …

(Sorry for the interruption. At NAC, we’ve decided that because the person in question actively seeks to be known by her first two names as an obvious form of political branding, we will refrain from taking the bait, and will instead refer to her formally as Ms. Bolovschak, and satirically as Auntie V. Thank you, and we now return you to the continuing beatings)

… “non-surname.” She then spoke for longer than five minutes, mentioning a potpourri of topics, most of which you’ve already read about here at NAC, and was cheered enthusiastically as a returning, reconquering heroine by a huge crowd of exactly one – the blushing, adoring Professor Erika.

There was a brief lull as Al Goodman was unanimously approved to join the Storm Water Board, and then it got strange.

R-07-01 Resolution to fund Community Montessori Charter Public School (Coffey)

CM Coffey, whose public stance toward most educational pursuits might be fairly characterized as hostile to the point of pathological, introduced the ordinance as required of him, perhaps randomly. Not one of the seven other councilmen (not counting CM Kochert himself) who were able to do so chose to second the resolution, and so it died an immediate and unceremonious death. However, it can be reintroduced at a future meeting.

Hmm.

The pros and cons of the Montessori method are open to honest debate among people, as is the suitability of its application within the public school structure. Moreover, there may be perfectly legitimate concerns with the timing of the resolution, with the council’s lack of information as to its merits, and so on.

And yet …

At least twenty parents and a half-dozen children had come to the council meeting ready to take up the newly enthroned president on his “this is America” boast, not to mention his request for “courtesy,” and to become a part of the governmental process. They appeared eager to share their story with the world – or, at least, that portion of the world with nothing better to do on a Thursday night in January.

Nope.

Thanks to an inexplicable measure of adult childishness run completely amok – precisely the frame of mind that this council will be remembered for in years to come – these almost certainly exemplary parents and children left the chamber with understandably bad tastes in their mouths, having been summarily kneecapped in a benignly procedural fashion, and without having the simple chance to present their case to the council, which could have then tabled the measure indefinitely using the always handy excuse that there isn’t enough information, or otherwise found someone to blame for being out of the Montessori loop.

But why cop the non-seconding attitude?

Don’t these citizens – don’t any of us -- deserve better from public officials who constantly pontificate about how badly they’re treated by city hall? A few scraps of dignity, perhaps, rather than a smirking, preening, good old boy’s nod ‘n’ wink orchestration of a non-second?

Talk about bad actors; some of these council guys couldn’t get a part on Baywatch if they bribed the producers with a mountain of cocaine the size of the Trinkle Dome. In three years, how many other such funding requests have been manhandled in such a mind-boggling, transparently staged fashion?

Does President Kochert, self-described steward of courtesy, really believe that it is honorable to deny these sincere people the courtesy of a hearing, and even worse, to do so while groaning aloud about unforeseen procedural matters and whining for the umpteenth time about harmful precedents that will ensue if the council gives money for education to one group without giving money for education to all groups (well, come to think of it, that is rather revolutionary … way too socialistic for a New Albanian of CM Kochert's antiquity).

Will more brilliant non-seconding fiascoes be contrived as a means of not having to face the council’s responsibility?

Shall this be Kochert’s legacy in the chair? Does he understand how embarrassing it was to watch?

Ironically, and with a rare display of humility, the only council member to get it right was CM Coffey, who said, “In the future, I’d rather not have this one,” meaning the task of introducing a resolution he decided long ago to abhor.

That’s good, because putting anything even remotely pertaining to education in CM Coffey’s “to dew” folder is risking cosmic hypocrisy on such an epic scale that fish might begin quoting Shakespeare, the Arizona Cardinals could win a Super Bowl, and a typhoon would blow into Floyd County straight from Japan without stopping for coffee in Albuquerque, sweeping New Albany into oblivion as punishment for our unprecedented impertinence.

Come to think of it, at least that would take care of those dilapidated houses, eh? Maybe there’s a method in this madness after all.