A sewer runs through it.

Yesterday afternoon, NAC’s Bluegill previewed the evening’s city council meeting, and while doing so asked a few pertinent hypotheticals.

Speaking of Slippery Larry, one wonders if he'll again conveniently forget his own long tenure on the sewer board and try to pin any accounting deficiencies on the Mayor, or if he'll suddenly spin his head and allow us the joy of watching him grimace as he owns up to actually agreeing with Garner.

Actually, CM Kochert was far too busy committing the most fundamental of substitute teaching errors, which is making an exception to classroom rules for one student, and then being forced to explain to others why preferential treatment was merited.

This rather hilariously led to a spanking new, tower-of-quivering-jello Kochert Dictum: Ya wanna talk during the meeting? So go out in the hall, already.

In turn, this fresh interpretation of Kochert’s increasingly obvious unwillingness to fairly run a council meeting meant that having declined to bounce the initial citizen peanut gallery violators (the odd couple Glimmer Twins, Bolovschak and Denhart), Kochert couldn’t quite summon the nerve to send others (my better half meritoriously included) to the penalty box.

Only Larry knows for sure and, in the absence of a crowd to play to, he probably hasn't decided yet … And what of at-large CM Kevin Zurschmiede? Having vociferously opposed paving appropriations without full documentation of the street department's intentions during early discussions, will he hold himself to the same standard as a sewer board member or give up the grandstand now that the Republican party no longer needs to concern themselves with Garner as a candidate?

I’ll leave it to others to fully document CM Jeff Gahan’s search for a sewer utility budget, and whether the financial information proffered the council last evening qualifies as such. It is interesting to note that both Zurschmiede and Kochert, dual council and sewer board members, publicly took the position that the sewer utility simply cannot ever be held to the same standards of budgetary accountability as other city departments.

Will 3rd district CM Steve Price involuntarily vote no on the measure before realizing its purpose is to withhold funds?

In the end, CM Gahan tabled it to further study the sewer board financials, so we don’t know what was or wasn’t happening between the ears of the 3rd district’s “37% Solution.” Later, Price’s continued inability (or more likely, unwillingness) to fathom how decades of “nickel and dime” tactics by politicians remarkably similar to himself have managed to produce the deterioration that has directly led to the current sewer rate reminded viewers that you can lead a quasi-Democrat to knowledge … well, you know the rest.

What are the chances that mayoral candidate Doug England's name comes up in the discussion?

It did, at least twice. But Guido already had left the room by then.

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In closing, I invite readers to contemplate the nature of the grandstand, which an on-line dictionary defines as:

“To conduct oneself or perform showily or ostentatiously in an attempt to impress onlookers: The senator doesn't hesitate to grandstand if it makes her point.”

Last evening Ms. Valla Ann Bolovschak took advantage of public speaking time to address items not specifically on the council’s agenda (the 2006 state audit report for New Albany). This is prohibited by the council president’s own rules, which he once used to chase an African-American minister from the rostrum.

However, the council president permitted it.

She was introduced by the council president by her chosen forename appellation of Valla Ann, presumably because he cannot pronounce her surname, although others generally are paid the courtesy of Mr., Mrs. or Ms.

Indeed, branding is an important facet of all marketing campaigns. She used 15 minutes when five is the stated limit.

Looking thoroughly powerless, the council president permitted it.

Returning to her seat, she joined with the academic poseur Denhart in audibly clucking throughout city controller Kay Garry’s reasonable point-by-point explanations of the items not on the agenda that Ms. Bolovschak used too much time to present to a council that already had access to the information in the audit.

As murmurings of discomfort began spreading through the room, the council president finally was moved to issue a half-hearted warning, which later became his equally flaccid “out in the hall” directive -- which he tepidly declined to enforce.

Now, make no mistake. The author does not pretend to be blameless when it comes to outbursts during council.

But mine are not politically premeditated theatrical performances, designed to disrupt and muddy, and unfortunately abetted by a council president who both implicitly and explicitly endorses the notion that rules are to be applied differently depending on his bias and whim.

That’s the very root of the problem in New Albany, Larry. I asked you before, and it's again important: Do you intend to run a meeting fairly at any point this year?