Light council agenda offers theatrical opportunities aplenty, so bring your own popcorn and a bucket.

Just the facts, ma’am:

Here is the agenda for tonight’s city council meeting, courtesy of the city clerk’s always informative web site.

The Tribune offers its preview: Patio homes on deck for New Albany City Council, by Eric Scott Campbell.

And, three days before today’s Courier-Journal took notice, there is another Tribune item with no direct bearing on tonight’s gathering, but one that almost certainly will be mentioned when the politicking breaks out: New Albany's sewer utility, EMC renewing pact.

Regular readers know that at the majority of city council meetings, there are moments of high tragic-comic drama that can truly be fathomed in only one way, which is by laughing out loud – not so much laughing “with” as “at.”

A disproportionate number of these laugh riots have come as a result of the ever creative machinations of the Gang of Four, the Luddite obstructionist quartet that has done so much to hold progress hostage during the past three and a half years. While the May primary election halved the Gang’s antebellum strength, pre-primary election positioning has altered the previous balance on the council, suggesting that many certainties are no longer bankable.

Thus, even the lightest of summertime council agendas contains the germ of board-trodding, scenery-chewing merriment, and I expect ample posturing to hilariously emerge in multiple acts from this evening’s main event.

Will the Gang of Four script in advance a dramatic reunion in time to squelch the Z-07-10 fringe area ordinance that all except CM Dan Coffey (who vociferously objected prior to meekly “passing”) supported on its first reading?

Seeing as any reference to fringe areas inevitably leads to free association time for the crapper-rappers of the so-called potty police, will New Albany’s self-appointed “citizen’s advocate” yet again stoop to co-op agenda-specific public speaking time to gloriously grandstand on the topic of (a) sewers, (b) the sewer board’s EMS contract, (c) EMS lunch receipts at Cheddar’s, (d) gingham swatches, household period furniture and he efficacy of crown molding, or (e) all of the above – and will council president Larry Kochert permit her to do so?

Speaking of slippery eels, will Kochert stage his own “July surprise” today and submit a last-minute filing to retain his 4th district seat as an independent? As of Saturday afternoon, the unsightly signs forever stacked in his backyard behind the former Haitian-inspired garage polling place still bore the inscription of “Democrat,” but a bit of paint goes a long way in any banana republic, doesn’t it?

Will the lame duck 2nd district councilman Bill “My Ellen Court” Schmidt return to previous form and lead a desperate insurrection against the JonPaul Green Valley Road professional office development plans?

How many times will Coffey profess to know more than the experts on subjects ranging from stormwater drainage to kinesiology ... and beyond?

Will there be enough lighter fluid for all the area crazies to flick their Bics and self-immolate en masse in protest of these and other manifestations of contemporary confusion far more suited to a grassy knoll than Hauss Square?

Will NA Confidential be thunderingly condemned for using them pointy head Frenchy surrender monkey words in the previous paragraph?

Only Scooby knows for sure. Stay tuned.