What's it gonna be, CM Blevins?

As four cacophonous years have passed, with at-large councilman Donnie Blevins forever dangling in the legislative wind, unable to settle on a core set of beliefs that might assist him in sorting through the pressures that come with being recognized as the perpetual swing vote, I’ve nonetheless defended him more often than not – and emphasized with him almost always.

I’d sit out there in the gallery during those nights when Blevins would be forced to make a decision, and you could see the contradictory cartoon figures, an angel and a devil, one on each of the councilman’s shoulders, and watch him almost visibly buckle beneath the responsibility of casting his vote for the Gang of Four on one side or the mostly reasonable group on the other, and I always knew it couldn’t be easy for him.

There were times when it was hard to watch. Sometimes Blevins would muster heroic oratory during the course of seemingly "getting it," while other times, he'd arrive in the council chambers like a schoolboy who'd just been taken to the woodshed ... and with Dan Coffey's belt marks shadowing his face. We'd nod, and think yep -- this time the Gang got to him last, and he rolled over.

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There is much about Monday’s last night’s city council meeting that deserves comment, and Bluegill is working on it, but before I retire for the night, something must be written – perhaps gently, perhaps still with much empathy on my part – about Blevins’s performance.

It was as bad a job of acting as I’ve witnessed in four years, and it bodes ill as we approach a period when the Gang of Four, itself about to be dissolved after the November elections, might still be able to kneecap the city for a generation to come.

The Gang's rancor is elevated, and it is increasingly rabid, and the Luddites on the council seemingly are ready to make the whole community pay for its own inability to comprehend a modern world that no longer will permit ward-heelers to conduct balloting in their garages, tell tremendous whopping lies without audience members calling them on it, or being able to avoid howling laughter when they cowardly abstain on crucial votes.

Two weeks ago, the council determined to form a committee, made up of the body’s three at-large councilmen, for the purpose of communicating with the plaintiffs in the redistricting lawsuit (the author is one of them) so as to avoid trial. The merits of this case have been discussed at some length here, but what is relevant at the moment is that the council approved this measure, after which the lame duck Blevins promptly let it be known that he had no interest in participating alongside fellow at-large councilmen Jack Messer and Kevin Zurschmiede.

Not unexpectedly, Blevins did not attend Monday’s 6:00 p.m. fact-finding hearing, which concluded shortly before 6:30 p.m., at which time four of us descended the steps in route to a quick dinner at the Speakeasy, only to find Blevins chatting with workers in one of the offices downstairs.

Hours later, at the conclusion of the regular meeting, and as CM Messer presented his committee’s report to the remainder of the council, Blevins – who confessed to having read only a small bit of the plaintiff’s document as discussed at the committee meeting – erupted in indignation at the suggestions presented by the plaintiffs during a gathering that Blevins scoffed at attending even though he was two floors down by the time it ended, and almost certainly was there before that.

As I said, I’ve defended Blevins before, but his ineffectual performance tonight revealed a odiferous and disingenuous hypocrisy that approaches the level of that practiced routinely by Larry Kochert and Dan Coffey. You've no idea how depressing this is for me, because I always have retained hope that Blevins would be able to move beyond it.

Blevins, after all, was named to the redistricting committee. Perhaps – just perhaps – he might accept the assignment with the seriousness it deserves rather than play the Gang of Four’s brinksmanship game without contemplating first that he is their most dispensable pawn.

That's because blatant political sociopaths like Dan Coffey are interested in congenitally indecisive people like Donnie Blevins for one reason, and one reason only, and it’s the same reason that Coffey’s second reading of an ordinance that seeks to cripple the city’s ability to lawfully assist economic development passed last night on the strength of Blevins’s veritable coin-flip of a swing vote: To keep the string of power wrapped tightly around Coffey’s own pudgy, bullying knuckle, and if Blevins thinks that after all of this is over that Coffey will be inviting him to the Wizard’s Westside dirt-floor hovel for ice-cold barbecued bologna on a stale shingle, then all my theories about the ability of humans to adapt for the best interest of their own survival can be thrown out the window.

Too bad, Donnie. You coulda been someone, really. You’ve shown those glimmers, and I know you’ve felt them, too. But when you let people like Larry Kochert and Dan Coffey twist your arm, and when you find out that they’re not really laughing with you … well, it’s just sad, and all you’ve accomplished is to keep quite a few people poor, ignorant and without hope of redemption -- and I know that really isn't your intent.

Dan Coffey cares neither about you nor about them. He must perpetuate the civic rot in order to have people like you – and people like them – looking toward him as the instrument of their salvation. They're bound to be disappointed. So are you, Donnie.

Sorry, but someone had to say it. I understand that you believe in a higher power, and I'll readily confess that I don't, but I just wish there were some way that I could make you see the power that this city ideally possesses if the doers and the capable can shake free of the shackles imposed on them by the likes of Coffey and Steve Price.

Donnie, they're not helping people to become free. They're ensuring failure by promising gullible, desperate people that the hands of time can somehow be frozen. It's only an illusion, and at times, you've seemed to grasp that, although you've not been able to shake it for long enough to offer hope of a positive legacy. Right now, your legacy is mixed. There are five meetings left, and your term will then be over. However, you're lucky, because time remains for you to be a part of the solution and not the problem.

And I mean that sincerely. Perhaps Dan Coffey will print this off for you to read. He doesn't follow the blogs, you know. But he detests us just the same, and you -- Donnie Blevins -- know that he's wrong in feeling that way.

The question, then: What do you intend to do about it?