Well now, that sure was something, wadn’t it?
We watched the (very long) meeting of the Minden Uncivil City Council last night. The Great Facebook outage of twenty-twenty-one put the Journal stream out of business for the night, so we all had to go the YouTube route to watch the latest show of the City Hall Circus. Come one, come all and see the Mayor in the Lions Den.
That’s right, some folks didn’t watch from home. They were up at city hall laying verbal punches into Mr. Mayor. It wadn’t pretty. It wadn’t even ugly. It was downright embarrassing. Not embarrassing for the folk laying out the licks. They were doing the greatest thing an American can do, that being the whippin of a politician. Nuthin against Mr. Mayor or any of the council in general, but it’s good when people give their elected officials what fer.
But we’re just plumb embarrassed that it’s gotten to this point. We don’t tell people we’re from Minden when asked because this last Thursday at four oh one post meridiem, the city went to 50 percent of its operating budget from last year. That bit of cheddar will last between two and six months depending on who you’re asking. Like most all things that involve our city government, there’s not a lot of concrete right answers or even people coming together to try and agree on all the variations of the wrong ones.
If there’s one thing the council can agree on it’s that they can’t agree on anything. That’s what’s so embarrassing. So what’s the result? Well, one of the many citizens who came before the microphone last night told the honorables that people are on their way out the proverbial door. Sayin fare-the-well to what’s known as the Friendliest City in the South.
She was correct.
Population is dipping. People heading out west, east, north, south and all the directional variations thereof. Now the Journal doesn’t want the parish to suffer, so folks if you just gotta move, head on down Sibley way or up towards Spranghill. Lotta land round there.
But we digress. This young lady was right when she passionately told the assembly that people are embarrassed and people are tired and people just aren’t going to take it anymore.
And that’s the truth.
Compromise was a word used a lot. Coming together was a phrase used a lot. We think it’s time though, friends, to stop kidding ourselves. There’s no compromise coming. There’s no coming together. This rift is too wide and personal and mean and ugly. Too much said. Too much done. Lines drawn in the sand. Mutually assured destruction.
No compromise is coming.
And maybe that’s for the best. Maybe all that’s left is for Daddy to come in. Father being the state in this analogy. Let the grownups come in, start calling the shots and put right what needed to be put right a long time ago.
We don’t want that. Truthfully, we can’t even believe we’re saying it (typing it rather), but that’s where we are at this point in time. It’s painfully and plainly obvious, so obvious that the visually challenged can see it clear as the sun in the Sahara, that we need saving. There had been talk of the attorney general getting involved. Talk of the district attorney. Talk of malfeasance and other big political words. Looks like that was all smoke and mirrors.
So with a council that won’t talk to the mayor and a mayor that just spent three hours being a punching bag from the community, there’s no more hope here. The hope is kinda what killed us, we suppose.
Just let the state come in and cut us to the bone and let out all that bad blood out so we can start over. Sure don’t seem like there’s any other way now.
But then again, what do we know?
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