For the record, I think I’m on the side of the devil.

So the City of Ypsilanti wants ideas on how to get out of its financial difficulties? How about this one?

You have some kid. An intern. Maybe even someone from Washtenaw Community College film the audience participation portion of each City Council meeting. If it was a student, that person could get course credit so it wouldn’t cost the City a dime. So this student would take the most crackpot monologues and then edit them into ten or fifteen minute segments. The Mayor or members of City Council could then film intros to each segment. Nothing too blue, but something a little edgy. You package a couple of these segments together and put them on a DVD. You then sell them on the City’s web site for something like $9.99. We are talking about a goldmine here. If you want to spice it up, you could have a bucket of that green slime over the podium where audience members spoke, and when they said something stupid, whammo! They get slimed. The only drawback to that kind of plan is that it might not pay back as City Council would probably go through a lot of slime.

Or how about this? You make everyone who wants to speak during audience participation put five bucks in a jar before speaking. If they speak with any sort of clarity, they get the money back. You know, they don’t even have to be lucid. They just have to be semi-polite. The second they say some kind of far-fetched, dumb-ass comment, the City gets their dough. By my estimates, the City would have added $185 to their coffers tonight. Amen.

I have no idea how the Mayor doesn’t leap over the table during City Council meetings and start throwing punches. I am dead serious. I almost threw a couple of haymakers tonight and no one was even insulting me. Say what you will about the Mayor and the other members of City Council, but they put up with a lot of garbage from a handful of imbeciles. That probably won’t endear me to the imbecile contingent of Ypsilanti, but you make your alliances where you see fit.

In case you were wondering, City Council took the income tax ordinance off of the agenda tonight. The Mayor said the City still had a lot of work to do, but in reality, with Councilmember Barry LaRue on vacation, the Mayor didn’t have the votes. It would have gone down in defeat 3 to 3. What people may not realize is that this was the public hearing portion of the ordinance. They can bring this back at any time and the citizens don’t have a say. Sure, they can speak during audience participation, but who’s going to risk getting covered in slime?

The highlight of the meeting was when several children from the New Beginnings Academy expressed their concern over the destruction of the wild mustang population by the Bureau of Land Management. City Council even passed a resolution in support of saving the wild mustangs. I would encourage everyone to join the children and donate at Save the Mustangs. It’s for a very good cause. You don’t want to let these kids down.