The dancing of politics

It's so easy to confuse people, especially when they are busy with other stuff.

Deliver a city budget to their homes instead of actually presenting it to them at a meeting and - holy cow - it never gets put on the City Council agenda, is never officially sent to the Budget & Finance Committee and no one points this out until it's time to vote on the budget.

That seems to pretty much sum up the progression of events leading up to the point where At-large Councillor Donna Holaday moved to remove the FY10 budget from committee and Ward 6 Councillor Tom O'Brien stood and said it was never in committee.

The council had to hastily put it in the committee so it could be taken out again.

I'm not sure if this whole procedure - council accepting items for the agenda, which are then either voted on or sent to committee - is part of the City Council rules or is state law.

What I do know is that this is at least the second time something like this has happened (the process to approve the bond order for the mods to the wastewater treatment facility was rife with this kind of confusion).

What I think is that O'Brien could have mentioned this fact before last night, during the meeting - that is, if he realized it before then.

And what I also think is that, since someone else told me in a phone conversation earlier in the day that the budget wasn't actually anywhere on the agenda, this was a smooth move to make at least Holaday look bad.

This is from today's Daily News report on the budget vote last night:

Holaday, a potential election opponent for Moak in the fall, praised the current mayor's budget, as well as the unions for making concessions.

Ummmm .... No. Holaday, like Cameron and Shanley, has said she won't run for mayor if Moak runs for re-election.

I know that some people are counting on we citizen journalists to point out stuff like this, but ... hey, if you're on the City Council and you realize that there is a potentially embarrassing situation about to emerge, don't you let someone know?

I'm giving bad marks all around, because sure it was sloppy (Eleven people on the council and the 3 people in the Clerk's Office and no one noticed?) but I also think the slop was swilled for political reasons.