Bob Dunning: From City Council to Sistine Chapel

WATTS UP, DOC? … nearly three years ago, a UC Davis law student named Daniel Watts tossed his hat in the ring for a seat on the Davis City Council … undaunted by his last-place finish, Watts is now back with another campaign … yes, the other day he announced his candidacy for pope … since the only absolute qualification for this high and holy office is that the candidate be a baptized male Catholic, Watts just might qualify … he did pull in 1,165 votes in his City Council run, which would be more than enough votes this time around since only 115 Cardinals are voting and you need only two-thirds of those …

If I were a betting man, though, I’d wager that Daniel’s name will not be the one revealed to the world when those highly anticipated puffs of white smoke emerge from the Sistine Chapel one day soon … still, I’d like to thank Daniel for his interest in the position and assure him that the new pope, whoever that might be, will welcome him to the flock with open arms …

TAX DOLLARS DOWN THE SINKHOLE … several weeks ago I reported that Mr. Goofy Gadfly had requested of the city of Davis any and all emails in the past several months that mention the Above-Pictured Columnist, were sent to any city employee by the Above-Pictured Columnist or that were sent from a city employee to the Above-Pictured Columnist …

I contacted Goofy himself and offered to save the city untold hours of research and untold numbers of tax dollars by sending him all my email correspondence with the city, but he pressed forward with his expensive request … and for those who think this information can be retrieved at the punch of the appropriate button, please realize that according to one city official in the know, every email must be run by the city attorney before being released …

Now the last time I checked, the city attorney’s services don’t come cheaply … in fact, in the first batch of emails that has been released by the city in response to a second and different demand by Mr. Goofy Gadfly, all sorts of personal information of third parties innocently caught in Mr. Gadfly’s overreaching web had to be redacted … trust me, having a set of eyeballs scan every email for personal information that must be redacted is time-consuming in the extreme, but the city is diligently doing its job, damn the cost …

The fact the city is now several weeks into this process and many more emails still must be reviewed, proves just how time-consuming this has become, not that wasting tax dollars is any concern of Mr. Gadfly’s … then again, since we just voted to spend 113 million Davis dollars to bring the Sacramento River into town, I suppose an expensive fishing expedition fits right in with the nautical theme …

THERE IS ONE EMBARRASSING EMAIL, AFTER ALL … other than an obvious obsession with the Above-Pictured Columnist that borders on fatal attraction, I can’t imagine why Goofy wants to see all my emails back and forth with city employees other than the hope that there’s something embarrassing in there … well, as a pre-emptive strike of sorts, I’m going to come clean right here and now … yes, there is something terribly embarrassing in one of those emails … I hope you’re sitting down and I hope you won’t think less of me after I bare my soul … OK, here it is …

In an email exchange with city of Davis Urban Forest Manager Rob Cain, a dedicated and hard-working city employee if there ever was one, I had to admit to Rob that our aging front-yard hackberry tree has a bad case of mistletoe … yes, mistletoe … given that mistletoe is strongly associated with Christmas and given that the city long ago banned the word “Christmas” from all city celebrations, it’s frankly embarrassing to have so much mistletoe for all the world to see …

And once Mr. Goofy Gadfly gets his hands on the email exchange I had with Rob Cain, where I pleaded to have Rob send out a crew to remove our offending mistletoe, I’m afraid Goofy will find a way to let as many people as possible know that our family has a mistletoe problem, shameful as that is …

For his part, Mr. Cain, who is the very definition of a public servant, has promised to send a crew of trained and certified arborists out to remove the mistletoe in a timely manner, but if word of this gets out to the general public, I may have to move to Woodland, mistletoe and all … please, Mr. Gadfly, have mercy on me …

— Reach Bob Dunning at bdunning@davisenterprise.net