Marx Brothers and City Council

I’m a huge fan of the Marx Brothers, particularly their earlier movies, such as “Coconuts,” “Animal Crackers,” “Duck Soup” and “Horse Feathers.”

Sitting at the computer and watching the Nov. 2 City Council meeting, time and again I realized this meeting had many of the elements of classic Marxism: confusion, anarchy, aggravated straight men (and women) and much more. Perhaps not the classic script or the sparkling wit, but you can’t get it all in one small town.

First of all, to set the scene, we have a really big fellow by the name of Zen Destiny who appears at all the council meetings and issues pungent opinions about the inherent flaws in our international monetary systems, and particularly banks. It should be noted that at least Mr. Destiny appears to formulate his own ideas, unlike some of our public officials.

For this meeting, Mr. D. wore a good-sized log chain, draped around his neck.

The first couple of hours were pretty uneventful, until the council started assessing the city’s dire budget shortfall, pending mandatory staff furloughs, and possible layoffs. Then Councilmember Mike Healy livened things up by throwing a dead skunk on the table in the form of a letter from a local developer, offering to front the city a million dollars in sales-tax money if they would approve development entitlements of his project by April 2. This raised the ire of Councilmember David Glass and Mayor Pamela Torliatt.

Then, just as the mayor asked for a motion on a resolution, former Councilmem-ber Bryant Moynihan approached the podium.

Moynihan is this city’s version of Harpo Marx. Harpo, you will recall, satisfied the anarchist in us all, laying waste to anything the org-anized mind cherished. The co-author of a past and future ballot measure to roll back water bill charges assessed to fund the new sewer plant (which critics say will bankrupt the city and cause irreparable damage), Moynihan has a unique ability to provoke anger in those whose buttons he is pushing.

One difference between Moynihan and Harpo. The latter is mute. On this night Moynihan demanded to speak. It needs to be stressed that Mayor Torliatt was absolutely correct in asserting, in a schoolmarmly way, that public comment was done with and he was interrupting the city business.

However, the dialogue degen-erated into a shouting match between Torliatt and Moyni-han, until she slammed down the gavel and announced the meeting was adjourned.

Apparently the police were called, and Harpo/Moynihan slipped out the back door.

But Torliatt had goofed, since there was still one important item on the agenda: firing the planning commission for the second time. The first time, the council erred in its effort to purge the commission of dissenting voices by violating city policies. They rewrote those policies, and now they were to make the purge official.

After a time, and after most of the large audience went home because of the adjourned meeting, the mayor reconvened the meeting. Now, California public meetings are governed by the Ralph M. Brown Act. One interpretation of the mayor’s act was that once the publicly noticed meeting was adjourned, the second part of that night’s action was invalid.

So they reconvened, fired the Planning Commission again, while Councilmember David Rabbitt read a statement accusing the majority of a “power grab.” Glass, who responds to criticism with the ferocity of a cub-challenged mama bear, thundered that he was “completely pure” in his motivations.

The meeting adjourned with Glass shouting at Rabbitt off-camera. Now, as it has turned out, the council had a meeting this past Tuesday to fire the Planning Commission for the third time.

Good stuff.

Note: If you want to watch this council meeting on your computer, the city hasn’t made it easy, but it can be done. First, go to www.cityofpetaluma.net and then click on the tab at the top that says “online services.” Next, click on the line that says “Council agendas, minutes and videos.” Now, scroll down to ‘City Council/ Petaluma Community Development Commission (PCDC)”, click again. Now look for some tiny, faint type that says “Current and archived agendas with staff reports; minutes; audio/video of meetings.” Click. Now go to “Regular City Council/ PCDC, Nov. 2 etc.” and then click on “video.”

(Don Bennett, a business writer and consultant, has been involved with city planning issues since the early 1970s. He serves on the Sonoma County Planning Commission. His e-mail address is dcbenn@aol.com.)