Nothing gets me in a good mood to watch a city council meeting faster than seeing seeing disclaimers like this:

Boo yah! In and out in less time than a network sitcom! Mayor Paul Polasek, what’s the first item on your agenda?

“First item on our agenda is items from council,” the mayor announced from somewhere beneath his Tom Selleck mustaches. “Do you have anything you wanna discuss?”

“Mr. Mayor, if we can put on the agenda for next meeting to talk about recycling?” Councilmember Andrew Young suggested.

City Manager Charmelle Garrett smiled at the quizzical councilmember and spoke patiently. “You can even talk about it tonight. It doesn’t have to be specifically on the agenda.”

“I kind of thought that, but…” Young trailed off into a grimace, waiting for someone to pry the rest of the thought out of him.

“Unless,” the city manager tried to read his mind, “you want it for the public purpose?”

This was like pulling teeth. “Eh, give them an opportunity to come up here and speak…if they’d like,” the councilmember shrugged. Is this guy for real? To be clear: absolutely no one is stopping the good people of Victoria from talking about recycling at ANY council meeting.

Case in point–first public commenter of the evening, the school superintendent:

“I’m here this evening to speak regarding the benefits of the recycle program,” the shiny-domed super read from his book report. “Continuing with the current recycling program would cost Victoria households $2.92 per month.”

$2.92? Wow, that’s a huge bargain! Although this IS Texas, so everything seems huge. Even the bromances.

“We appreciate the work you do. We’re all very proud of y’all achievements,” the mayor beamed at the superintendent.

“We appreciate you very much, too,” the super boyishly grinned. I waited for one of them to say, “I wish I knew how to quit you!” but alas, no takers.

As if on a mission to prove Councilmember Young’s separate-meeting theory wrong, the next commenter was a tall glass of water who wanted to talk about–

“First off, I’d like to echo Dr. Jackson’s comments on the recycling program. I think it’s a small amount for us to continue. Me? The $3 extra a month is no problem.”

Closing in on minute 14, the public works director had a brief presentation. “I’ve got some slides with some marked up changes  So this here is the planned project sheet:

“The projects that we have recommended removing, we’ve stricken the Nursery Drive project–”

Mayor Polasek jumped in. “When you say ‘stricken,’ we’re not cancelling these. We’re not NEVER gonna go back and do Nursery Drive. There’s some people out there that would kill us if we didn’t!”

Being Texas, I believe it! Annnnnnddd minute 19–fin!

Final thoughts: I give 10 out of 10 stars to that chemistry between the mayor and the superintendent. Encore!