Tag: dead horse

It’s time for your drinking game, spring break edition.

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Celebrate while you can Sunny.

FCPS is currently on Spring Break! We are trying to soak up every minute with our dearest children since our overlord Governor Hogan has pretty much nixed any hopes of more than a four day weekend yippe skippy spring break fun time in the future. Channel your inner college break constitution, but remember this is just for fun. Don’t overdo the alcohol. Grab your agenda and steel your mind for the ride!

We hope you had a good holiday. You are going to need to hold onto that good mood when this week’s meeting starts with budget adjustments. When there is a BS abstention on budget items for no good reason throw back a truffle bunny, because we know you need a tiny excuse to steal your kid’s candy.

Next up are a few business items. The constant yield tax rate is one of the items. The crystal ball says there will be denial if the constant rate actually stays constant. Throw back a tax break because who has patience for this? Bonus drink if you managed to get your own taxes done by tax day. Next up are hazard mitigation and transportation updates. We recommend abstaining on drinks for those discussions. Save your liver for what’s up next.

Time for the 3rd reading of Limited Private Event Venues Bill. If Council Member Chmelik doesn’t vote Aye for his own Bill drink a poison apple.

Break time! Have some carbs. There are 3 second readings to get through when the meeting reconvenes.

Prepare to throw back some local shots as distilleries, ethics and solar facilities are discussed. We know there will be dead horse flogging during the ethics reading. That poor horse is so dead and flogged that all we can recommend is have a long tall glass of water to quench your tbirst.

Finally, we have a draft budget, followed by public and council member comments. We predict some council member complete nonsense during comments, so finish strong with a bullshit.

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If only this weren’t necessary.

 

Procrastination update: Frederick County Council 3/21/2017

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Sorry y’all. We are tiring of same ol same ol. It was really hard to get back to this and give it our attention. However, a bright spot occurred during the discussion of the Bill regarding Farm Distilleries and Tasting Rooms. This process seemed to be a model of good governance–citizens and representative legislators coming together to get things done. It showed our community in a charming light. Robert Ramsburg, President of the Frederick County Farm Bureau, even mused that this bill may come with the blessing of Jesus, who turned water into wine at a wedding venue. One of our Junior Yokels was intrigued by the discussion, and it proved a wonderful teachable moment. These people want music and Jerry’s constituents want peace and quiet and they will work on amendment to try and resolve this. This would also be a useful primer for some U.S. Congresspersons regarding how compromise and efficacy are intended to be a part of the gig.

Of course, there was plenty to find fault at other points. Most especially Council Member Comments continues to be A Festivus Celebration: Airing of Kirby Delauter’s Many and Unvaried Grievances. This is why we had such a hard time returning to torture ourselves: if we wanted to listen to someone rant and rave tirelessly about the same stupid crap, we would call our own Drunk Uncles during the late evening hours. You sit, hold the phone to your ear while patiently waiting for the end of the bellyaching over a litany of things that don’t entirely make sense, but everyone knows contradictory evidence is futile in these circumstances. You just ride it out.

Most of the council members regularly reflect on positive things in our community. Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber rarely mention anything that would make you think they have any pride in this county. It’s truly astonishing that this is a regular feature of these events.

Billy was worse than Kirby this week, as he is a flagrant asshole (although mercifully brief). He asks without a hint of irony, “Why do we hate solar?” This, understandably, was noted by both M.C. and Jessica, as they have authored a bill, scrapped it, and started again with a new bill. This is the one they are currently in the process of trying to work through to expand the solar industry in Frederick. It’s the weirdest hatred of solar power in history.

Worse, though, after Kirby’s regular rehash of the teachers voting on the budget that funds the BOE, Jerry explained that he is earning less than he did before joining the Council and has the W2s to prove it. Riding on this, Billy tried to question the validity of this statement because Jerry gets paid for the part time work of Council Member. Shut up, Billy. Just stop. The council salary has nothin’ to do with the teaching position. He took on the additional work of council person to do it. Furthermore, he does the things in the job description of councilperson, and should be compensated appropriately. This still does not discount the possibility that he is in sum making less, or maybe just making less at FCPS (where he bowed out of the new salary scale to be sure no conflict of interest could be found–not that it will stop the rambling about one), but who cares. It’s irrelevant. Shut up. Really.

Jerry addressed the theatrics involved in all of this, noting that the same person who trots out a ridiculous fantasy budget each year and expects to be praised for it, actually voted against Tony Chmelik’s proposed charter amendment that would have allowed his suggested changes to the budget to be useful.

Also picking up on this theatrical flair, Jessica seized upon the fact that Billy claims a simple text amendment would solve the issues Kirby has regarding the mulch business. This is the issue that was central to this weeks extensive griping. Jessica noted that she would hope we could expect some focus on problem solving in lieu of complaining. She also suggested that if a simple text amendment were all that is required, perhaps one of the concerned Councilpersons might solve the problem by drafting a simple text amendment. Wouldn’t that be a Festivus Miracle for the ages? Hmmmmmm. She managed to so without sarcasm, which frankly makes her a freaking superhero. We would also like to see our Councildolts make a doody or get off the pot. We will never run for office, because we would probably word it that way, but harsher.

All the dead horses fit to be beaten were trotted out after the long council break

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This meeting started with all the regular malarkey. There was a grand opening event in the first public comment section. Thanks be to Yokel reader and frequent public commenter Patrick Schempp. He came with audio effects so that we could all hear Blaine Young at the last BOCC meeting brag about how he screwed us all for generations to come. That’s may be a slight paraphrase, but not at all a mischaracterization of the attitude. The AV Club presentation ran a little long, so by the fourth minute of the meeting Billy had already started his insolent griping at Bud about controlling the meeting. I think Mr. Schempp must’ve hurt Billy’s feelings…

Sorry to have to keep using this one folks. But it's kinda not our fault.
Sorry to have to keep using this one folks. But it’s kinda not our fault.

And then came the consent items, and Kirby took the opportunity to wail on the most brittle skeletal remains of his favorite dead horse. One of the consent items involved BOE money and that was going to affect Jerry and Jessica’s salaries. Oh. Mon. Dieu. How many times are we going to go over this? But he knows. He just wants the public to know that if they vote on the whole consent agenda one of the line items will give money to the BOE to decide what to do with it, and years down the road the teachers on the Council may benefit from it. Probably maybe eventually they will see seventeen cents more than they had yesterday. Shut up, Kirby. Shut. Up. We are bored of your stupidity. Jerry and Jessica both responded, kind of the same way they always do when Kirby pulls this crap (oh, consent items passed, in spite of time wasted).

Other Shrelauter horse carcass flogging included the continued denial of the science of water. Why should we comply with the Clean Water Act? Again (and this is a review for Kirby, too–goodness no wonder they have no respect for education issues, look how it helped them comprehend nothing at all). To ignore the problems with erosion and pollution that Shrelauter disbelieves, there are significant fines and prison time at stake. Why be bothered with reality, though. Also Billy says it is good thing that they have learned some of our local streams are polluted by animals. Tony jovially concluded that they need to shoot more deer. The thing is, we are pretty that you are NOT just allowed to go shoot the domesticated bovines standing in area streams, and their pies are so much more copious than the fewmets left by deer. But harharhar. Thriving animal populations or whatever. This is a positive spin a la “the Grand Canyon is beautiful and caused by erosion.” Psst Billy: our troubles here are generally caused by sediment deposition. Also, according to Billy our water is obviously fine. “No one has died.” (true story) O.K. Please explain how we are to listen to your possibly lead poisoned brain thoughts and reach the same “it’s all good” conclusion. We’ll be waiting…

A new and head-scratching thing occurred during the discussion concerning the payment in lieu of tax agreement to establish workforce housing on North Market Street. Billy seemed at a loss when he was told about fair housing laws. This means incentives can’t be given to certain classes of people. He was hoping it would be guaranteed somehow that the available units would be filled by teachers, nurses and first responders of the highest workforce caliber and obviously not some ambiguous lesser riffraff. Indignantly, he demanded to know what laws. This ignorance was shocking to your yokels, only because we have bought houses and dealt with realtors. Then we remembered: Billy is a realtor. We don’t know if our jaws will ever come off the floor.

A quick and dirty guide to the hot topics:

Everybody likes the hotel tax. Except Randy Cohen of the Holiday Inn (can’t really blame him for that, but try as he might that Holiday Inn is not going to move itself downtown, so…). He did bring a couple of friends. One of them was so angry about Redheaded Eskimos.

Nobody likes the medical marijuana pilot program. They all came out of the woodwork to say so.

Council member comments at the end of the evening had us laughing so hard we were unable to breathe and nearly passed out from lack of oxygen. Kirby is still complaining about his lease back option getting nixed. And just because it was obviously a terrible idea from the first day! Billy had a lot to say, and this post would be twice as long if we just focused on that (see yourself at 5 hours 43 minutes, no, that is not a typo). Jessica ducked out because of new motherhood, and she honestly must have been miserable by that point and probably wouldn’t have even been able to laugh at her neighbor on the dias. We highly recommend that she does as promised and goes back to watch them. Of course she will. She is a responsible council person.

There is another phrase kind of like beating a dead horse, but it is much cruder and involves a chicken. If this redundant stuff continues, we may be forced to drag that ghastly thing out. We can’t keep being forced to say the same things over and over again just because Shrelauter hasn’t had a fresh thought in over a year.

 

Post President’s Day drinking game-Get your shot glasses ready!

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Busy week here in the county!!! First off we have a regular legislative day on the 16th and then a joint BOE meeting on the 17th. The agenda looks juicy, so grab it here and play  with caution. No alcohol poisoning.  We need all the Yokels we can get in this upcoming election season!

Budget transfers have been going pretty well lately. However, the library is on the list this week! And you know how thoughts of reading and learning really get some of our councilmen in a tizzy. Slam back an Attitude Adjustment if you hear any negative thoughts about the fancy learning that the libraries afford us. We can dream that change can happen, can’t we?!

Next up are appointments. If anyone decides to take to behave like a U.S. Senator threatening to block a Supreme Court justice, shoot back two, yes two glassfuls of  Four Horsemen.

Look how happy Billy is with his prop! Photo: Bill Green, FNP.
Look how happy Billy is with his prop! Photo: Bill Green, FNP.

Time to discuss deer hunting and crop damage. Should be interesting.  Not sure where to take this one, so just sip upon your  Ratty Ol’Deer Head whenever you hear the word deer.

Great Helena, Zeus, Poseidon, and Sappho please hear all of our combined cries for mercy!!!!! It’s time for the dead horse ethics discussion. There just isn’t any way that we will get through this without any nonsense, is there? No Kirby you cannot profit off the county until 2018!!! And no more teacher/BOE conflict of interest talk!! NONE!!! Set up a row of Cement Kickers and drink as much as you need to calm your nerves!!

Maybe we will get lucky and Gumption the Dragon will make another appearance at tonight’s meeting. She’s really keen on the Narconon and really, really hates this special exception bill. If we are lucky enough to spot this local celebrity, treat yourself to some Dragon’s blood.

Let’s just lump impact fees and school construction into one category shall we?  If Kirby makes the big reveal about how he’s going to single-handily fix our education problems mix up some Too Cool for School, since we suspect his plan has something to do with dismantling public education.

 

Amateur Diagnosis Day: Is there a reason Kirby can’t learn?

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Hold on to your hats, folks. If you were wondering if we would drag out the dead horse trope again, we have decided to work a new angle at the local desk. An emerging theory behind the scenes.

There are individuals who seem to have no ability to learn from their mistakes. They will continue to repeat the same behaviour over and over again and never learn from the disastrous outcome. “Do You Never Learn From Your Mistakes? – You May Have a Behavioural or Brain Disorder.” Hubpages.com April 1, 2o13

Just look at this list of symptoms!

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“I’m not gonna sit here and be talked to like some kind of punk.” (mood swings, unable to accept criticism)

Surely this would explain numerous temperamental outbursts, inability to stop repeatedly making nationally embarrassing missteps in use of social media, and the fact that we (yet again) need to publish this graphic from, oh, like the first week we started blogging.

Imagine if you had to be Farell Keough's teacher. Does that illustrate how hard this job is?
Haha, the original caption was this, in response to some LTE nonsense: Imagine if you had to be Farell Keough’s teacher. Does that illustrate how hard this job is? (And,  it is still perfectly relevant, since  guess who showed up last night to keep yapping about this himself–amateur diagnoses all around, then. Cheers!)

Now, we did enjoy Kirby’s explanation of how much it chaps his hide to endure the implications that that county employees would be willing to grant people special favors. Obviously he’s just watching out for the little guys, here, like any of us would. The same blowhard who stormed out in a huff because some county employee requested that he stop interrupting an explanation of the need for equipment for his department! Impressive that he has adopted this new chivalrous attitude! Wheeeeeee. To think only of others at a time like this, when he is being persecuted by this targeted law–Kirby’s Law, some would say. It is really curious, now isn’t it, that so many other Maryland counties have some version of Kirby’s Law already enacted. Why does all of Maryland, maybe all of America, hate Kirby so much? It’s probably Rachel Maddow’s fault…

Memories.
Memories.

Kirby admits that he has no point, defending himself against the implication that he depends upon the government for his business success, belying the the Oliver Twist posturing he likes to adopt about how this is affecting his livelihood. Which is it, dude? Pick one position, please. Don’t get greedy.

This is what happens when council member comments are done extemporaneously. You make no sense.
This is what happens when council member comments are done extemporaneously. You make no sense.

As awesome as it is that Kirby is such an upstanding citizen servant, to the point that we don’t even need to worry about any appearances of impropriety, let’s think a moment. What if the next guy elected is not as squeaky clean as Mr. Hashtag? Hmmmm. Riddle us that, oh man of many contradictions.