The clock on the wall read 7:03. Already late.  He banged the gavel.

“Alright, let’s get started.  Al, would you lead us in the pledge?”

After the portly septuagenarian council member finished the oath in childlike sing-song fashion, he got down to business, calling for motions to approve the minutes and agenda.  Everything passed; smooth sailing so far.

In his three months so far as the mayor of Driftwood Springs, Walt Marsdale thought he had a good feel for the routine now, but the next part of the meeting was what always gave him that ulcerous pit in his stomach.

“Onto public comment.  Please step forward to the podium if you wish to address the council.  You will have three minutes to speak, and it is up to the discretion of the council members to respond,” Walt said

He waited a moment.  An elderly woman shuffled slowly to the podium.  She pulled out a piece of paper from her purse, slowly unfolding it.  Very slowly.  This should count against her time, Walt thought to himself.

“Mr. Marsdale,” the woman began, “my name is Emma Hartley.  When you were sworn in three months ago you promised that you were going to clean things up around here.  I don't  usually like to call people liars to their faces, especially in such a public setting, but I have to tell you that I’m very disappointed that you would be such a liar after only being a politician for a short time.

“I live about halfway down the dead end on Slate Falls Road.  Now, if you go the last half a mile down to the dead end, there’s a house at the end of a driveway that’s about 300 yards off the road behind a lot of trees.  If you go all the way to the end of the driveway up to the house, you’ll find there are three cars in the driveway.  One of them looks like it's in use, and has a license plate.  The other two don’t have plates at all, and one of those doesn’t even have tires on its wheels.  It’s just sitting there on the gravel without any tires!

“The building code very clearly states that any driveway can only have up to one unregistered vehicle that is not stored within a garage.  Obviously this driveway has one car more than the limit.  Where has your highway department been?  Where has the code officer been?  Honestly, where have you been?  How can you say that you are cleaning this place up when you clearly haven’t gone around town, or made sure that your employees have, and done your job to make sure people are following the rules.  I don’t expect you to respond to save yourself from being such an embarrassment, but I at least hope the newspaper will quote me and make everyone in town aware.  Thank you.”

There was a silence in the room as people shifted uncomfortably in their chairs, wondering what would happen next.

Don’t want to do this, but I guess I have to, Walt thought to himself.

“Mrs. Hartley, thank you for airing your concerns.  I would like to take a quick minute to respond,” Walt said.

“First, let me be very clear: when I spoke of ‘cleaning up this place,’ I was specifically referring to the fact that the previous mayor, who was recently convicted of embezzling $10,000 from the town to finance his own driveway paving, had developed a reputation for using illicit drugs in this very Town Hall during his office hours.  Multiple witnesses have come forward and stated that they saw and or smelled marijuana, mushrooms, and something the kids are calling WALL-E when they entered the building.

“Second, while there is a town building code, it is certainly not my immediate priority to ensure compliance at each and every property when I still need to fill a number of vacancies caused by the previous mayor’s doped-up rage that led to the firing of nearly all non-union staff.  In fact, the new code officer only started on the job about a week ago.

“Third, and most importantly, I have had to take a leave of absence from my full-time job in order to spend 80 to 100 hours a week working on getting a new highway garage built before winter arrives.  As you know, the building and all of the snow plows in it were destroyed when the former mayor tried to put out his pot pipe in the garbage can, and walked away before he knew it was out.  So you’ll have to forgive me if I haven’t been able to take care of of the situation with your neighbor.”

Walt looked her in the eye, stone-faced.

“Speaking of the former mayor," he said, “how is Mr. Hartley doing?”

“Thank you for asking,” Emma replied, “he should be out on parole in about ten months.  And it’s called Molly, not WALL-E.”