Motion carries 3 to 1, Commissioner Gruber says Nay.

New(?!) Commission Chairman Frank Burt may as well have recorded his voice saying that and then simply replayed it after every vote.

By now everyone will know that the road project is back on and we have only ourselves to blame.  Bob James won the primary against David Ed Bishop by just 666 votes (appropriate number really).  The turnout from TimberCreek was extremely low and that apathy coupled with District One’s vote against Bishop has led to Charles Gruber being painfully outnumbered on the Baldwin Commission.  He’s in for a torrid time – I hope he has a good shrink lined up.

It will be 4 long years before there is a chance to correct this decision and in that time our neighborhood and property values will be worthless as the hard working middle classes are trampled on in favor of the rich land owners who can afford to contribute to election campaigns THAT AREN’T EVEN IN THEIR OWN COUNTY. 

An extreme commentary?  Maybe, but ask me again in 4 years – I’ll be the scruffy guy at the off-ramp of the CR13 interchange (just in front of the Dollar Tree) with a “will work for food” cardboard sign hanging from my neck.

The only tiny glimmer of hope is that Tucker Dorsey said he would take a long hard look at the numbers when the bids come in and if he doesn’t think it is fiscally responsible to build the road then he will vote against it.  But, remember who put him in power.  If you think that Frank Burt is going to let him vote against any of his pet projects I think you are in for a rude awakening.

It will be interesting to see if there is ever a vote that splits the Burt, James, Dorsey axis.  Certainly the 29 items on yesterday’s agenda didn’t, even if Dorsey did manage to pay a little lip service towards trying to be his own man by getting an amendment to the proposal to halve or eliminate funding to six charitable concerns. 

Unlike the other five charities, at least the Red Cross gets some chance to receive some funding, even if the axis did make it contingent on Mobile County putting up the same amount. 

Obviously not content with spending our tax dollars, they are making a start on the next county over.  Look out Escambia, you are next…!

There’s more blogging to come later; I am still a little shell-shocked after the efforts of the last few days but I can’t sign off without mentioning Palumbo Drive.

For those that weren’t there or haven’t seen the news, someone at the Commission made an almighty mistake (that's the G-rated version) by making a spoof agenda item that proposed the new service road be named “Palumbo Drive”.

Now everyone who has ever worked in an office environment knows this sort of thing goes on, and in normal circumstance the prank stays within a limited number of people and nobody gets hurt.  Not this time.  It was published along with all the other agenda items in a publically available folder which was at the sign-in desk for all to see!

Assistant Administrator David Brewer took the fall for it by admitting it was his staff that made the mistake but I’m convinced that the concept of the “joke” started a lot higher than that.

Of course our Councilman wasn’t there to defend his name as he is recovering from surgery but laughter is often the best medicine, and to prove we can do anything better than they can I give you the EBay Listing to end all EBay Listings…  Get well soon Gus.