Ken Jacobs, Rosalia’s Mayor, cried so much in his June newsletter that I’m sure he broke his pacifier. People are being mean to him. They’re bullies, real toughies, and just plain bad people crazy enough to expect him to follow the rules and act more like a mayor than a little king. These poor souls think they live in the United States, not the sovereign Kingdom of Jacobs.
He needs his pacifier and it’s not something you can just get off the shelf. Pacifiers are designed for the demands of whimpering children, not Ken’s industrial strength wailing. We’ll need to get our engineering firm on the problem. They’ll do some expensive studies and eventually arrive at some even more expensive recommendations. The new pacifier may be overkill, but Ken’s worth it and what would the other Mayors think if he didn’t have the finest pacifier? They may think their towns are better or something like that. Let’s look into grants too because this thing is sure to be pricey. The Department of Little Tyrants will give us $6,000 but we’ll have to cover the maintenance for the next 15 years. His pacifier will need yearly rebuilds, expensive parts when we can least afford them and, most importantly, regular sanitation so it doesn’t get an E.Coli contamination. We better place an order soon because inflation never sleeps. It’ll cost $96,328 if we wait a year. A levy may be the answer if we can fool the majority. Of course, if Ken makes us mad we may take the money for his pacifier and use it to fix his toothbrush instead. Hopefully it won’t come to that. We can always raise sewer rates 400% to cover any shortfall but we may still need to raise taxes outright. An air or sunlight tax would rake in tons of cash. That’s the creative thinking our Council excels at. Our maintenance staff can take care of his pacifier but we’ll have to give them a big raise first. That’s what Ken would do. We’ll give the office staff big raises while were at it because they may have to handle the paperwork. Ken would do that too. That’s being fiscally responsible in Rosalia. If you don’t like it you can move.
