City Commission - Candy Factory Episode

There are times when the Kissimmee City Commission meeting turns from an episode of an ordinary local government at work, into an absurd attempt by the script writers at Access Osceola to get a cheap laugh. Even though the WayneWho staff is basically immune to the feable quick laugh tactics put forth by the over staffed public information office (a.k.a. Access Osceola) for the City of Kissimmee, even we chuckled at this week's episode.

The WayneWho staff held tough during the power pointless presentation of the thrills of the high stakes competition and victory of the All America City award. The ability to pick a soundtrack and mix it with semi-action shots to make the application judging seem on par with the Super Bowl almost made us crack a smile, but in the end the ludicrous nature of the moment snapped us back into the reality of our surroundings.

During the next act, though, even our grumpy old staff could not hold back the laughter. The scene started with staff explaining that they needed direction from the commission (wait, it gets even funnier) on how the commission was going to decide funding for social services, if indeed they were going to fund them at all. The initial reaction of the commission was that the recommendation from staff looked good to them and that they would like to approve staffs plan.

After a couple of rounds of staff explaining that what they had put in the back-up was not a plan that should be voted on, the commission seemed to slip into an almost coma like state of confusion. Then the commissioners showed their true talents in the acting trade by debating on what criteria they would base the funding on, since they had already removed any mechanism for finding out the needs of the programs by getting rid of the United Way funding process and by not creating some type of application process in the interim. Those decisions had left the commission with no way to find out what programs were requesting what funding, or what services the citizens of our community might need in the coming year. (This is now the climax of the humorous skit as devised by Access Osceola to keep you watching.) To bypass the logical step of creating an application process, many of the commissioners decided to say out loud that they thought it would be best to base the future needs of our community on the needs from last year. Wow. The punchline hidden in the skit being that gas was only around $2.45 last year and that with an oil, housing, credit, job, economy, and overall life crisis facing our nation today, last year's plans should do the trick on any funding decisions. Hysterical!

What was even more funny was the juxtaposition of the presentation of the All America Pageant award, followed by the "I Love Lucy-esque" discussion of the serious matter of social service funding. As one WayneWho staffer called it, "Pure Comedic Genius." Most of our staff has been holding out for the Pay-Per-View cage match between Commissioner Irizarry and Commissioner Gemskie, but the social services workshop might prove to be worth its weight in popcorn (Tums if you are one of the social service programs, or might be in need of one of them).

All we can say is that if this type of brilliant script writing does not fix Access Osceola's little ratings problem, nothing will. (Maybe Access Osceola should run the tapes of Commissioner Irizarry trash talking churches and explaining how churches need to be charged like businesses because basically they are businesses, and that they should be shut down if they don't comply. That should keep the viewers tuned in for sure!)

Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do.
...Ricky Ricardo