"And Don't You Forget It!"

Mayor Jones has been strangely serene in his dealings with Council lately. I had begun to think that having a new wife and child had brought him some new perspective and a kinder, gentler manner vis-a-vis his fellow elected officials. Apparently not.

At last night's City Council meeting, Councilman Cubert Smith joined the ever-growing list of city council members that have been publicly chastised by the mayor. Read the whole story in this morning's Gazette here.

Now to be fair, Cubert Smith is an odd nut: I mean that in the most endearing way possible. He is an artist (which automatically qualifies him as quirky) and ran unsuccessfully for City Council many, many times before finally succeeding in the last election. And for him to try to attend a meeting between the mayor and his employees is a little out of the ordinary, but so is the mayor's vehemently denying him access to the meeting. But Smith did not deserve the cold-blooded attack at the end of last night's meeting, when Mayor Jones publicly scolded the councilman for writing him a "pretty nasty letter" calling into question his exclusion at the mayor's meeting with police officers.

I have personally read other letters that the Mayor has characterized as "nasty" and I have to say that Mayor Jones must have a different definition of "nasty" than I do. I have also read letters that the mayor has written to other council members and they seemed to me to be very nasty.

According to the Gazette:

Smith said he didn’t come to the meeting to be adversarial. He said he was
appointed to a council committee on employees and a black caucus, and allowed to
meet with employees.
“Well you’re not,” Jones said. “I want you to understand
that. You’re not going to intrude on meetings of mine, and don’t you forget
it.”

Anyone who has observed Mayor Jones for very long knows that this was Cubert Smith's induction into the "Danny Jones Political Enemies Club", a club whose membership continues to grow and grow.

Welcome aboard, Cubert!