Abby meeting draws a crowd

I dropped into the Abby of Aberdeen hearing at City Hall yesterday for about 45 minutes or so. Abby lost, but quite the crowd was assembled. Some were there for Abby, some for other reasons.

It was like a Who’s Who of City Hall followers. There was one-time mayoral candidate Brian Alexander, one-time City councillor Arjun Singh, one-time council candidate and all-round ship-disturber Kevin Millership (back in town after a lengthy absence fighting the good fight on fluoridation elsewhere), one-time councillor Grant Robertson, one-time candidate Kevin Skrepnek, and full-time pesticide crusader Diane Csezewski.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Robertson, who has been keeping a low profile these past 10 years, showed up sporting a doggy hat and various paraphernalia including fake dog poop. I’m not sure whether he’s for Abby, or against her.

Anyway, he hasn’t had much chance to dress up since — in an unparalled feat of poor taste — he showed up at an all-candidates forum in 1999 wearing a pair of women’s red panties on his head, and refused to apologize all the way to election day, in which he paid soundly for his misplaced sense of humour.

I fell victim to some electronic incompetence during the meeting when I couldn’t get my cell phone to turn off, drawing a good-natured reprimand from Mayor Milobar, who asked all former mayors to turn off their phones.

I thought I had, until Coun. John O’Fee texted me, the thing rang, and I banished it into the care of the mayor’s secretary until I was ready to leave the meeting. O’Fee — who spends much of his time in the meetings doing things on his Blackberry —obviously just couldn’t resist.

Anyway, bottom line is Abby is grounded to her own yard, on a chain, unless owner Ed Odgaard can put up a fence or otherwise make sure this public danger of a Golden Retriever ceases and desists from licking school children to death as they pass by.

“This is insanity,” muttered one Abby supporter loudly, drawing a rebuke from the mayor that was even stronger than the one I received.