Election season brings out the liars in Margaret’s Cove. As your mayor, I deal with all kinds of people year-round. I feel it is my duty to rebut some of their accusations as we approach the coming vote.
There is some talk that I have scared away the fish in the bay. This is goofy. Fish do not fear like you or I. They are little creeps that munch through the water all day. There’s nothing in there to scare. True, there are fewer fish, but this is because of the terrible poisons that we dump endlessly into their habitat. In a perfect world, we’d stop doing that. Have any of you picked up a newspaper lately? This isn’t exactly a perfect world.
It’s well-known around Margaret’s Cove that the chemical plant gives off a bit of a smell. Some of the thugs that show up to town council meetings have said that this has reduced tourism. True, there are fewer tourists, but I wouldn’t blame the smell. The chemical plant offers a wholly decent tour. The problem here is that these tourists are snobs. People from the city would rather go to an art gallery and look at photographs of chemical plants than drive out here and look at a real one. Take it up with them. I’m not paid to care about folks who don’t even live here.
The public park in Margaret’s Cove has seen better days. I’m the first to admit that. But also, blaming this decline on my brother’s chemical plant seems like a low blow. He has paid more than his fair share after the explosion for the cleanup and to help those children. And yet the children keep showing up to the council meetings, prodded on by cynical, injured parents. These little devils can’t vote but still want a free ride. So, I let the children know what I think, and in language they’d better get used to hearing. I dumped some plywood and tools on the lot, and that just started a whole new round of complaints. Get over yourselves.
Being your mayor is a terrible job. I doubt to the core of my being than anyone else could handle it. The real “avoidable disaster” I worry about waking up to is one of you people knocking on my door demanding this or that, as if I caused the town’s bankruptcy. I pray every day that my brother and I can find a buyer for the chemical plant and get out of this town. You and I know that is unlikely until the children stop complaining to every lawyer they see. I’ve asked the police to take these children on, but they’ve whined that the optics are “bad.”
Some of you have filed to run against me, but I threw your applications in the garbage. Each and every one of them were totally unqualified. One candidate is a teacher. Imagine a teacher trying to run a whole town! Our whole budget would go to playgrounds and apples. No dice. You’re all stuck with me for another few years. Let’s try to make this as painless as possible.
