Having watched quite a bit of last night’s roughly eight-hour Albuquerque City Council, my overall feeling is that anyone attending, participating, or conducting anything close to the whole thing should get today off from work. And maybe a nice cuddle pillow to clutch while decompressing for at least eight hours in a comfy place.

It is thus particularly ironic that a significant portion of last night’s democracy pageant concerned attempts at various times to help, house, criminalize, and farcically wish away homelessness. Better Burque’s primary role is to discuss transportation matters, and while we are notoriously bad at “staying in our lane,” your humble blogger this morning just doesn’t have the oomph needed to anywhere close to fully express my alternating frustration, appreciation, and outrage regarding the Council’s actions last night (and for seemingly ever) on the subject.

We’re gonna stick with transportation, and extend that already big filter to include the roughly two hours spent last night hemming, hawing, and apologizing for the City’s Aviation Department and its ludricrous RFP “process” in determining who gets some vendor spots at the soon-to-be-finally renovated Sunport.

Yeah, we’re fast-forwarding simply to roadway stuff and that means fast-forwarding through seven hours and forty-nine minutes of meeting videotape to the less than ten minutes spent “discussing” and approving the new City bike plan we brought up here last week. I put “discussing” in quotes because NOBODY was really up for talking about anything, bike plan included, at past-midnight early this morning. Also, everyone knew it was going to be approved when the meeting started, eight hours earlier.

Democracy after seven hours and forty-nine minutes is kinda like the fourth, fifth, and sixth donut. What seemed exciting and tasty a few hours/doughnuts back is now indigestible. Sponsor Councilor Baca understandably appeared to be on his sixth donut while introducing the Plan and urged its support with an equally understandable seventh donut staring at you from the otherwise empty donut box gusto.

A few sleepy donut burps later, the Plan was approved unanimously. The beyond late hour was helpful in one regard: Councilor Sanchez, who gives one the distinct impression he not only has never ridden a bike but really would prefer they were all vaporized into non-existence, lacked the energy at past-midnight to pontificate comments (badly) in the form of a question for nearly as long as he would have at, say, 6:30 PM.

As somebody famously said and life keeps reminding us, democracy is the worst form of government except for all other the forms humans have tried. Last night’s marathon Council session was an exquisite, at many times trying, showcase of this axiom in oft-heartbreaking practice. Given we’re all currently wondering what might happen if our country loses this form of government, last night’s session was chock full of decisions that very well might have been decided differently in a more autocratic setting.

So yeah, I’m concluding the eight hours last night was worth it, devil you know and all that, with the caveat that we also reserve our inalienable right to DVR and fast-forward democracy when needed. Sincere appreciation to all who attended, participated, and/or conducted last night’s meeting in its entirety. Here’s your cuddle pillow and enjoy your day off.