The Great and Powerful Oz, dba the city of Eugene, wants to pretend it cares to listen to the public’s input on its Potemkin “Town Square” concepts. So, how would y’all like to see police surveillance trailers everywhere, and nobody allowed out in any town squares unless they’ve submitted applications and are granted personal written preauthorization from Colonel Jon Ruiz himself, to be carried at all times?

This interim measure would only be in effect till all city plebeians could be micro-chipped and their every movement tracked with electronic bar codes.

City loudspeakers should constantly play recordings of angry birds squawking and screeching in the town squares. Maybe add moats with crocodiles too. The penultimate act of the council can be to declare human existence itself a health emergency and put the whole city under a permanent curfew lockdown.

They should fill in all the city sidewalks with rip-rap and boulders at that time, and task squadrons of police with arresting anyone caught outside of a structure after sundown without their Ruiz permit. Council can declare EPD to be Ruiz’s lictors. 

The rubberstamp council can then officially abdicate, and vote that Colonel Ruiz be the de jure military Governor General of all Eugene, for life. He’s obviously such a very stable genius of high-quality opaque and autocratic leadership — the very best kingpin bureaucrat our local oligarchy can buy!

Who really cares about transparency and democratic values in their governments these days anyway? Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

Mike McFadden 

Eugene