Cedar Hollow Forms Oversight Committee to Oversee Its Oversight Committees, Appoints Recycling-Center Raccoon as Tie-Breaker

CEDAR HOLLOW – In a 4-to-3 vote that required two recesses and one laminated flowchart, the Cedar Hollow Town Council on Tuesday created an Oversight Committee Oversight Committee, a nine-member body charged with overseeing the town’s existing oversight committees, none of which could immediately say who was overseeing them.

‘We have an oversight committee for the cancellation desk, an oversight committee for the weather kiosk, and an oversight committee for the suggestion box,’ said Councilwoman Priya Nair, who sponsored the measure. ‘What we did not have was oversight of the oversight. That gap has now been overseen.’

The new committee’s first act was to request interim reports from all eleven existing oversight committees. Each committee responded by requesting an interim report from the new committee, a paperwork loop the town clerk, Marla Denby, described as ‘self-sustaining’ and ‘frankly, kind of beautiful.’

Deadlock arrived early. The committee split 4-to-4 on its first motion, whether to meet on Tuesdays, after its ninth member, a resident seat reserved under the town charter for ‘an unaffiliated stakeholder,’ went unfilled for the third consecutive month. Rather than leave the seat empty, the council appointed the raccoon from the recycling center, whose qualifications include nightly attendance at the facility and, in the words of Mayor Tom Okafor, ‘a complete indifference to lobbying.’

‘He has never accepted a gift, never taken a position on surge pricing, and cannot be reached by email,’ Okafor said. ‘By Cedar Hollow standards, that is an ethics record.’

The raccoon, appearing through the recycling center’s chain-link fence, declined to comment but knocked over a bin that several attendees interpreted as a vote for Tuesdays.

Not everyone is persuaded. Resident Daryl Voss, who operates the town’s Subscription Cancellation Desk and is himself overseen by two of the committees, called the appointment ‘the first sensible decision this council has made,’ before asking whether the raccoon would also need a cancellation policy.

The Oversight Committee Oversight Committee will deliver its first report on the other committees in ninety days, at which point the council is expected to form a committee to review the report. The raccoon’s term is one year, renewable upon continued indifference.