MILLBROOK COUNTY — The Leftover Candy Economic Stabilization Task Force’s second meeting took an unexpected turn Tuesday when Commissioner Gerald Mims floated a proposal to issue municipal bonds backed by the county’s 2.3-ton Halloween candy surplus, then spent the remaining forty minutes of the session walking it back.
“It was a thought experiment,” Mims insisted afterward, loosening his tie in the Annex parking lot. “I said the words ‘candy-backed securities’ the way a man says ‘what if we trained the pigeons’ — as a joke, to lighten the mood. Then the county attorney started taking notes, and I watched my joke become a line item.”
According to meeting minutes, Mims proposed that the county securitize its holdings of 41,000 miniature chocolate bars and 19,000 fruit chews, issuing “Sweet Bonds” to investors at a fixed rate of return “denominated in chocolate.” Task force member Denise Kowalski, Deputy Director of Post-Holiday Logistics, asked whether the bonds would be backed by the candy’s market value or its “sentimental break-room value,” a question Mims described as “devastating and fair.”
The proposal’s undoing came during the risk assessment, when the county’s risk manager pointed out three structural flaws: chocolate melts, fruit chews have no secondary market, and the entire reserve could be depleted “by a single well-attended office birthday party.”
“Liquidity,” the risk manager said, “is not the problem. The problem is edibility. An asset your auditors can eat is not an asset. It’s a snack.”
The task force voted unanimously to table the bond proposal “indefinitely, or until chocolate becomes a precious metal.” In its place, members approved a more modest initiative: the county’s first Official Candy Exchange, a Saturday-morning swap meet where residents may trade unwanted candy under the supervision of “a licensed confectionery mediator.”
Early exchange rules prohibit trading “more than three Almond Joys per person per session,” a cap Kowalski called “the only regulation the public has ever demanded.” All trades must be recorded on Exchange Form CE-2, and anyone attempting to trade raisins will be “escorted to the exit with dignity.”
Mims closed the meeting with a statement for the record: “Let the minutes show that the Commissioner of Seasonal Surpluses retracts the phrase ‘candy-backed securities,’ apologizes to the county attorney’s notepad, and moves that we never speak of this again.” The motion passed 9–0. The county attorney was seen smiling.
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