Here’s our alternative list of city council goals for this year

If they could be perfectly honest, the goals of the Thousand Oaks city council members might be: •City council meetings will henceforth have a sergeant at arms, a slightly trigger-happy and unstable individual who’s always armed. •Anyone who exceeds the speaker’s time limit at a council meeting will get a mild electric shock for the first offense, a shot of pepper spray for the second offense and be stun-gunned for a third offense. •To make it more interesting, the green, yellow and red timing device will be eliminated. Instead, a loud gong will go off when the time limit has been exceeded and the punishment will be administered immediately. This will drastically increase the number of viewers as the city breaks new ground in broadcasting by combining reality TV with public affairs programming. •Anyone who accuses a council member of being in the hip pocket of developers will be taken out and shot (nothing serious, just a flesh wound). •Anyone who accuses a council member of being a tree-hugger will be forced to sleep three nights without a campfire or sleeping bag in an open-space wilderness area (one with plenty of wildlife, including mountain lions, rattlesnakes, skunks and opossums). •Anyone who appears at a city council meeting to protest a new public park or other recreational facility will be tattooed with NIMBY across his or her forehead. •Any person using more than two speaker cards per council meeting will be compelled to write 500 times on a chalkboard: “I am a blabbermouth gadfly who interferes with city council business.” •Council members won’t be compelled to keep a straight face if referring to “affordable housing” when the rent or mortgage payments exceed $3,000 a month. •The council will pass a new law in which the city can seize the SUV of any parent caught driving their child to school if their home is less than three blocks from school. If the same parent is also caught driving a youngster to school while drinking a cup of Starbucks or talking on a cellphone, the city can also take possession of the family’s luxury car.

On the serious side, the council and city staff deserve credit for a job well done on setting priorities. Now it’s time to accomplish them.