Council Fails to Disclose Secret Plan to Overturn "Measure Acorn"

The Alameda Daily Noose and I were on the edges of our seats watching last night's City Council meeting, as we waited for the Council to reveal its secret plans to overturn Alameda's Squirrel-limiting "Measure Acorn." Way back on September 5, 2007, an alert reader informed us that the Council had formed a committee for the sole purpose of subverting Measure Acorn, colloquially known as "Measure Acorn," under the guise of cleaning up obsolete language in the City Charter. You can only imagine our disappointment at the Council for failing to come clean, despite a withering barrage of questions from representatives of Inaction Alameda!

The Alameda Daily Noose and I were so disappointed that we spent the whole night reviewing our tape of the meeting, yet closer scrutiny revealed nothing more than a mind-numbingly boring discussion of accountants' credentials and masculine and feminine pronouns. Of course, just as predicted in the Alameda Daily Noose, the committee favored the abolition of the Alameda Secret Police Fund, which we know will come as a huge disappointment to our good friend and loyal reader Marlene Verloren.

Finally, as the Alameda Daily Noose and I backed the tape up for what seemed like the hundredth time, we noticed something unexpected. Sure enough, when we turned up the volume and ran the tape slowly backwards, we could hear the Mayor utter the following phrase, clear as a bell:

"When 'Measure Acorn' comes, they run and hide their nuts."

Bingo! Obviously, the Mayor was using what sounded like bureaucratic gobbledygook to insert a coded secret message to her minions. On the face of it, the text seems to refer to the way the Squirrels are held in check by "Measure Acorn," but there must be some way to interpret it as a malevolent call to arms against the low tree density of our Treasured Island. The Alameda Daily Noose and I will continue listening to the suspicious backwards message until we've figured out how to twist it into the meaning that we know is there.