The LaFayette City Council will have its regularly scheduled December meeting tonight at 7:30. This should be an interesting session, featuring irritated restaurant owners / beer-advocates who feel their position was misrepresented in November’s vote along with residents grieving over council-ordained cemetery desecration.

Four families will be talking about the cemetery issue, and will probably bring (or mention) evidence shown in this TV report. Announced plans to create a new cemetery panel will hopefully come to fruition and accomplish something, but depending on the respective moods of council and crowd they may well be “delayed” to a future date to encourage forgetting about the issue. An e-mail we obtained indicates public works manager Vanessa Gilliam feels slighted and unfairly blamed for the whole cemetery issue, but she probably won’t speak at the meeting (and has so far refused to reply to our inquiries) since she values her job.

Hopefully someone at the meeting will ask the mayor why he felt it was a good idea to invade residents’ privacy by dumping household garbage mixed with ground cemetery flowers in a public place. Anyone with city garbage service should be concerned about potential identity theft after half the town and reporters from Chattanooga poked through trash looking for mementoes, keepsakes, and evidence from the cemetery desecration. (Any mysterious or unexplainable credit card charges should be forwarded [with my regards] to the mayor’s office.)

Key Koukos (Twins Pizza) and Miguel Santiago (Yan-Yadi-Yadi) will be speaking about beer and wine sales. Wayne Winters, whose months of insistence led to last month’s liquor vote, will also be speaking, and he assures us his quest will continue. Hopefully this time he’ll get a concession to actually vote for beer and wine instead of all liquor, but the council will probably dismiss all calls for beer sales by saying the people have spoken through their November vote not to allow sales of hard alcohol.

If last month’s standing-room-only special session about the cemetery is any indicator, this meeting should have a record turnout – so anyone desiring to get involved with either issue should come early. Guests not on the agenda won’t be allowed to speak officially, but silent witnesses still speak loudly if their numbers are large enough. Meeting guests who arrive by 7:15 will get a bonus treat: an opportunity to see the council make up reasons why a tattoo parlor shouldn’t move into the former Teddy D’s building a mile south of town on Hwy. 27.

Remember: be nice, be peaceful, but be present and alert. Whatever your issue, the best way to accomplish something positive for the city of LaFayette is to let its leadership know they’re being watched and will no longer be allowed to get away with underhandedness, double-speak, and cronyism.