2009 grade: C
Some of the best times to be watching a council meeting are when Tim Outhit gets up to give a five-minute speech on how council is wasting time discussing a petty issue. “Then sit down and shut up!” yells Gloria McCluskey from across the room. “Your worship!” shouts Bill Karsten in meeting-cop exasperation. “You would know,” chuckles Dawn Sloane, and around it goes.
With a talent for dropping his voice an octave and sounding senatorial, Outhit certainly knows how to give a bombastic speech. But to what end? Mostly he argues that if only councillors would follow his wise lead, then everything would work out fine. It’s rather tiresome, really; Outhit should take a class in brevity from Darren Fisher’s School of Speechifying, and stop worrying that other councillors are wasting his precious time.
Otherwise, Outhit supported “tax reform.” Thing is, Outhit’s a smart guy, and while he may not agree with the anti- camp, he knows damn well their arguments are at least informed and, regardless, the “no” vote won. But here he is, time and again, popping up to give bombastic one-octave-lower speeches calling for “tax reform” to be reborn, and ridiculing the majority opponents as high-voiced mental defects. Someone cut off his mic, willya?
