New ‘Somewhere Method’ allows elected officials to cut hundreds of thousands of dollars without identifying anything they actually want cut

MANDEVILLE — After weeks of searching for ways to reduce city spending, Councilman-at-Large Scott Discon has unveiled a groundbreaking new approach to municipal finance that allows elected officials to cut hundreds of thousands of dollars from a budget without identifying a single thing they actually want cut.

Known informally as the “Somewhere Method,” the system begins with a city council member deciding how much money the city should stop spending. Determining where that money will come from is then delegated to someone who works there.

The approach could dramatically simplify government budgeting, which traditionally involves the tedious process of examining individual expenditures during the budget hearing process, determining which are unnecessary and voting to reduce or eliminate them.

Under the Somewhere Method, none of that is required.

“We should be saving some money somewhere,” Discon said during an Aug. 13 budget hearing.

City officials initially believed “somewhere” referred to a specific location within the proposed FY2027 operating budget.

It did not.

Councilman unveils revolutionary budget plan: Cut $300,000 from ‘somewhere’

After promising to develop a list of potential savings, Discon returned to subsequent budget hearings but acknowledged he could not identify any major operating expenses that should be eliminated.

“I don’t see where we could make any big change,” he said Aug. 19.

That apparent obstacle was overcome during the council’s final budget hearing Aug. 27, when Discon discovered that identifying actual expenditures was unnecessary.

Instead, he proposed simply removing $300,000.

“It’s just a general $300,000,” Discon explained when pressed for details.

The breakthrough immediately eliminated one of the most difficult parts of city budgeting: knowing what the city will no longer purchase.

Economists said the implications could extend far beyond Mandeville.

Rather than spending months debating appropriations, Congress could theoretically balance the federal budget by subtracting several trillion dollars from the bottom of a spreadsheet and asking the executive branch to work out the particulars.

City creates ‘Department of You Figure It Out’

Asked which operating expenses should be reduced to produce the $300,000 savings, Discon explained that determining what to cut should be left to the administration.

“It’s up to the administration to figure out how they wanna divvy that up amongst their line items,” he said.

“I don’t wanna be the one to make that decision.”

City officials subsequently established the Department of You Figure It Out, a new administrative division responsible for determining what elected officials intended after they have finished voting.

The department’s duties will include locating unspecified savings, identifying expenditures council members meant to eliminate but did not identify, and translating phrases such as “generally,” “somewhere” and “you know what I mean” into generally accepted accounting principles.

Its proposed mission statement reads simply:

“Whatever they meant.”

Funding for the new department has not been identified but is expected to come from somewhere.

Officials confirm operating and capital budgets remain on separate pieces of paper

The Somewhere Method encountered another complication when Discon suggested capital spending reductions as a way to offset recurring employee salary increases.

Planning Director Cara Bartholomew attempted to explain that the city’s operating and capital budgets are separate.

“You have to stay in the same piece of paper,” Bartholomew told him.

City officials have since confirmed through extensive testing that this is true.

Finance employees reportedly placed the operating budget on one side of a conference table and the capital budget on the other, removed $300,000 from the capital document and waited approximately 45 minutes.

No money appeared in the operating budget.

A second experiment produced the same result.

Officials are now developing a mandatory training program for elected officials tentatively titled “The Two Pieces of Paper.”

The introductory course will teach participants how to distinguish between money used for recurring expenses, such as employee salaries, and money used for one-time capital expenditures.

An advanced course, “Next Year Is Another Year,” will address why eliminating a one-time drainage project does not permanently finance an employee’s annual salary.

Officials stressed that participants must successfully complete The Two Pieces of Paper before enrolling in Somewhere II.

Search continues for $300,000 believed hiding somewhere in city budget

Meanwhile, an intensive search for the $300,000 entered its second week Wednesday.

City employees have searched departmental budgets, filing cabinets, desk drawers and several suspicious-looking spreadsheets.

Public Works crews checked storm drains.

Mandeville police searched underneath the council dais.

Finance employees used Ctrl+F to search the proposed budget for “$300,000,” “somewhere” and “general.”

Nothing has been recovered.

Discon nevertheless remained confident the money exists.

“I don’t have to back it up with anything more than the fact that I think we’re still overspending,” he said during the final hearing.

Officials said that statement represents another important component of the Somewhere Method known as Presumptive Appropriation Theory, under which the existence of unnecessary spending can be established by believing strongly that unnecessary spending exists.

The technique eliminates the antiquated accounting requirement that numbers correspond to other numbers.

Discon supports employee raise, votes against employees receiving it

The chairman demonstrated another innovation later that evening.

Discon joined the council in voting to increase the proposed employee cost-of-living adjustment from 1% to 2.8%.

He then voted against the operating budget containing the 2.8% raise.

Municipal scholars initially believed the two votes were contradictory but later determined they represented an advanced application of what is now being called the “Discon Doctrine.”

Under the doctrine, an elected official may support a government expenditure while simultaneously opposing the legislation necessary for the government to make that expenditure.

The doctrine could significantly expand the range of positions available to elected officials.

A council member could support road construction while voting against purchasing asphalt, support police officers while opposing police payroll, or support Christmas while voting against Dec. 25.

Asked whether the doctrine could eventually permit a council member to vote both for and against the same budget simultaneously, researchers said the mathematics remain theoretical, citing the “Schrödinger’s Budget” thought experiment.

City officials nevertheless praised the council for ultimately adopting the FY2027 budget and ending weeks of hearings.

At press time, the missing $300,000 had still not been located, although investigators said they remain confident it is somewhere… or perhaps nowhere, simultaneously.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Mandevillain normally fabricates quotations attributed to elected officials for satirical purposes. In this story, we did not. Every quote attributed to an elected or city official above is real and was taken directly from Mandeville’s FY2027 budget hearings. We saw no reason to interfere — the resulting comedy practically wrote itself.

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Delayed audit, Girod Street wheelies and several prepared statements dominate city’s budget hearing

MANDEVILLE — Mayor Clay Madden assured the City Council that Mandeville remains financially sound despite a delayed annual audit that officials traced to fixed-asset records dating to the 1960s and at least one city asset whose original purchase price was listed in Confederate currency.

Councilman-at-Large and Council Chairman Scott Discon opened the hearing by reading from a prepared statement welcoming everyone to the hearing.

“As Mandeville’s councilman at large and your council chairman, I want to thank everyone for being here tonight as we undertake the important responsibility of reviewing the people’s budget,” Discon said from the prepared statement.

In a second prepared statement, Discon asked Councilman-at-Large Jason Zuckerman to lead the Pledge of Allegiance.

“I pledge allegiance …,” Zuckerman began without prepared remarks, briefly alarming the two citizens in attendance.

Much of the early discussion centered not on the proposed budget but on the city’s delayed annual audit, which officials said was complicated by an ongoing effort to reconcile decades-old fixed-asset records.

Finance officials said some of the records date to the 1960s, when municipal accounting standards apparently consisted largely of writing “city stuff” on a piece of paper and putting it in a drawer.

Among the assets still being reconciled are three typewriters, a mimeograph machine, two desks last seen during the Johnson administration and a 1967 backhoe that was apparently depreciated for 43 years as “miscellaneous.”

Officials also said the city may own a mule.

“We haven’t found the mule,” Madden said. “But until the auditors tell us otherwise, we have to assume it’s still an asset.”

“Trader Joe’s is now open,” Madden added.

Madden, who arrived several minutes late to the city’s budget hearing after getting stuck behind a group of teenagers riding wheelies down Girod Street, said the administration inherited many of the accounting issues and has been working methodically to correct them.

The mayor was temporarily unable to provide additional details because the relevant documentation was stored in a filing cabinet that had not been opened since the Apollo 11 Moon landing.

“As your councilman at large, I think the citizens of Mandeville deserve to know where their mule is,” Discon said in a prepared statement.

Zuckerman asked whether any of this would affect the proposed fiscal year 2027 budget.

“No,” Finance Director Jessica Farno said.

Zuckerman asked whether the city could then discuss the budget. Discon consulted his prepared statement. “Eventually,” he said.

The proposed budget projects the city’s unassigned General Fund balance at roughly 43% of annual operating expenditures, above the council’s recently adopted target range of 30% to 40%.

The disclosure raised the unusual prospect that Mandeville could enter the next fiscal year with slightly too much money.

Councilwoman Jill Lane sought clarification. “So a deficit would be bad, right?” Lane asked.

Farno said yes.

“And having money is good, right?”

Farno nodded in agreement.

“But having too much money is bad?”

Farno looked at the ceiling, then added, “Apparently.”

Lane nodded.

“OK,” she said. “I think I’m getting it.”

Discon fired back, saying the city’s financial position should not distract officials from their responsibility to complain about it.

“As Mandeville’s councilman at large, your council chairman and someone who takes very seriously the responsibility entrusted to me by the citizens of this community, I believe it is incumbent upon us to remain vigilant,” Discon said in a prepared statement.

Zuckerman, who was not absent, asked what specifically the council should be vigilant about.

The hearing then moved into a discussion of capital spending, including projects that will require the city to temporarily advance money before receiving reimbursement from outside sources.

Madden explained that the reimbursements could occasionally create timing differences in city financial reports.

He was 11 minutes late providing that explanation because a train was blocking Girod Street.

Mandeville does not have a railroad.

“It’s complicated,” Madden said.

Lane returned to the broader financial question.

“What if,” she said, “we just spend less money than we take in?”

The council recessed for 20 minutes while city officials investigated.

Upon returning, Farno confirmed that Lane’s proposal could, in theory, prevent a deficit.

“That’s essentially how a balanced budget works,” Farno said.

Lane smiled.

“I knew there had to be a way.”

In a prepared statement drafted during the recess, Discon praised the councilwoman for asking important questions.

“As your councilman at large and chairman of your Mandeville City Council, I have always believed that good government begins with asking difficult questions,” Discon read.

After nearly two hours of discussion, Zuckerman asked whether there were any remaining questions about the proposed FY2027 budget.

Discon shuffled several pages.

“As your duly elected councilman at large, chairman of the Mandeville City Council, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, longtime resident of this great community and the individual presently entrusted with possession of this gavel, I believe we have accomplished a great deal tonight,” Discon said in a prepared statement.

No additional questions were raised.

“As Mandeville’s councilman at large, your council chairman, the King of Sting, the Master of Disaster, and, most importantly, a citizen who cares deeply about the future of this community, I move that we adjourn,” Discon said in his final prepared statement of the evening.

The motion passed unanimously.

Lane asked whether that was good.

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Replacement attorneys assure court they did not use AI, simply forgot to lawyer

Firm says latest setback was produced entirely by actual people

NEW ORLEANS — Just months after replacing one legal team following a highly publicized courtroom dust-up involving artificial intelligence and hallucinated legal citations, LSU Health Foundation announced Wednesday it has begun searching for a third set of attorneys after its replacement counsel managed to suffer a legal setback the old-fashioned way.

Unlike the previous attorneys, whose legal research was criticized for allegedly citing court opinions that existed only in the digital imagination of artificial intelligence, officials stressed the latest mishap was achieved entirely through authentic human effort.

“We want to be perfectly clear that no AI chatbots were involved in this one,” a spokesperson said. “Every procedural misstep was handcrafted by experienced legal professionals using only natural intelligence.”

The latest development comes after a federal appeals court dismissed the Foundation’s appeal in the long-running Sucette Harbor litigation involving the City of Mandeville and Councilman-at-Large Jason Zuckerman. The dismissal stemmed from a procedural filing failure rather than the merits of the underlying dispute, prompting legal experts to describe the outcome as “an unfortunate reminder that deadlines are more than gentle suggestions.”

Foundation officials declined to elaborate on exactly how the filing went sideways, saying only that “the calendar remains under internal investigation.”

Reached for comment, members of the Foundation’s former legal team appeared almost relieved.

“Look, our citations may have been fictional,” one former attorney said. “But at least we filed them on time.”

Another added, “It’s comforting to know that artificial intelligence hasn’t replaced human attorneys. Some mistakes are still proudly made by people, just not us.”

Sources familiar with the Foundation’s attorney search said interviews for a third legal team will now include several rigorous screening questions, including:

• Can you distinguish real court opinions from imaginary ones?
• Do you own a calendar?
• If a deadline appears on that calendar, what do you do?
  

The Foundation also announced several reforms intended to restore confidence in its outside legal representation, including mandatory Outlook reminders, Google Calendar invitations, sticky notes attached to computer monitors, and a decorative wall calendar featuring motivational courthouse photography.

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Officials insist typo on signage was intentional and no they are not stupid

MANDEVILLE — Saying the revisions would eliminate any remaining uncertainty over acceptable behavior at the Mandeville Trailhead, the City Council unanimously adopted an ordinance Thursday expanding the list of prohibited activities and establishing what officials described as “more precise” hours of public use.

The ordinance amends Section 13-15 of the city code, replacing the previous list of prohibited activities with an updated set of regulations that city officials said more accurately reflects the council’s vision for appropriate Trailhead conduct.

While the ordinance continues to prohibit the use of roller blades, skateboards, bicycles and electric bicycles, council members agreed the code needed additional clarity in several other areas.

Under the revised rules, it is now unlawful to:

Use roller blades (men only).
Use skateboards.
Use bicycles and electric bicycles.
Drive golf carts.
Sit for too long.
Stand with legs too wide.
Walk lackadaisically
Stretch excessively.
Ask if it’s hot enough for you.
Lean on things.
High-Five.
Chew gum.
Wave with both hands (men only).
Wear Lycra (over 40 only).
Wear shoes, except those with white soles.
Wear fanny pack.
Pass intestinal gas.

“I was getting approached by people upset that we needed to do more,” Councilman-at-Large Scott Discon said. “I as your councilman at large — because I represent everybody and got more votes than the others — felt we needed to at least do something to show the people that we’re trying.”

Councilman-at-Large Jason Zuckerman had a slightly different take even though he supported the ordinance. “Are we just sticking rules in the mattress that we’ll never use?” Zuckerman asked.

“Nobody wants to see men my age wearing Lycra or fanny packs, true, but I don’t recall a single complaint about golf carts doing wheelies under the pavilion. I tried doing a wheelie in my golf cart once — it’s impossible.”

Karen Killjoy, founder and president of Mandevillians Opposed to Madden (MOM), praised the council for “finally taking a meaningful step toward making the Trailhead slightly less enjoyable.”

“People have been high-fiving, chewing gum and wearing suspiciously dark-soled shoes for years,” Killjoy said. “Frankly, the city waited too long to act.”

Mandeville resident Tommy Delabreze, 60, who spoke at the meeting, said the new rules are too confusing and conflict with those of the Tammany Trace.

“This is totally ridiculous now. If I wanna walk lackadaisically, I ought to be able to do just that. I’m an American,” Delabreze said.

“And suppose I possess a fanny pack but don’t actually wear it? Does that count?”

Council members also approved a revised operating schedule intended to provide greater consistency for Trailhead visitors. Under the new regulations, hours of operation will vary by day:

Monday: 7:04 a.m. to 9:37 p.m.
Tuesday: 6:58 a.m. to 8:12 p.m.
Wednesday: 11:42 a.m. to 2:16 p.m.
Thursday: 7:00 a.m. to 8:58 p.m.
Friday: 7:00 a.m. to 10:01 p.m.
Saturday: 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. (odd-numbered only)
Sunday: Subject to weather conditions.

Officials acknowledged the expanded ordinance would not fit on the existing Trailhead signs and said updated signage would instead summarize the regulations while encouraging visitors to review the complete ordinance before entering city property.

The signage itself received considerable attention during the meeting after several residents questioned why recently installed Trailhead signs instructed visitors to “follow and follow” the rules.

City officials rejected suggestions that the duplicated phrase was a typographical error.

“The second ‘follow’ was added intentionally,” officials explained. “The first ‘follow’ asks residents to obey the rules. The second ‘follow’ reminds them that we’re serious.”

Officials said the city will continue evaluating the effectiveness of the signage and, if compliance fails to improve, future revisions will include additional “and follow” statements.

“If necessary,” one official said, “we’re fully prepared to go to four follows.”

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Group scrambling for replacement grievances after administration addresses issues they wanted to complain about in 2028

Seeking injunction before they exhaust remaining campaign issues

MANDEVILLE — Calling the situation “completely unacceptable,” members of M.O.M. (Mandevillians Opposed to Madden) held an emergency strategy session recently after Mayor Clay Madden and the City Council addressed another issue the organization had previously thought would make Madden unpopular.

“This has become a serious threat to our mission,” a MOM spokesperson said. “Every time we identify a problem, they keep trying to solve it. We’re running out of things to complain about.”

Madden, briefly interrupting production of his latest “Look What We Built” walking video, responded with, “Have you heard Trader Joe’s opens this week?”

Group seeks injunction

Unable to identify a crisis equal to those they had recently lost, members voted unanimously at their weekly meeting at Starbucks to ask the Louisiana Attorney General to immediately prohibit Madden and the City Council from solving any additional problems until MOM finds other things to complain about.

“We’re simply asking for a temporary injunction,” MOM president Karen Killjoy explained. “If this administration and council insists on fixing everything we’ve complained about, local opposition may cease to exist altogether, and that is a threat to democracy.”

State Attorney General Liz Murrill told reporters that while she may be known for her zest in municipal correspondence, she has no actual authority to issue any type of injunction. “I’m not sure who told them that,” she said.

Minimum Fund Balance

The next order of business before ordering scones was addressing the recent adoption of a minimum fund balance policy. Recently-adopted policy prevents the council from approving a budget that dips the unassigned fund balance below 30% of operating expenditures.

“For years we argued the city needed to stop spending from the pre-Madden surplus we took from the people,” one MOM member recalled. “Then they went out and adopted a law mandating a surplus. Nobody asked them to actually do it. What assholes.”

Killjoy said the only remaining option for them regarding this issue is to complain that the council’s selected minimum fund balance figure is way too low, no matter how big it might actually be.

“We think we can still salvage this, just as long as we can avoid saying what we think the minimum should be,” she said.

“How much should it be? Hell, we don’t know, we just have to say it needs to be a lot bigger than whatever they say it should be. It’s going to be a challenge.”

Structurally Balanced Budget

For years, critics argued the city should stop relying on one-time revenues to support recurring expenditures and instead the mayor should propose a structurally balanced budget.

But on June 30, Madden, fresh from a walking tour of Harbor Field’s new bathrooms, released what even long-time critics are calling a structurally balanced budget.

Killjoy said, “It never occurred to us that he would actually do it. We thought it would be our ‘forever’ issue. What a gut punch.”

The MOM spokesperson said they are brainstorming ideas on how they can salvage budgeting as a campaign issue for 2028.

“We’re hoping that with enough social media pressure and AI-generated memes that make people look fat, gay or kissing, we can guilt Madden into cutting the employee 10% retirement contribution. This could make people hate him, but then again, it could make a lot of other people like him more. Tough call.”

Moving forward

Having failed to identify any major unresolved crises, MOM voted to launch a new public awareness campaign under the slogan:

“Stop the Madden-ness.”

“We believe we have a whole slew of positives in Mandeville that could be spun into negatives with the right help from our crack social media team of Gen-Zers,” Killjoy told The Mandevillain.

MOM says they are encouraging residents to recognize the hidden dangers of balanced budgets, appreciating home values, highly ranked schools, thriving small businesses, low crime, and other quality-of-life indicators before it’s too late.

“Remember, in a town with a population of 13,000 people, we were able to get over 700 to vote for a candidate like Jeff Lyons. I think that speaks for itself,” Killjoy said.

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Zuckerman and Lane absent, leaving only Vogeltanz to be a pain in everyone’s ass

MANDEVILLE — City Council Chairman Scott Discon reportedly presided over the most productive and least stressful meeting of his tenure Thursday evening after discovering that the easiest way to eliminate parliamentary disputes is to simply not have enough council members present to create them.

With Councilman-at-Large Jason Zuckerman and District III Councilwoman Jill Lane absent, Discon was left with what political scientists are now calling “the perfect governing body” — three council members, no procedural battles, and absolutely nobody objecting to every sentence before it was finished. The graphic below proves their absence beyond a shadow of doubt.

Witnesses said Discon appeared visibly confused several times during the meeting after successfully completing entire thoughts without someone disagreeing with him.

“He kept looking over toward Jason’s empty chair like he was waiting for an objection,” one attendee said. “After about 20 minutes, I think he finally accepted that nobody was going to challenge his interpretation of Robert’s Rules or accuse him of violating parliamentary procedure.”

The evening was so uneventful that several controversial agenda items — including proposed changes to the council’s meeting rules and a vote involving short-term rental regulations — were simply postponed until enough council members were available to disagree with one another.

District II Councilman Kevin Vogeltanz told The Mandevillain that he didn’t call for a point of order all night because without Zuckerman there, Discon was calm and agreeable. “Hell, he might have actually sided with me against himself if I had. What’s the fun in that?” he said.

Experts agreed it was the most efficient solution the council has found to date.

“The chairman spent weeks preparing revisions to meeting procedures,” said one observer. “Then, by sheer coincidence, he discovered that the best way to avoid procedural disputes is to postpone discussing procedures.”

According to those in attendance, the meeting proceeded at an almost unsettling pace.

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I honestly thought I was in the wrong meeting.

— City Attorney Elizabeth Sconzert

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Agenda items involving festivals, races, engineering contracts, and personnel changes passed with little discussion. Robert’s Rules of Order reportedly remained closed for nearly the entire meeting, marking the first time the book had gone unused since being purchased.

Several audience members admitted the silence became uncomfortable.

“At one point nobody argued about what motion was actually on the floor,” City Attorney Elizabeth Sconzert said. “I honestly thought I was in the wrong meeting.”

The absence of Lane also produced unexpected efficiencies.

For the first time in recent memory, no one requested clarification on what a “yes” vote would mean in terms of postponing an item, overruling the chair, sustaining the chair, adopting an amendment, rejecting an amendment, amending the amendment, or simply asking whether the amendment was actually the amendment everyone was talking about.

Council members completed multiple procedural votes without first conducting what parliamentary historians refer to as the traditional, 10-minute “So… what exactly are we voting on?” discussion.

Meanwhile, Zuckerman’s empty chair reportedly maintained a perfect record of not disputing anything Discon had said, and the phrase “I’m going to tell you why you’re wrong about that” was not uttered a single time.

“It was honestly the most cooperative Jason has ever been,” Discon noted.

Following adjournment, he described the evening as “surprisingly relaxing” before cautioning that the experiment should not become routine.

“I wouldn’t want people getting the impression council meetings are supposed to go this smoothly… they’re not,” he said.

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New publication promises faster reporting by eliminating facts altogether

MANDEVILLE — Local residents welcomed the launch of The Mandevillain Thursday, saying they were excited to finally have a newspaper willing to publish stories without the unnecessary delays associated with confirming whether any of them actually happened.

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Reid Wakaushun said the publication was created after years of watching journalists waste valuable time checking facts, interviewing witnesses, reviewing public records, and confirming quotes before publishing.

“We asked ourselves a simple question,” Wakaushun said. “What if we just… didn’t?”

According to the newspaper’s mission statement, The Mandevillain is committed to delivering breaking news “well before reality has had an opportunity to catch up.”

Among the publication’s editorial standards:

• Anonymous sources are preferred because they do not exist.
• Quotes may be fabricated if they are funnier than the real ones.
• Every story will contain at least one sentence that makes readers stop and ask, “Wait… could that actually happen here?”
• Corrections will be issued only if the original story accidentally turns out to be true.
  

The launch has already drawn criticism from several residents, many of whom complained about stories they had not yet read.

“I haven’t looked at the website,” said one Mandeville resident. “But I’m already offended, and I wanted to get ahead of everyone else.”

The newspaper says it plans to cover local government, neighborhood drama, Causeway traffic, utility bills, bicycle controversies, Facebook arguments, and other subjects that “already seem fictional most days.”

At press time, The Mandevillain had announced its first editorial policy:

If you’re asking whether a story is true, you’ve completely missed the point.

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MANDEVILLE — A group of local teenagers issued a public apology Tuesday after witnesses reported they inadvertently obeyed every traffic law while riding bicycles through Old Mandeville for nearly four consecutive hours.

According to police, the riders came to complete stops at every stop sign, signaled each turn with proper hand gestures, rode single file when traffic approached, yielded to pedestrians at crosswalks, and refrained from performing wheelies along the Mandeville Trailhead and Lakeshore Drive.

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Editor’s Note: Out of respect for those parents who don’t want their kids shown doing the exact unlawful things they are actually doing in public, we grossly over-pixelated all teens. We also pixelated the alleged signs they allegedly disobeyed, or perhaps obeyed… we are not judging. They are great kids, we are certain of it.

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“It was embarrassing,” said 15-year-old Brayden Avantguere. “At one point we even waited for a car that had the right-of-way. We’re still trying to figure out how that happened.”

Residents described the behavior as “deeply unsettling.”

“I’ve lived here 30 years,” said Marigny Avenue resident Denise Maurantize. “When I saw a teenager actually stop at Girod Street before crossing, I assumed he was having a medical emergency.”

The Mandeville Police Department confirmed officers briefly considered conducting a welfare check after receiving multiple reports of bicyclists obeying traffic laws voluntarily.

“We’re pleased they know the rules,” one officer said. “We just didn’t expect to see them all at once.”

By late afternoon, witnesses reported conditions had returned to normal after about twenty riders performed wheelies through a stop sign, scaring one driver into peeing themselves while shaking their fist in the air mouthing, “You little fuckers!”

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MANDEVILLE — After months of analysis, consultants conducting an expensive, independent review of Mandeville’s water and sewer utility system released their preliminary findings Thursday, concluding that residents remain overwhelmingly opposed to paying utility bills.

City officials seemed relieved by the news.

The $1.2 million report by consulting firm Cheatem & Stealham Consulting concluded that customers dislike high bills, low bills, estimated bills, corrected bills, bills that arrive early, bills that arrive late, and bills that arrive exactly on time.

“We tested every scenario,” lead consultant Mark Holichee said. “No matter what we changed, people still preferred free.”

Researchers interviewed residents across the city and found broad consensus on one issue.

“I support quality infrastructure,” said Girod Street resident Susan Boullina. “I just think someone else should pay for it.”

City officials lauded the audit for validating their pre-existing beliefs, despite the potential political repercussions of advocating for it.

“It’s good to have independent verification,” one official said. “We didn’t want to rely solely on the last hundred years of human behavior.”

The consultants recommended no immediate changes other than continuing to send monthly bills “despite overwhelming evidence that nobody enjoys receiving them.”

A follow-up study is expected to determine whether residents also dislike property taxes. Preliminary results are described as “highly encouraging.”

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MANDEVILLE — In a surprise press conference Wednesday morning, a residential water meter in Old Mandeville publicly admitted it has been “mostly guessing” for years.

The meter, located outside a home near Lakeshore Drive, told reporters it initially intended to measure water usage accurately but eventually began making what it described as “educated estimates based largely on vibes.”

“I’d see someone watering their lawn and think, ‘That looks expensive,’” the meter said. “Other months I’d just spin a little slower because I was tired.”

The confession reportedly came after an independent audit of the city’s utility system prompted several meters to reconsider their professional ethics.

Residents reacted with mixed emotions.

“I knew it,” said one Sanctuary homeowner. “There is absolutely no way I used that much water during the month we were on vacation.”

City officials declined to confirm whether other meters might also be improvising but encouraged residents not to interrogate utility infrastructure.

Experts cautioned against jumping to conclusions, noting that most water meters continue to perform their duties faithfully and have never held a press conference.

As of press time, the meter had retained legal counsel and released a brief statement clarifying that any resemblance between its estimates and actual water usage “should be considered purely coincidental.”

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