It's no picnic at City Hall

When Gerard Couture was mayor, he decided to throw a little party for city workers.
The workday shindig, featuring hotdogs and a few minutes away from the grind, proved a hit among employees and perhaps helped create some new personal bonds that might have made the city government run a tad more smoothly.
That's hard to measure.
But a handful of city workers, all women, thought it was a morale booster that ought to be replicated. So they set to work on the planning for another pre-Memorial Day picnic that would be paid for by the workers themselves.
Everything was rolling along, with plans coming together and posters announcing the event appearing all over City Hall.
Then, suddenly, the posters vanished.
Nobody wanted to say on the record what happened, but they all said that Mayor William Stortz could explain.
Stortz said he didn't really know.
"It's not my picnic," he joked, adding that "some things unforeseen came up" that made it impossible to have the much-anticipated event. He didn't elaborate.
"I'm always willing to go to a picnic, and help out, too," the mayor said.
But there's no picnic to attend.
And by all accounts, except the mayor's, morale took a hit at City Hall.