Is it blasphemy to speculate that no one, save the nine members of the Seattle City Council, is alarmed by the stocky stature of the dais in the new city council chambers? Sure, the new platform may not be the most attractive structure--squatty, backed by a perforated wall of particle board and flocked in a metal sheathing that resembles hammered tin--but it is, in scale with the rest of the new City Hall, appropriately diminutive, even cute. If you squint a little, you can imagine the council as a small squadron of sullen gray Muppets, their heads the only objects visible above the little stage.

Well, the council finally got tired of looking silly. Last week, it spent $19,000 to elevate the platform, shutting down council chambers for three days straight and inconveniencing handfuls--nay, dozens--of online council-meeting watchers.

But even with its newly elevated stature, the council couldn't keep from looking silly. As late as Monday, as council members scrambled to meet a late-afternoon deadline to move the monorail right-of-way agreement off their agenda, the negotiations threatened at every moment to disintegrate into chaos. (Eventually, the council approved the historic agreement with only minor tweaks and changes, paving the way for the two monorail teams to submit their bids this summer--just in time for council president Jan Drago's weeklong vacation.) At one point, monorail antagonist Richard McIver burst out that he was "disgusted" at the way Drago was shepherding the approval process; at another, monorail opponent Richard Conlin derided the entire debate as "random."

And that weirdness doesn't even account for the pandemonium that erupted after the council meeting, which Drago inadvertently adjourned without putting the agreement up for a vote. The snafu had council aides scrambling after their departing bosses, many of whom had to be shuttled, bemused, back into council chambers to resolve the issue. Then, after the council worked through that confusion, anti-monorail leader Henry Aronson cornered Peter Steinbrueck behind the short wall that divides the council dais from the public. A brief shouting match, which ensued when Aronson hissingly impugned Steinbrueck's credibility as a leader, ended when Steinbrueck bellowed, "You go ahead and get yourself elected and then you can make the decisions, Henry."

Given the council's near-obsessive focus on the monorail of late, you could forgive it for failing to fight for a perennially threatened city program: the Car Recovery Clinic, which helps people whose cars were unfairly impounded. Last week, with only five days' notice, the city yanked the clinic's $75,000 budget, leaving dozens of clients without legal assistance. Officially, the decision came down from the mayor; unofficially, some clinic supporters were speculating that City Attorney Tom Carr's office had a hand in the project's untimely demise. Carr adamantly denies knowing in advance that the mayor's office planned to spike the contract.

barnett@thestranger.com