Public sentiment is so fickle. One week people are ready to take on their government with pitchforks, buckets of tar and bags of feathers. The next week they seem to forget what happened to get them so riled up, only to return to it again with renewed ferocity months later. The city council will take up two issues tomorrow that have been through this cycle of anger and amnesia.

Galveston Housing Authority board members will come back before the council to explain again their plans to rebuild the island’s public housing. Rancor over the agency’s rebuilding plan seemed to die down during the summer, after the board agreed to drop the idea of building 1,000 new affordable housing units. Compared to the hundreds who signed an online petition opposing the rebuilding, few people attended meetings held in August to gather public input on the design of the three developments that will be rebuilt.

But now a small group of housing authority detractors is up in arms again. The agency reignited the passionate opposition after placing an ad in The Daily News soliciting people displaced by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina for a special housing voucher program offered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Agency opponents hold the program up as an example of the housing authority’s determination to “build an empire.” Several people told the council during its last meeting that it should conduct a thorough assessment of the housing authority’s operations and property management record before handing over the $25 million in disaster recovery funds it pledged toward the rebuilding.

Later in tomorrow’s meeting, City Manager Steve LeBlanc will ask the council to take up another issue that seemed to be resolved earlier this summer. The council agreed in June to give the Historic Galveston Strand Seaport Partnership $50,000 to help pay for a master plan of the downtown area. Although the merchant association started working on the project before Hurricane Ike, the city’s 300-member recovery committee included it as one of 42 priority projects in the recovery plan it submitted in April. I previously wrote several stories about the conflict between some members of the association, who would like to see Port of Galveston property used to build condominiums, and proponents of the port’s industrial uses.

But the master plan study was not really a controversial issue until county commissioners also agreed to contribute $80,000 to the study. Now, all of a sudden, it’s a big deal and Ted O’Rourke, the head of the International Longshoremen’s Association is accusing both the city and the county of funding a surreptitious attempt to take over the port. The issue has become so contentious that LeBlanc put it on tomorrow’s agenda to discuss again.

I wonder what issue will come back around in the next few months to be debated again.

This is how rumors get started: During the great smoking debate earlier this year, someone who wrote a letter to the editor said the city council surely would ban fatty foods next, since members were so concerned about islanders’ health. Lots of people didn’t read that carefully enough because we are STILL getting letters protesting the pending fatty foods ban. People are seriously dependent on their fast food!

But the ban is nothing more than a figment of hyperbole. The city council is not considering a ban on fatty foods. Seriously. You can eat as much trans fat as you want. No one’s going to stop you or give you a ticket. Chefs will not be hauled out of restaurants in handcuffs for serving mashed potatoes swimming in butter and swathed in gravy.

Although no one’s trying to ban fatty foods, I have heard some discussion around city hall about making gym memberships compulsory…

I really like the idea that the tomato and watermelon plants that popped up all over the island after Hurricane Ike came from seeds carried all the way across the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba. It gives the story I wrote earlier this week such a romantic flare. The pictures of women’s underwear handing from trellises supporting luscious fruit didn’t hurt either. Of course, I didn’t really believe the “seeds from afar” theory. But I did wonder where the plants came from and why melons and tomatoes were so common. No one I talked to before the story ran offered me a plausible explanation. Now I have to grudgingly acknowledge the seeds likely came from a much closer and decidedly less romantic locale than an island in the Caribbean.

Everyone who posted in our online forums after the story ran pointed to the city’s sewage system as the most likely source for the seeds. One poster dubbed the beautiful green melons now waiting to be harvested “fecal fruits.” Yuck. But after talking to city officials, I have to admit our readers are probably right. Workers at the city’s wastewater treatment plants often find gorgeous tomato plants growing on top of the piles of solid waste that build up at the bottom of the plants’ filtering tanks. When Ike’s storm surge came along, the water overflowed all of the treatment plants, taking everything that was in the tanks with it. The surge also backed up sewage lines full of… ahem … fertilizer on its way to the plant. That explains why the volunteer vines are so widespread and not just growing near the treatment plans. It also explains why so many of the plants came from fruits generally eaten raw. Cooking ruins seeds for replanting.

Again, yuck.

Most of our forum posters said they wouldn’t eat produce from plants that came into their yards from such a disgusting source. That was my reaction too, at first. But then I realized digestive tracts are nature’s most common source for spreading seeds. Granted, many of the plants that grow in the wild pass through birds, not humans. But the principle is the same. That’s actually how seeds are supposed to spread. There’s a reason why fruit tastes so good – it’s supposed to be eaten so it can be spread around!

I can’t imagine the watermelons would be dangerous to eat, as one poster suggested. I will admit it’s not really nice to think about where it came from while you’re serving it at your picnic. But if you don’t tell anyone, they’ll never know. Everyone I talked to who ate the tomatoes harvested earlier this year said they were delicious.

Although the people I interviewed most commonly reported having tomatoes and watermelons show up in their yards, those probably aren’t the only plants Ike spread around the island. City officials tell me marijuana is another common crop at the treatment plants. I can just hear it now: “I didn’t plant those pot plants in my back yard officer, honest! Ike did it.”

Last week’s city council meeting was another marathon that might have appealed to the insomniac political junkies looking for a late-night TV alternative to David Letterman. But not all of the council members enjoy staying up past 10 p.m.

Galveston’s city council is not the only one that meets late into the night. League City’s representatives often stay at city hall until close to midnight making policy. But the island’s politicians seem to resent their schedule more than their counterparts in the north county. Several council members have left meetings early in recent months, citing fatigue. The early desertions have occasionally put meetings at risk for premature endings as the quorum slips away one member at a time.

After Hurricane Ike, the council abandoned non-televised workshop meetings because it didn’t want to tie up city staff members whose time would be spent better working on recovery efforts. But during recent budget meetings, council members once again brought up the possibility of meeting in workshop in an attempt to cut down on the length of regular meetings, which don’t take staff away from their daytime duties but keep them up late into the night. Last week, City Manager Steve LeBlanc gave council members an extra incentive to make the change when he told them they could save $20,000 by reducing their TV time.

According to LeBlanc, the city’s budget for media services in 2007 was $37,000. In 2008 it was $76,000. For 2009-10, LeBlanc budgeted $95,000 for the service. The costs for the service haven’t increased, he said. But the time the crew has to spend at city hall recording the meetings has at least quadrupled since the new council members took office.

A majority of the council members are in favor of switching back to a workshop meeting format, based on the budget meeting discussions, LeBlanc said. But the one council member most opposed to workshops wasn’t at the budget meetings. Elizabeth Beeton told me last week she was opposed to any change that would take the council’s business off camera. She believes Galveston’s voters should see everything their representatives do when they meet. Of course the workshops are open to the public, but people rarely want to take time off work to attend. At least if the meetings are after work, people can come to watch in person or catch the coverage on Channel 16, she said.

What would you like to see the council do? Does the length of the meetings bother you? Would you rather have shorter meetings with the majority of the council’s discussion happening off camera? Or would you rather the council continue to hold just one meeting and pay to keep the entire show on the air?

Today’s city council agenda is long — 13 ordinances and resolutions and 15 action items. But one thing I expected to see, at least on the discussion list, is conspicuously absent. Council members will not be talking about the smoking ban today, despite appeals from the Galveston Restaurant Association that they reconsider the ordinance adopted last month.

Although a majority of restaurant owners supported the ban proposed by Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas, which prohibited smoking in bars and restaurants, they criticized the last-minute inclusion of patio and deck areas. None of the council members pledged to put the ordinance back on the agenda after listening to the restaurateurs blast the restrictions during the public comment section of the last meeting. But I thought several members seemed willing to take it up again in an attempt to make everyone happy.

I doubt the ban’s opponents are going to let the issue drop, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually persuade the council to agree to allow smoking in outdoor seating areas. But for now, they’ll have to wait two more weeks to find out if they’ve carried their point.

Part of my weekly routine will soon include stashing away rolls of quarters to feed to the parking meters outside the downtown building where I live. After months of delays, the city is finally ready to sign a contract for new parking meters to replace the ones flooded by Hurricane Ike last year. As part of the new parking program, City Manager Steve LeBlanc will ask the city council to raise parking rates to $1.25 and charge on Sundays. If his proposals pass, I’m going to have to start thinking about what I can cut out of my monthly budget to make up for the new expense.

I really enjoy living downtown. It’s something I always wanted to try, and I have to thank Ike in a round-about way for persuading my husband he could live without a garage or a yard to mow. Most of the appeal to living downtown is the easy access to restaurants and shops. I’m always anxious to support local businesses, and I know most of them have been frustrated by the parking free-for-all that allows contractors, employees and residents to hog spaces that could be used by customers. I’m glad for them that the new parking meters will be installed soon, but I wonder what affect the new rate increase and Sunday charge will have on visits to the area.

I also wonder whether the new meters will really have the desired effect of freeing up parking spaces. A lot of downtown residents don’t have anywhere else to park. We won’t be moving our cars, we’ll just be paying to leave them where they’ve been for the last year.

After I posted info about the changes on Twitter, one of my followers said he would no longer be going downtown to eat when he comes to the island. I’m not sure how faithfully he’ll stick to his vow, since I know how much he loves Mod Coffeehouse. But I wonder if he’s the only one who will have that reaction.

If you’re a frequent downtown visitor, will the new parking meters deter you from going to your favorite restaurant, coffee shop or boutique? If you’re a resident, do you plan to pay for a space in a long-term lot or will you just feed the meters in front of your building?

UPDATE: Evidently Frito-Lay's plans have changed since the city first announced the $1 million donation. The company is no longer going to build a restroom on the seawall. It will instead make improvements to Fort Crockett park, including benches and some sort of shade covers. I'm working on getting more information about the change of plans and will post another update when I have something to share. As far as I know, the company has not dropped its request to change the park's name.

I was pretty impressed last month when I heard Frito-Lay was going to give the city $1 million to install a solar-powered restroom on the seawall. But it turns out the potatoe chip company wasn’t making a donation so much as they were buying naming rights to Fort Crockett Park. As my colleague TJ Aulds reported in today’s paper, county commissioners are moving forward with plans to rename the park Sunchips Park at Fort Crockett, in honor of Frito-Lay and its donation. Nothing’s free, I guess. Before the name-change is official, commissioners must give the public a month to comment. It should be interesting to see what people think. If the response is overwhelmingly negative and commissioners decide not to make the change, I wonder whether Frito-Lay would take its eco-friendly bathroom somewhere else. That would be bad PR, for sure.

But since we’ve opened the door to offering naming rights as a way to raise recovery funds, I’ve been thinking about corporate sponsors for other things around the island.

The Galveston Park Board of Trustees is trying to raise money to build a new pavilion at Apffel Park, the only island beach where drinking is allowed. So how about, Apffel Park, brought to you by Anheuser-Busch? The rest of the seawall could be parceled out among popular non-alcoholic, beach-friendly beverages, like Gatorade, Coca-Cola or Capri-Sun. The city’s West End residents are complaining about how long it’s taking to get reconnected to the city’s sewer system, so how about Sanitary Sewer Improvements, brought to you by Charmin? The tagline could be, “taking the worry out of flushing.”

I think there’s real money to be made here. What other naming rights could the city take advantage of?