In a terse and, at times, accusatory and vaguely threatening email to the North Vancouver Chamber of Commerce this week, Mayor Darrell Mussatto contended it was wrong for chamber officials to come out in support of a study into the nuts and bolts of potential amalgamation - particularly without running that by him first.
As if the chamber needed the mayors' permission to speak its mind or owes him one for supporting other chamber initiatives.
For someone who is by now a career politician, it's frankly baffling behaviour, especially during an election year.
When given an opportunity to respond to a drubbing by members of council on Monday, the mayor chose to stick to his guns on the amalgamation issue and offer kind words about the chamber.
That's sadly indicative of the nature of politics, where council meetings feature a lot of praise and posturing while real scores are settled over the phone or behind closed doors.
On the issue of amalgamation itself, the mayor pre-judges what the study will conclude.
Yes, it's hard to ignore other spectacular failures in amalgamation, especially when one of them helped give rise to Rob Ford. But a new study may very well benefit from the mistakes made by other municipal amalgamations, most of which involved sticking together many more municipalities that have much less in common under a different set of provincial laws.
In the meantime, perhaps the mayor can work on his tact.
It's silly season again, when politicians of all stripes are getting testy. But that's no excuse for pulling the heavy card.
