After months of unnecessary turmoil caused, in part, by a divide over the vacant last City Council seat created by an election tie, there's been a positive, but not surprising, development in Aberdeen government.
Mayor Patrick McGrady is different than Patrick McGrady, the candidate for mayor. That's shocking in the same sense that Humphrey Bogart was shocked to learn there was gambling in the casino his character owned in the Hollywood classic, "Casablanca."
It all started with Barbara Osborn Kreamer, who many years ago was an elected member of the Harford County Council and the Maryland House of Delegates. Kreamer, who has spent recent years unsuccessfully trying to get elected to the Aberdeen government, read one of McGrady's campaign letters aloud during the most recent City Council meeting.
The campaign literature advocated McGrady the candidate's view that taxes in Aberdeen needed to be reduced. The new mayor is proposing the slightest of tax cuts from $0.66 per $100 of assessed value to $0.656, which is the constant yield tax rate. The constant yield is a state government assessment of what the tax rate in a year needs to be for the same amount of revenue to be collected in the coming fiscal year.
McGrady responded to Kreamer's reading with a wry smile and a simple answer: "Sounds like a good letter, Mrs. Kreamer."
His comment led to another that led to another.
"Patrick McGrady the candidate is very different from Patrick McGrady the man I know," Councilwoman Sandra Landbeck said.
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" McGrady said.
Landbeck laughed and said: "That's a good thing."
If, or why, that's a good thing doesn't matter. What matters is that it's good for Aberdeen, regardless of the reason that such an exchange could and did happen.
During the months-long standoff over who would be the final council member appointed by the mayor and approved by the city council, it didn't seem such jocularity between the two could happen. Yet, there it was last week. We hope that it is the beginning of a new era in Aberdeen government notable for philosophical and political differences debated with decorum and respect.
We've never thought it necessary for governing bodies to get along, singing in four-part harmony, putting on publicly united faces for a government to be effective. But nor do we see anything wrong with elected officials doing public service with a smile.