Scoop of Poop

The parks board blew it when it agreed with what McHenry called "a lot of opposition" after last Tuesday's meeting. (When I mentioned to McHenry that the supporters claimed to have superior numbers, he quickly got away from trying to quantify the debate. "Sometimes you simply need to make a decision," he told me.)

Hipp and everyone else who worked for the dog park did all the right things to win approval. And when it came time for the parks commissioners to act, they hid their intentions and shut off debate. The dog park deserved a vote on its merits, not some chicken-shit new policy slipped onto the agenda at the last minute.

Fierro and the other commissioners should have anticipated the hostile reaction that they got in response. Commissioner Aggie Stackhaus actually seemed to enjoy the spectacle. Two park proponents say they overheard Stackhaus tell a fellow board member, upon entering the packed chamber, "I'm loving every minute of this." During the meeting, someone in the audience shouted a threat of a lawsuit. "Go ahead," Stackhaus mouthed.

Dog-park proponents view Stackhaus, a former city councilwoman, as their principal villain. They say Stackhaus conferred with Inloes at a Waldo Homes Association meeting this past spring, before Funkhouser appointed her to the parks board. (Inloes confirms that she and Stackhaus are friends.) Dog park supporter Laura Mikkelson tells me that Stackhaus glared at her when she addressed the parks board on August 14. "It was very obvious by her body language that she was against the dog park," Mikkelson says.

Stackhaus puts off people with more than her body language. Another park supporter, Carmen Root, says she knows Stackhaus from the time Root worked for the Main Street Corridor Development Corporation, and Stackhaus was on the board of directors. Root says that when she called Stackhaus about the dog park this summer, Stackhaus snapped at her and told her to get her information somewhere else.

That conversation left Root in tears. "A person who acts like that shouldn't be in public office, paid or appointed," Root says of Stackhaus.

Most of the dog-park supporters left the board room after the new policy was approved. I watched the commissioners finish their meeting. Stackhaus put on a performance that screamed I need attention. She talked louder than anyone in the room, worked her eyebrows like semaphore flags and thanked one presenter three times, as if her appreciation were the most heartfelt.

I thought I was watching the previous parks board — those elites Funkhouser wanted to cast out of the temple — when Liberty Memorial booster Carl DiCapo spoke to the commissioners about a new restaurant opening inside the World War I Museum. Stackhaus cooed at DiCapo — despite the Liberty Memorial Association's underhanded money grabs and broken promises that Funkhouser had documented as auditor ("The Shaft," February 22, 2007). "Cheers and congratulations!" Stackhaus gushed after DiCapo invited the board to a gala for the new restaurant. (Stackhaus and the other commissioners gleefully marked the event in their calendars.)

The meeting concluded with the commissioners going into a closed session, which cleared the room. Ostensibly, the commissioners were talking about legal issues. But when the discussion lasted more than 15 minutes, I edged closer to the door, trying to listen through the cracks. The scraps of conversation I picked up sounded like a strategy session to control fallout over the dog park. At one point, the commissioners decided that Fierro was going to speak for the board (which he and McHenry did in a brief discussion with reporters afterward).

While eavesdropping, I thought I heard Stackhaus say, "I'm not answering the phone."

Sure enough, she didn't return my call for additional comment.