By Jackson Frolic | Beacon senior editor

In one fell swoop Monday night, Forrest Bunkard erased the demagoguery of the past and penned the opening lines of a new era for Bass Lake.

As the first elected mayor of Bass Lake in as many years, Bunkard followed through on his campaign promise to “wipe the slate clean” and “restore Bass Lake to its rightful owners, the citizens of this fine community.”

Following the slate-wiping and  community-restoring, already more than the previous three un-elected mayors achieved, Bunkard got straight to work on his agenda. The new mayor renounced his predecessor, the self-appointed Carolyn Shee, and laid out his five-point plan dubbed “Road Beyond Mediocrity.”

“First off, let me renounce my predecessor, the self-appointed Carolyn Shee,” Bunkard said to the half-full town council chamber. “There. Now that that’s done, let’s get to work, or as the Bachman-Turner Overdrive sang in 1973, let’s start “Takin’ Care of Business.”

A Bunkard administration promises to be replete with such pop-culture references, which will be a relief not only to the press corps but to the handful of local residents who actually follow town politics.

For the past three years, Bass Lake has had as its top-elected official a conniver (Delores Denominator), a non-entity (Guy Soundguy) and a monomaniac (Shee). The first two won the post by default and the third by unopposed coup.

Bunkard took the office by sheer determination and by getting more votes than whoever it was that ran against him.  And that’s an outcome we can all appreciate to some extent.

Jackson Frolic is Beacon senior editor and primary opinion writer since no one else seems to want to take a position. He wrote this.