Put it in City Council chambers and watch City Council flush copious amounts of city funds down it.

They then can do literally what they have been doing figuratively with taxpayer dollars.

Glad to know that I am not the only one who needs to check his notes.

But other than Smith and Kunselman, Briere included, no one has spoken up or voted noand most members of council have been Oprah-like jumping on the sofa in support of tossing all these dollars down the…drain.

Working from The Chronicle’s archives instead of from memory, the report of the Dec. 21, 2009 city council meeting shows that Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) was actually a lone voice of dissent on the Dreiseitl vote taken that evening. Before the council was a $111,4000 contract with Quinn Evans, the architect for the municipal center, for design documentation and procurement of bids for fabrication and installation of the sculpture proposed by Dreiseitl.

On a related note, on that same evening, the council rejected a proposal to reduce temporarily the percentage allocated to public art from 1% to 0.5% — a measure than got support from only Kunselman and Sandi Smith.

Chapter 24 of the city code, “Public Art” aka “the public art program” or “the percent for art” program was adopted by the Ann Arbor city council on Nov. 5, 2007. Minutes from that meeting don’t indicate a roll call vote, but rather simply that it was adopted. However, my recollection is that it received unanimous support from councilmembers at the time:

John Hieftje, Robert M. Johnson, Ronald Suarez, Stephen Rapundalo, Joan Lowenstein, Stephen Kunselman, Leigh Greden, Marcia Higgins, Margie Teall, Christopher S. Easthope, and Wendy A. Woods.

Of those 11 only five remain on the city council: Hieftje, Rapundalo, Kunselman (after 1-year hiatus), Higgins, Teall.

So the program itself predates Hohnke.

Working from memory, the council votes on the Dreiseitl project have all come after Hohnke’s election in 2008 and those votes have all been unanimous.