fellow members of the pleasant valley town council, we must decide today whether to fire our police chief, larry lucas. as you know, it was recently discovered that after attending a law enforcement training course in new orleans, chief lucas stayed an extra day and charged the cost of his hotel room to his expense account. no one objects to the chief spending an extra day in new orleans, but of course he must pay for it out of his own pocket, and not out of the budget of the town police department. whether an intentional or accidental misuse of department funds, this is a serious mistake, and one that we cannot tolerate in our town’s chief of police. thus i believe we must fire chief lucas. now, earlier you heard council member zack zuriff argue that chief lucas should not be fired. zack argued that chief lucas has been a good and honest police chief for 12 years, and that this mistake in filling out his expense account was merely an accounting error and not an intentional wrong, that chief lucas immediately reimbursed the department for the cost of the hotel room as soon as he recognized his error, and that such a small mistake does not justify the dismissal of a person with such a long and outstanding record. but i’m afraid we can’t give much weight to zack’s argument for keeping the chief. after all, zack and chief lucas have been friends since their high school days, and zack is obviously offering his argument out of loyalty to his friend. certainly it is heartwarming to see a friend like zack stick by his comrade through adversity. such loyalty is rare and wonderful. however, once we recognize that zack’s argument is merely the support of a loyal friend, it is clear that we should not take it seriously.