If you waited breathlessly for the results of the roundtable sessions to save Port Huron's financial bacon, you must be terribly disappointed. No, not even one participant of the city's roundtable therapy sessions provided that "slam-dunk" idea to keep us out of bankruptcy.

Yes, I know. I'm shocked, too!

Lest you forget, this all started several months ago when the City Council woke up from several years of slumber to discover Port Huron's impending bankruptcy. In a panic to get out from under the blame for another city crisis, it appears a plan was hatched: Let's put together a series of tightly controlled group sessions where the community, with no real information or understanding of the issues, would take ownership of the financial crisis. Ah, a plan any council member could love.

Tweed Kezziah and Susan Watkins of the Colorado consulting firm of Kezziah Watkins, were called into action. They were given the very difficult task of turning lemons into lemonade.

The city had a crisis, but maybe there was a solution. Using the breathtaking 112% water-and-sewer-rate increases spun by the city's consultants, Black and Veatch, as cover, the hope was maybe these massive rate increases could be sold using the roundtable sessions.

Could city and township residents be convinced they had no choice but to give up one month's Social Security check to bail out Port Huron?

Not one of the city council members has any firsthand knowledge of what went on or what was discussed at any of the 20 meetings. The consultants and the city manager didn't want them there, and they caved. There's nothing like laundered information.

Then, to add insult to injury, council members were denied access to the final report until after it was personally given to the Times Herald by the city manager. How much further out of the loop could council members get when reporters are more informed of the council's business than its members?

I know. I just shake my head, too.

The consultants made it very clear that while their study didn't use a "valid random sample," they still believed the results were reliable. Nothing like a gut feel on important issues.

You have to ask, with such an important study determining the future actions by the council on such a major issue, why wasn't it done using statistically valid input? That would have been easy to do. And were a substantial number of the participants recruited by City Hall and the council, thereby putting the study's validity in greater doubt?

It was Mayor Pro-Tem B. Mark Neal who raised the question of the night when he asked if the city manager's presentation during the first 30 to 40 minutes of each session influenced the participants and therefore the study's results. How could it not?

There was one point on which the consultants were very clear: Participants, by a 2-to-1 margin, wanted more than 50% of the cost of covering the $42 million deficit through the next five years to come from budget cuts at City Hall.

Based on that one point, alone, we shortly will see if the results from the roundtables really matter or if the whole exercise was just a City Council "con."