Sometimes it takes a 2-by-4 up beside the head to get a mule's attention.

Or as City Councilman Robin Lumb put it recently, "The sounds you hear are sabres being rattled, but they remain in their scabbards. That could change."

Lumb's message was directed at Mayor Alvin Brown's administration and was yet another example of an increasingly frustrated City Council.

The topic being discussed during a council committee meeting where the sabre rattling took place was the inability of the Jacksonville Children's Commission to hire a new executive director.

The accusation is that Brown is blocking the commission from taking action even though by city law it's the commission's responsibility to hire an executive director, not the mayor's.

"The will of the council was previously clearly stated," Councilman Bill Gulliford said, when the council voted to not put the commission under Brown as he had asked for in his reorganization plan.

Gulliford said he sees "a purposeful intent" to ignore the council.

Councilman John Crescimbeni sees a pattern coming from the Mayor's Office.

During the committee discussion, he pointed out that Brown had ignored a council resolution saying the city's equestrian center should be managed separately from the city's other public facilities.

The Mayor's Office, however, included the equestrian center in the bid package.

With the building frustration on the council have come mayoral smack downs.

Read more here:  http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/400601/ron-littlepage/2012-05-...