For anyone brave enough to attend an Oshawa City council meeting these days, best go armed with a sleeping bag.

If Monday's meeting is any indication -- and we think it is -- we're in for a very long year.

The meeting should have taken no more than an hour to skip through. Unfortunately, some politicians, apparently bent on getting a headline to prove to the electorate they are on the job, dragged things on for approximately four hours.

A two-minute presentation by Regional Chairman Roger Anderson was parlayed painfully into lengthy questioning and posturing as politicians dragged out complaints as old as the kitchen sink.

The clerk was served with several notices of motion that councillors want debated at upcoming meetings, including one from Tito-Dante Marimpietri that any surplus money from the 2009/2010 winter maintenance program be returned to the taxpayers in the form of rebate cheques. It might be appealing in a sound bite, but the reality is this is not a good proposal.

The winter is far from over and, while we've had little snow south of the Ridges, all that could change at any moment, putting the City into the red. This Week asked a couple quick questions around City Hall and easily discovered the snow-clearing budget is currently about $354,000 under budget while last year the City went over budget on snow clearing. If there were 38,000 households in Oshawa, each with four people, the average refund would be $9.32, less the cost of stamps, envelopes, staff processing time and bank charges to send the refund.

City councillors tempted to support this idea in search of votes should consider they would in effect be throwing taxpayer money away to feed the post office and the bank. And when finicky Mother Nature slams us with a good ol' Canadian winter in 2011, where's the money going to come from to clear your street? Any surpluses should remain in the snow clearing account for use next year.

Reasonable behaviour is in somewhat short supply some days.

That's the irony of two notices of motion filed Monday by John Henry, who wants to see the Election Act changed so that candidates cannot register until after March 30 of an election year, rather than Jan. 1. The motive, he says, is to prevent the budget being used for 'political purposes'. He also wants Oshawa to pass a motion prohibiting City Council from using the opening of a public space -- such as a building or park -- for a publicity opportunity any time after Sept. 1 of an election year.

Sad but true, good behaviour can't be legislated. Put all the rules in place you want but a headline-seeking politician will find a way to circumvent them whether it be through an opportunistic photo op, by taking credit where credit simply isn't due, by placing themselves in the path of a microphone-bearing journalist or by filing warm and fuzzy motions that sound great, but are impractical.