City Council Approves Municipal Coat of Arms After 11-Year Design Process

The Millbrook City Council voted 4-3 on Tuesday to adopt a municipal coat of arms after an eleven-year design process that consumed $340,000 in consulting fees, generated 847 public comments, and resulted in a shield that council member Janet Ordinaire described as 'aggressively mediocre.' The approved design features a blue shield with a single white star, a design so generic that three neighboring municipalities have already noted it is 'basically identical' to their own arms. 'We started with a beaver holding a wreath of wheat sheaves above a river with a setting sun,' said committee chair Donald Fesswise. 'Then the beaver people argued with the river people, the wheat people seceded from the committee entirely, and we spent two years debating the color of the sun.' The star was adopted as a compromise in year nine after the committee realized it was 'the only symbol no one had strong feelings about.' Public reaction has been muted. 'It's fine,' said resident Maria Torres. 'I thought they were designing a new sewage plant this whole time.' The sole dissenting council member, Gerald Pale, objected on the grounds that the star should be six-pointed rather than five-pointed, a distinction he called 'the difference between a mullet and an estoile, and therefore the difference between civilization and barbarism.' The arms will be featured on official city letterhead, the municipal website, and a commemorative banner that will hang in city hall until, as Ordinaire predicted, 'someone complains about it and we start the whole process over again in 2030.'