If you didn’t know that this is an election year for municipal governments in Mississippi, you would be able to discern as much simply by observing the conduct of the Columbus City council of late. Council meetings, work sessions and special call meetings have turned into a spectacle of grand-standing, bloviating and thinly-veiled campaigning, all on the city’s time and the taxpayers’ dime.

That nonsense was raised to a theater of the absurd this week over an innocuous proposal to apply for a non-match grant that the city council could later decline, if it so desired.

In sane circumstances, it would probably have been approved quickly, perhaps even as one of the consent agenda items the council approves at each meeting.

But these are not normal circumstances. There are contested mayor and council positions to be decided this spring and incumbents who have designs on both positions.

What elevated the grant to a political hot potato was that the nonprofit that wanted to partner with the city on the grant proposal approached Darren Leach, a candidate for mayor. Leach informed Susan Wilder, the city’s grant writer, who began preliminary work on the grant application.

It was game-on at that point for some council members who were incensed that they weren’t the first to be approached about the grant. Turns out, Tom isn’t the only one who is Petty.

The council voted not to apply for the grant on the grounds there was insufficient time to study it even though Wilder outlined the details of the grant to the council in a separate meeting five days prior to the vote. The council has made many decisions with far less information.

Mayor Keith Gaskin later instructed Wilder to continue work on the grant application anyway. The council called a special meeting to address that Thursday. It could have been and should have been a meeting where the mayor was confronted by defying their decision.

Instead, the council used the meeting to pummel Wilder, who was put in an impossible position by the Mayor. No matter what she did, she was going to go against an order. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Because the discussion was held in executive session, we do not know what was said to Wilder. What we do know is that she left the meeting in tears and was escorted out of City Hall by a police officer. (She was not arrested, just escorted out.)

Officially, all we know is that the council voted to ask the city’s HR director and COO to evaluate an unnamed employee’s job performance.

It’s pretty obvious who that employee is.

Candidates are free to tear into each other during a campaign season. They are also free to form whatever alliances they choose. But the line should be drawn when it reaches a point where a city employee is pulled into a political campaign fist fight and humiliated to the point of tears.

It’s the sort of thing that damages the city’s reputation and destroys employee morale.

Think about it. What job candidate in his or her right mind would want to work in such an environment? Ask Wilder. Ask longtime building inspector Kenneth Wiegel, who was also slandered and bullied at a November council meeting.

Wilder’s performance evaluation will be presented to the council at its next regular meeting, provided she hasn’t told the city to “take this job and shove it” by then.

Stay tuned. There will be another kind of job performance evaluation in the city this spring, one conducted by voters who have watched this council in all its wrong-headed, spiteful, bullying glory. Some of these council members will come to regret their conduct this week when that day of reckoning arrives.

Voters don’t easily forget episodes like this.

The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.

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