OZ – The Wizard of Oz is being questioned by the city council for using $1.2 billion in emergency funds to build a yellow brick road connecting the city with Munchkin Land.
The wizard has defended the use of funds as not only “necessary” and “urgent,” but also as “good for tourism.”
At Thursday’s council meeting, however, Council Member Apple Tree referred to the spending as “wasteful” and said there was no public support for the project.
“This road is massive and could easily have been paved with another, less expensive material aside from these custom yellow bricks,” Apple Tree said. “This appears to have been more of a vanity project than a proper use of emergency funds.” The councilman added that the funds could have gone toward better security for our apple trees, which have had issues with tourists shaking their limbs in recent years.
Several members of the Lollypop Guild were present during Thursday’s meeting and claimed to have not been consulted by the Wizard of Oz in regards to the construction of the yellow brick road. They said the construction has slowed traffic and led to the destruction of several sacred munchkin gravesites in the region.
“We represent the opposition,” one guild member said in a prepared statement. “The opposition, the opposition.”
“Follow the yellow brick road, follow the money,” said another.
The Mayor of Munchkin Land, who was also in attendance, called for a third-party investigation into the use of the funds, which led to an outburst from Oz.
“Do you presume to criticize the great and powerful Oz?” Oz said. Oz later apologized for the comment.
“I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish,” Oz said in a statement following the hearing. “Frankly, this scrutiny is turning into a witch hunt, and this city has been through enough of those.”
This is not the first time the embattled wizard has come under scrutiny for his use of city funds. Two years ago, he spent $5.4 million on smoke machines, pully ropes and green screens to project a giant face on the wall of his city office. Two years before that, he delayed the installation of public restrooms in city parks in order to spend nearly $2 million on a hot air balloon for private use.
