It’s proved to be an extremely abbreviated victory lap for the Corporation of Hamilton. Just months ago the Home Affairs Minister was issuing iron-fisted threats to shut down the scandal-tarnished and serially inept municipal government.

But in a rare departure from form, the Minister reversed himself.

An exultant Corporation was allowed to continue on its hapless way, presumably based on the logic that the current administration would likely be swept from office soon enough and it had surely exhausted almost all possibilities in terms of self-inflicted injuries.

A municipal election is pending. And with the re-enfranchment of those business owners and rate payers whose elimination from voter rolls led to the election of the laughably misnamed “Team Hamilton” in the first place, the clock was running down on this experiment in civic management by pratfall comedy.

The Minister’s frustration was understandable even if his proposed course of action seemed an obvious overreach of his authority.

His original ultimatum followed on from an almost unquantifiable litany of missteps on the part of Team Hamilton, all somehow duly catalogued and itemised in a report issued by the Ombudsman.

The situation at City Hall, colourfully but correctly labelled an “omnishambles” by one local commentator, was close to anarchic.

Rampant maladministration at the Corporation had “crept up at every corner in a dazzling, infinite, relentless variety and wilfulness of ways” reported the Ombudsman. Due process, accountability and any suggestion of transparency were all viewed with bemused contempt by an administration for whom the whims and caprices of the moment were entirely acceptable substitutes for organisation and planning.

Examples are, unfortunately, legion. The most flagrant involved a proposed $1.7 billion project to cover the refurbishment of 26 acres of prime waterfront.

In what was either the most outrageous sweetheart deal in modern Bermuda history or an act of near madness, the Corporation blithely signed away rights to the Hamilton waterfront for 262 years.

This shotgun marriage between one of the City’s most valuable assets and an unproven development partner had to be hastily annulled by way of retroactive Parliamentary legislation.

Nevertheless, Bermuda may still be required to settle a hefty bill with the property developer, who is demanding compensation for losses stemming from the aborted project, and may well be entitled to it. But there were many, many other smaller-scale fiascos and random acts of idiocy.

Everything from the pruning (or felling) of the City’s trees to the Hamilton-wide extensions of pay-and-display parking fees (and the legality of the Corporation car clamping policy, or lack thereof) has become the subject of controversy, consternation and scrutiny.

The Home Affairs Minister was overly optimistic to conclude there simply wasn’t enough time for other such calamities to play out.

Now an administration which seemed to have plumbed every conceivable depth of inanity, ineptitude and incompetence is at war with itself over the financing of a proposed City hotel.

This week, a group of councillors and aldermen called for the resignation of the Mayor of Hamilton over his handling of the matter, claiming he had “misrepresented the Corporation and put in jeopardy a substantial amount of money and assets”.

The Mayor, denying any and all wrongdoing, has vowed to remain in office.

So the extended custard pie fight which passes for good governance in Hamilton these days is set to continue until at least the next municipal election, due to take place sometime later this year.

An exasperated Home Affairs Minister must be revisiting the laws pertaining to civic governance in Bermuda to see if he didn’t miss any loopholes and can belatedly make good on his pledge to ring the curtain down on this sorry omnishambles.