City Lights:

Sometimes in the news business, we look for excuses to be silly. It’s only human nature. We read those off-the-wall stories about parents setting up balloon hoaxes or beachgoers fighting for their nudist rights, and suddenly the headlines we’ve put out in the last week — “Council to vote on raising fees” and so on — seem pretty drab.

So when a quirky story hits town, we’re inclined to run with it. Take the case of Devin Dwyer, the Huntington Beach city councilman who, in October, got so incensed over a parking ticket that he announced he would shred up the ticket on the dais and resign from the council if the city didn’t change its street-sweeping policy. Needless to say, he backed down on his boast, and our reporter, cartoonist and a number of letter-writers went to town with it.

For last week’s paper, which summarized the major events of 2009, we followed a time-honored tradition by running a list of the year’s most dubious achievements — events that may not be important enough to qualify for the top 10 stories of the year, but are funny or offbeat enough to warrant retelling. Dwyer’s ticket demonstration easily made the list.

This year, for fun, we listed the dubious achievements in a mock awards format. Dwyer got the Where’s Robin Hood When You Need Him? Award for taking a dramatic stand for the people, then declining to follow through.

That didn’t sit too well with a reader who left me two messages Dec. 24, then read me the riot act when I called him back.

Dwyer, he said, had been working steadily to change the city’s street-sweeping policy for the last few weeks and had made a number of strides on it.

I explained to him that the editorial was meant humorously, but added that if a councilman alerts the media that he’s going to resign, he should be prepared to make good on that boast.

Imagine the Independent threatening to go out of business if the City Council votes a certain way, then sheepishly putting out another paper the following week.

After what seemed like half an hour, I got off the phone. Then it rang again, and a voice I had never heard came on the line. “Michael — Devin Dwyer.”

I was already in debate mode after the last call, so I dug my heels in for a free-for-all. But instead, Dwyer’s voice was warm and friendly. “I hear you have an award of some kind for me in your paper,” he said, chuckling.

He hadn’t seen the editorial, but a couple of people had described it to him, and he seemed to find it quite amusing.

When he heard about the Robin Hood award, he said he wondered if he’d have to attend a lavish dinner and make an acceptance speech.

Like the previous caller, he noted that he had been working to change the city’s appeals process for parking tickets and that he was working with a texting company that could notify residents in advance when the sweeper was coming through. I told him I applauded him for doing so, because, like Dwyer, I once got a ticket for parking in front of my own home. We agreed there was some cosmic injustice to that.

I’ll admit that when I first read about Dwyer’s ultimatum (and saw that photo of him in the Orange County Register, scowling and preparing to shred his ticket in half), I had an impression of him as surly and impulsive. But his call to me showed that not only does he have a gentler side, he also has a sense of humor. And we crave that in the newsroom.

Thanks for the feedback, Devin.

City Editor MICHAEL MILLER can be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com .