It’s not often that you can get a panel of 11 people consisting of politicians, lawyers, and government bureaucrats including the Naperville city council to ‘freeze’ and become speechless for what seemed like an hour, but that’s exactly what Naperville citizen and Smart Meter Awareness Group member Joanne St Ives did at last Tuesday’s city council meeting when she asked a simple straight forward question. In fact, the only audible sound you could hear was the hyperventilating of council member Bob Fieseler while the others sat in frozen silence. It was not until citizen St Ives asked again for an answer that the deafening silence was broken. Watch and listen as Joanne makes her less than three-minute right-on-target presentation to the Naperville city council with her question coming at the end that freezes the entire council.
The city council’s consternation comes from the fact that it is very difficult to argue against the truth and common sense. Now typically politicians, lawyers and government bureaucrats are very adept at speaking without making sense and chances are that most of them own many pairs of tap-dancing shoes. The more they dance around issues, the more shoes they need. And when it comes to the topic of the Naperville not-so Smart Grid Initiative, there is a whole lot of tap-dancing going on.
Now to be fair, there is one council member (Doug Krause) who represents the voice of reason on the Naperville city council by truly considering the best interests of Naperville citizens. Watch and listen as he addresses his peers.
Balancing out council member Krause’s concerns for his constituency is the power play of council member Bob Fieseler who basically states that ‘come hell or high water’ the citizens of Naperville are going to get these (not-so) Smart Meters whether they want them or not.
Then council member Fieseler follows up with this brilliant observation about the unimportance of paying attention to detail.
Apparently, Fieseler takes the same stance that the person in charge of making sure the Titanic had binoculars for the crows nest did; why pay attention to detail, what could possibly go wrong; forget the details, let’s just get this ship moving. Keep in mind that council member Fieseler who downplays the importance of detail is the same person who appears to be the ‘front person’ for this not-so Smart Grid Initiative debacle.
On a separate but related note, Kim Bendis, another member of the Naperville Smart Meter Awareness group, wrote a detailed letter dated June 13 to city manager Doug Krieger listing and asking for answers to a series of thoughtful and important questions regarding the NSGI to which the city manager responded one month later. One question was “Is there anyone on the city staff or city council who personally, professionally or politically is benefiting from the NSGI project?” In other words is there any conflict of interest. That sounds like a respectful, fair, and reasonable question that any citizen has a right, if not an obligation to ask. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “the first responsibility of any citizen is to question authority”. For the most part the Naperville city council does an outstanding job of avoiding any semblance of conflict of interest. To this, each of the nine council members should be commended and applauded. Interestingly, it was the only question that was not answered either directly, or with the aid of tap-dancing shoes.
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The city, in my opinion, is in a reckless rush to do a cowboy implementation of this technology in our city, without a citizen referendum nor town hall. The DOE contract, with it’s seemingly arbitrary deadline mandate for forced installation of these intrusive electric monitoring devices on our homes should not take priority over the health, safety, privacy and security concerns of their citizens. I found it appalling that Fieseler is telling citizens that they WILL have these smart meters on our homes, even as taxpayers are telling him that they may be unhealthy, too intrusive and a waste of money. What is the big rush anyway? Illinois hasn’t even approved the money for the Illinois Smart Grid, with Governor Quinn threatening to veto the bill. Let’s stop right now, and do it right. Hard wire in the data collecting devices into the homes of people who want the so called “choices and savings” that Fieseler is promising. I’ll bet if citizens were asked to spend $400.00 t
replace their present meters, for such little return, few, if any, would opt in. The smart meter
can’t make it in the market place, so the heavy hand of government has to force the installation.
making our private homes a data collection free for all. Worse yet, the optional “service control switch, purchased by the city, can be programmed to turn off our power if some government official decrees that our electric “demand” exceeds THEIR quota, putting those homes in a “penalty” situation. Read the technical manual Council.
City confirmed it purchased the optional 200 ampere service control switch:
REX2 Meter Technical Manual page 4-3
“In addition to other service control features, a REX2 meter with the optional 200 ampere service control switch can be programmed to automatically disconnect power when demand exceeds a programmed threshold (see Figure 4-1). The service control switch will remain open for the time remaining in the current demand interval PLUS the time programmed in the REX2 meter as the DEMAND THRESHOLD PENALTY (in Figure 4-1 a 10-minute demand threshold penalty was used for a total of a 30 minute cycle). The demand threshold penalty is the minimum length of time that the service control switch will remain open after the switch has been operated. At the end of the demand threshold penalty (and after a randomized delay period of less than 1 minute), the service control switch will close and power will be restored to the consumer. If power levels again exceed the demand threshold, the sequence of switch opening and penalty will begin again.”
Mr. Curran stated that this “service control switch” was purchased so power can be shut off, remotely, if bills aren’t paid, which per the above description makes little sense. That optional switch can be used to do a lot more, including the rationing of electricity as “central planners” or Federal laws mandate. I’d also like to ask the city, if a “safety/well check” is done before power is cut to families to see if there are children or fragile elderly in the home, especially in the winter. If a “safety/well check” is policy, and the family found safe, why not just turn off the electricty while at the residence? Forget “remote” shut off completely. Don’t buy “options” than can be eventually used by political schemers.
Smart meters is just one more big government scam to bleed the over taxed citizens out of their hard earned money to reward political/union/corporate cronies. The cast of characters is always the same bunch of hacks who double and triple dip into salary,benefits and pensions. Maybe they can hook-up these meters to the red light cameras and your car’s GPS and then they can punitively charge us for time of day electricity used, if you drive after 5PM and miles driven. Next it will be the air we breath and bathroom usage.
When are people going to stand up to these thieves and vote them all out of office. Get ready for the next big rip off, the toll way 13 billion dollars fiasco.
A google of smart meters and fires or explosions will lead to articles from all over the country about the dangers of these devices…
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=27884095387&topic=13359
SANTA ROSA- It was confirmed today that an electrical fire which led to the evacuation of downtown Santa Rosa Plaza last Thursday evening was caused by a bank of newly installed PG&E ‘smart’ meters
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/04/13/18677046.php
http://www.click2houston.com/news/28147128/detail.html
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/utility-group-alleges-smartmeter-sparked-san-bruno-explosion
Thanks, Naperville residents for the work you are doing.
Scarlett – Oak Brook