The Department of Energy owns the Naperville City Council

How much does it take to own the Naperville city council? If you are talking in terms of Smart Meters, it takes about $11 million. When the Department of Energy offered the Naperville city council a money grab, the Naperville city council grabbed it like a swarm of sharks going after a cargo of filets.

It was at that exact moment that all common sense and rational thinking vacated all the council members except for council member Doug Krause. He is the one and only council member who truly represented the best interests of the citizens of Naperville. The remaining eight council members morphed into a group of empty suits. Just as the Federal and State governments control the Naperville city council with money grabs, so is it that the Naperville city council attempts to control the citizens of Naperville with punitive fees for retaining their current non-wireless electric meters.

It’s getting down to crunch time with the final vote by the Naperville city council on the installation of the not-so Smart Meters. That vote most likely  will occur at the next Naperville city council meeting Tuesday October 4^th. The final vote is no secret; in fact, I will give it to you towards the end of this posting.

Most all of the members of the city council are probably good people trying to do a good job, and they might even be fun having as a neighbor or going with to dinner. However ‘sometimes something somewhat sinister’ happens when you take a good person and give them a title and some power to control and regulate; and when the federal government entices them with a money grab they lose the ability to reason.

It could also be compared to a little kid who wants his way and he is going to hold his breath and turn blue until he gets what he wants. However in the case of Naperville city council and the not-so Smart Meters, they use more sophisticated techniques to get what they want and grind down the opposition  as happened in last Tuesday’s meeting such as:

• pushing the topic on the agenda to the next to last item to discuss
• then changing it during the meeting to the last item to discuss
• then to taking a recess just prior to discussing the topic
• then lowering  the room temperature from real cool to almost cold
• then dimming the lights over the dais making it more challenging to see the council members
• placing the Ambassador (lobbyists) directly in camera view all night with some showing childish behavior (laughing, waving papers, and shrugging shoulders) when citizens spoke during the Public Forum

I suppose all of the above could be considered coincidence, I mean I’m sure government wouldn’t do any of that, and their over priced PR firm hired to reinforce the council’s will and whims wouldn’t recommend something like that would they. Of course not. In fact, they even told us that you could trust government. And that must be true because the Naperville city council told the citizens of Naperville the same thing.

Let’s look at the following cuts of video from the September 20 council meeting. You will see some of the best of Naperville, and some of the worst. The best comes to you from Naperville citizens addressing the city council, while the worst comes to you from some of your elected Naperville city council members responding to citizens just like you.

First, we have citizen Amanda Rykov and at the end, she asks, “Can anyone answer my questions?” And Mayor Pradel says, “NO, your time is up.”

The arrogance of the city council rears its ugly head when the Mayor and council refuse to answer her three simple questions. Yes another classic example of disrespect from the Naperville city council to the citizens of Naperville.

Next, we have newly elected council member Chirico showing his complete naivety by not understanding why anyone would want to hack into Smart Meters and have access to the personal information of over 57,000 citizens including their social security numbers. Council member Chirico exhibits his inability to grasp reality.

Then we have citizen Joanne St. Yves again speaking the ‘foreign language’ of common sense, reason, and logic to the Naperville city council and they don’t get it.

Next we have councilman Wehrli being offended and defensive that any citizen would question his integrity, I mean come on folks, if he knocked on your door at dinner time and said, “Hello, I’m with the government and I’m here to help you” it must be true……right?

Then we have council member Fieseler who has the genius to tell us within 14 seconds that he is completely closed-minded.

And then we finish it off with citizen Jennifer Stahl who also speaks in the language of common sense and reason that no council member can comprehend other than council member Doug Krause.

The Naperville city council cannot wait for this topic to come to a vote at the next meeting and be done with it. They have gone up against a formidable opponent…..an intelligent, informed, and engaged group of Naperville  citizens who were committed to doing the right thing for Naperville. This group of citizens with the Naperville Smart Meter Awareness group had nothing but determination and perseverance on their side. They did not quit and they did not give up. The Naperville city council had citizen tax dollars to fight the citizens of Naperville, they had an over-priced PR firm to manipulate information, they had lobbyists, they had federal support  dollars to do a beat-down on the ‘little guys’, they had their own specially picked experts to package mis-information to the citizens of Naperville, they had staff and legal council, they had the police to disperse citizens who were getting petitions signed, and they still could not silence this dedicated group of committed citizens.

You have to ask yourself, “How confident is the city council that they are right?” Is city manager Doug Krieger, along with council members Fieseler and Wehrli willing to link their reputation on the Smart Meters working?

Are they willing to lay it on the line that security will not be breached? Are they willing to attach their legacy to the idea that this was  a wise and prudent  financial decision? If it came down to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would they say ‘yes’?  Well Doug, Bob, and Grant, do you have the courage to say ‘yes’?

So how does this story end?  It ends just like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” with a final vote of 8-1 in favor of the Naperville city council over the citizens of Naperville. The deck was stacked right from the beginning.