In the spirit of the new year and giving, it’s only right that we should acknowledge our Naperville city council. They have given the residents of Naperville much during this last year including:
- Smart Meters that we don’t want,
- another two years to wait for districts to be implemented in addition to the three years we have already waited for a total of five (5) years,
- Naperville Electoral Board misconduct,
- more city liquor licenses,
- denials of multimillion dollar building projects,
- hundreds of ‘your time is up’ comments during Public Forums,
- occasional citizen ‘toss outs’ during council meetings,
- citizen-intimidation by armed police during council meetings,
- 30-seconds of time for citizens to make comments during Public Forum
- penalty fees for saying ‘no’ to Smart Meters
- an in-hackable city website that was hacked and down for nearly a month.
- and numerous late starts for Tuesday night city council meetings
However on a more positive note, the Naperville city council has provided us with many memorable moments including:
- many entertaining and outrageous video-imbeds for Watchdog postings.
- Plentiful posting topics
- increased resident awareness for council activity and inactivity
- many ‘how not to do it’ videos for political science class rooms
- city councils elsewhere learning from Naperville city council mistakes
- inability to make decisions, results in fewer bad decisions.
So with that being said, what can we give to each of the nine Naperville city council members, along with the city manager, city attorney, and entire council as a group; twelve in total. Let’s take them one by one.
- Council woman Judith Brodhead – one proclamation to read at each council meeting, thereby fulfilling her role on the council.
- Councilman Steve Chirico – a book deal on “How to go from the worst dressed to the best dressed council member within one term”.
- Councilman Bob Fieseler – a book on “The art of faking sincerity”.
- Councilman Paul Hinterlong – Speaking ‘gigs’ on ‘How to make everything you say sound like a question’.
- Councilman Doug Krause – A book on ‘How to cope with a majority of peers who are clueless’
- Councilman Joe McElroy – A plaque stating, “Am I the only one up here with common sense”.
- Councilman Kenn Miller – A plaque commemorating the “Most 3rd place finishes in Mayoral elections”.
- Councilman Grant Wehrli – a cap with embroidered words saying “What was I thinking when I said that”
- Mayor George Pradel – a cap with words stating, “I can’t believe I was the longest serving mayor in Naperville”
- City Manager Doug Krieger – a framed certificate stating, “Can you believe that I’m still here after all the major screw-ups I’ve made”
- City Attorney Margo Ely – a huge salary increase for dealing with all the city official’s mistakes, errors and overall screw-ups.
- And finally, a Christmas gift to the entire city council – a huge council chambers clock with a fire alarm to get meetings to start on time.
New Year’s resolutions for this ban of Peter Principled misfits should be,” we will endeavor to manage the resources entrusted to us while taking into consideration what our employers want”!
We will read and understand what we are voting on before not after the codes, laws and edits are passed!
We will start implementing less government not more to balance our budgets and trim waste, graft and corruption caused by profligate cronyism and back door deals.
We will get rid of SECA and TIF awards as they are nothing more than redistribution of wealth and used to buy votes.
We will tell the sustainable community crowd to pay their own way if they want electric cars, wind mills, solar panels, smart meters and any other non-economical pieces of junk which no one would buy unless massively subsidized by we the tax payers and mandated by idiots (aka politicians).
Happy New Year to all.