We’re all familiar with the “No shirt, no shoes” policy of most restaurants. Can you imagine a restaurant owner walking into his own restaurant with no shirt and no shoes and everybody being O.K with that. It might work at Jimmy Buffet’s Margarita-ville in Key West, Florida, but not at most places.
The Naperville city council has their own type of ‘no-shirt, no-shoes’ policy too, and it’s called, “No address, no applause” mandate. During the Public Forum portion of the meeting, speakers addressing the city council are required to state their address. If the speaker begins speaking without providing the his or her address, Mayor Pradel interrupts the speaker requesting the speaker’s address. Doing this benefits the council especially when the speaker’s topic is not one the council wants to hear. Distracting the speaker is a subtle ploy to throw off the speaker’s concentration. When a speaker has only three minutes to present, every second counts.
However, if the mayor and council support the speaker’s point of view, then the ‘provide your address’ rule disappears. Watch and listen as Stephanie Kifowit, newly elected representative for the 84th District addresses the council.
The Naperville city council doesn’t like applause, unless of course they are the ones applauding, or the applause is directed towards them, which happens as often as the Cubs winning the pennant. Watch and listen as Mayor Pradel tells the citizens to calm down or they will be removed.
The same citizen beat-down was used by councilman Grant Wehrli at the March 1, 2011 meeting when he was Mayor Pro-tem while Pradel was away on business.
Abraham Lincoln was quoted, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Giving councilman Wehrli the ‘power-of-the-gavel’ is seldom good news for Naperville residents.
Now watch and listen as Stephanie Kifowit ends her short, well-spoken presentation, and receives applause from both councilmen Bob Fieseler and Doug Krause.
It’s clear from Pradel’s and Wehrli’s comments that applause is a form of ‘intimidation’ during Public Forum, yet there are councilmen Fieseler and Krause ‘intimidating’ somebody in front of Pradel and Wehrli while the gavel remained quiet. Maybe residents should be allowed to applaud in support of someone or something, just as Naperville council members are allowed to applaud. It’s the American way of doing it.
The privilege of the political aristocracy and their cronies always excludes themselves from the rules they enforce on the peons (tax paying citizen) in part because we tolerate it. When people realize that these clowns work for them and not the other way around things might change for the better.
This council is filed with idiots. I have been following your site for a while and love it. I live north of Naperville and thought our town had problems. Naperville makes my town look like the board is perfect. The Naperville council is clueless. To me, it really seems like they don’t care about the people, capitalism or protecting the people. It seems like they like the power and will do whats best for them and their buddies
Thinking about how this Council acts makes me wonder if a different tact might work better. Instead of going to meetings where we are on their turf, and they make the rules, start meeting with, or calling the press and get the story out on our terms. I know that Grant seems infuriated when someone, like Dougie Krause, talks to the paper without running it by Grant first.
The political elite double standard is appaulling, but as Illinois crawls closer to bankruptcy, our Council doesn’t seem to get the fact that the days of unfunded pensions and the continuous encumbering of taxpayers with more debt are about over.
Didn’t Detroit’s problems start this way? The city had a tough time in 2008. Can they protect homeowners and business from not ony the shifting of State Pension debt to local property taxes but another major slowdown?
According to the Monthly General Fund Budget Report, the City took in 1.4 million dollars more in Revenue, but total expenditures were 11 million dollars than the prior year. On July 11, the Council borrowed another 5.6 million dollars for more projects. The Director of Finance then states that because interest rates are rising, the city will “only have to pay $19,000/year more in interest.” Wow! Imagine running our family finances like this.
Do any of them have a clue, that home sales are stalling, the consumer spending is slowing and that interest rates are going up? How will they continue to manage the budget if they think that 1 million of additional revenues is great, but then spend over 11 million more than the previous year. When will the borrowing stop…or worse yet, at what point will borrowing become unaffordable?
The Unristricted Cash for the Electric Utility fund is now -$12,405,177. and the Smart Grid Fund is now -$2,126,972.