Naperville city officials like it when Naperville is ranked #1. It doesn’t happen that much anymore. Recently it was reported that Naperville was ranked the #1 city in which to retire. The same report had Honolulu, Hawaii ranked as a less desirable place to retire. Naperville’s weather forecast this coming Monday shows (-7 degrees) as the high, with a wind chill of (-31 degrees) and blowing snow. Honolulu will be 79 degrees.
Being #1 isn’t always what it’s made out to be. Who wants to be # 1 on the FBI list, or the first kid on the block to use a new untested pogo stick.
Naperville did earn another #1 ranking. You won’t read about it on the City of Naperville’s website, and you won’t read about it in the local newspaper (Naperville Sun) which many consider as the ’10th council member’. But you will find it in the Chicago Tribune and it’s website for the week of January 2-8, 2014.
The title is “2013’s Most Popular Suburban TribLocal Stories on the Web”. The #1 most popular story was about two Naperville women (Jennifer Stahl and Kim Bendis) being handcuffed and arrested (with the blessing of city officials) for protecting their homes and families against the forced installation of so-called electric smart meters on their homes.
City officials including the Naperville city council and Mayor George Pradel, along with city manager Doug Krieger continue to drag these Naperville women through the court system and waste taxpayer’s dollars. Not one Naperville city official has stood ‘tall’ or taken a leadership role to end this needless drain of time and taxpayer dollars which could be used to help Naperville residents rather than to persecute them.
This story drew more attention than any of the other Top-10 Chicago-area stories which included three separate murder cases, an accidental death, a plane crash, and drug dealers being robbed among other stories.
Naperville city officials did something that even politicians in Chicago and Cicero couldn’t do. They ranked # 1 in egregious actions against their residents making it the #1 most popular local story. Maybe Honolulu, Hawaii would be a better place to retire.
This incident is not only a stain on the city of Naperville and its bazaar leadership especially the city manager and ex and current police chiefs but the police department as a whole since they are charged with protecting its citizens not abusing them.
To continue persecuting these two individuals using the entire resources of the city and its ethically challenged attorneys will result in settlement with them that all tax payers will be forced to pay. The city and the cops were wrong. They should get over it and move on while learning a lesson that the citizens many times know more then they do about technology, law and citizens rights then they do.
Lastly they still don’t realize they work for the citizens not the other way around and until they incorporate this philosophy into their daily activities these types of incidents will continue to occur.