If there is one thing that Naperville city officials are good at, it’s being consistent. Whether it’s starting city council meetings late or making ill-advised decisions, they are consistent. Usually they only adversely affect residents and business in Naperville, however they occasionally reach well beyond the city limits.
Take for example the little township of Cottage Grove in far southern Illinois. It’s a small town of only 219 people give or take one depending if someone is born or dies that year. It’s about 30 square miles in size with a little over 100 homes. They don’t have a river walk and they don’t have bar fights in their downtown area, like Naperville, because they don’t really have a downtown area.
What they do have is a community of residents who take pride in their town, just like Naperille, and residents who will stand tall to protect their homes and families from bullying as did Naperville residents when they fought the city of Naperville over the forced installation of so-called Smart Meters.
In Cottage Grove Township, the bully is Peabody Energy, considered as one of the world’s largest coal companies, if not the largest. Peabody wants to extend the Cottage Grove strip mine (coal) and basically eliminate the town from existence, by threatening the drinking water and the town’s total environment.
Faced with losing their homes , farms, and health, from the blasting, flooding, and non-stop industrial war-zone traffic of coal operators, residents in this small southern Illinois town are taking a stand. Resident Jennifer Dumbris said, “We are going to pursue every legal means that we can, but with the control (Peabody) has over the existing system, it will be difficult, which is why we need all the support possible from the Attorney General to citizen groups across the state and nation. The very fate of our community is now on the edge.” Another resident said, “Mr. Peabody’s coal trains want to haul our community away.”
Peabody is doing to Cottage Grove Township residents, what the Naperville city officials did to Naperville residents and businesses; they are bullying to enforce an enormously flawed idea.
Peabody is supplying coal to Praire State Energy, which is in fact, largely owned by the City of Naperville. So Naperville city officials are in partnership with Prairie State and Peabody Coal to essentially obliterate the southern Illinois town. You won’t find that on the City of Naperville’s website.
What you will find in the next couple of months will be sky-rocketing electric bills. Naperville city officials including the Naperville city council, have been consistently on the wrong-side of right on nearly every decision dealing with the city owned electric utility.
The next time you open your refrigerator, and the little light comes on, realize that Naperville city officials are not only making you pay dearly for those watts, they are also putting a southern Illinois town out of existence.
This IMEA purchase agreement is the biggest liability and financial risk this city will face in the nest 20 years. As the little town owners go belly up our 36% ownership will have to pick up the slack and we are looking at double digit electric rate increases until the whole thing collapses and the 1/2 billion bonds are called in. We of course have 36% of that liability. Time for some immediate action!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-26/first-look-new-report-crony-capitalism-–-trillions-corporate-welfare
Most people would not buy a wireless smart meter for their homes, allowing city government to track, store and distribute to third parties (as law allows) their minute to minute energy use. Nor would they pay for all the cyber security software, updates, data storage required for this data collection that can determine most family activity. Most people hated the “time of use” billing plans on their cell phones, and flocked to “anytime” use plans. This same failed scheme is being hatched by Naperville management for our electricity. Most people would be very happy to be allowed to purchase their electricity in the free market, avoiding the Peabody fiasco if possible. However Naperville City Council, without a referendum, committed consumers into a 35 year contract with IMEA, paying a $72M premium, just to join.
This is crony capitalism at its worst. It forces citizens, through government mandates, to purchase things like “smart meters,” software, power monitoring software for our PCs, electricity and terrible investments in Prairie State. Economically forcing people into “time of use” energy plans that make using our own homes prohibitively expensive during the hours of noon and 9PM, is a loosing deal for all of us, unless you are fabulously wealthy and don’t need to choose between taking care of your young families or elderly or groceries.
Who wants their daily activities monitored and stored forever by Naperville? Who really wants to pay 2-3 times more for electricity for using their homes during most of our waking hours? Who doesn’t want true choice for their power providers? Who really wants to financially support Prairie State or Peabody?
The only people who have foisted this waste of our pay checks is our City Council, Krieger, Curran and the appointed PUAB board. Allow citizens to be free from RF spewing “smart meter” monitoring by our government. Give us the freedom to enter the energy market to choose plans that fit our requirements. Has it really come down to this in America, let alone Naperville?