Well, the council meeting last night was, to say the least, somewhat interesting. And, one item in particular.
First, to understand this post, take a quick peek at this post about electric vehicle charging stations from last week (5/19/15).
Last night the idea of installing charging stations for electric vehicles came before the council. Fortunately, clear thinking heads prevailed, even over the belligerent, denigrating, condescending attitude of, yep, you guessed it, Jeff "The Arrogant One" Vaught.
KCP&L wanted to install 10 electric car charging stations (old technology already) on city property and the city was supposed to pay $200-$400 per station for two years. Vaught kept putting down his fellow council members for not agreeing with him. He still was pushing the idea that the city would wind up with electric vehicles in its fleet. That besides the fact that most electric cars get about 80 miles on a full charge and it takes, with the old technology, about 8 hours to fully charge on one of these things but used primarily to "top off".
Throughout Johnson County there are some of these charging stations on various pieces of government land. But there are also some that are on business property. And that is what some of the clearer heads on the Shawnee City Council would like to see here. Virtually all of the other council members saw the logic to that, especially Stephanie Meyer and Mickey Sandifer. The locations that KCP&L wanted to use would mean that basically someone would come up, plug their vehicle in and wait for it to charge. With no place to go.
Those locations in JoCo that are on business properties give the vehicle owners the ability to plug in and then go shopping (two examples being the Hy-Vee at 95th & Antioch and the Hen House on 87th Street in Lenexa) And there are various other locations including shopping centers.
We have various locations that would be perfect for these stations. How about 10 Quivira, or Shawnee Parkway Plaza or the Hy-Vee in Shawnee. Plus, these locations would either have the vehicle owners or the businesses paying the electric charges...........NOT the taxpayers of Shawnee.
But Vaught, for all his chest thumping about Eco Development and his constant reminders that he is in commercial real estate, apparently cannot understand the benefits of this arrangement.
Curious, will he have to refund to KCP&L the donation they made to his failed mayoral campaign?
:-) :-)
BTW, go here and there is an interactive map of electric vehicle charging stations, nationwide and you can drill down to any community.
DTJVSD
