Last night at the council committee meeting I do believe
we were treated to another example of Jeff Vaught’s arrogance, and I would even
go so far as to say stupidity.
Let’s look at what the item was. This was tabled from previous meetings and
came back up last night and concerned the placement of ten electric vehicle
charging stations by KCP&L on city property, including the parking lot at
city hall.
Each of these charging stations will charge two vehicles,
so it requires two parking spaces. To place
three at city hall would eliminate six parking spaces. The bone thrown out by KCP&L would be
that they would install them at no charge (an approximate value of $10K) and in
return the city would pay for the electric services at each unit for two
years. The projected costs would be
$400/year for each of the ten stations. The stations can also be set for the users to pay, but KCP&L wants to do that after the first two years.
Anyone who has studied these things and the vehicles that
use them knows that it takes a long time to charge up one of these
vehicles. Most of the council members
could not see where that would be beneficial to have them on city property since there would not be
anything for people to do while the vehicles are being charged. It is a fact that there are commercial properties
that have installed them which makes sense.
First, folks can be shopping or related activities and the commercial
properties could charge the costs to their advertising budgets. Some that are doing that are Wal Mart, Hy
Vee, Mill Creek Shopping Center. Even
the county owned golf course on Midland has them, but they are a self-
supporting unit in that they charge greens fees and other related fees, and folks that go there are there for
quite some time.
A concept that is being used for the placement of these
items is referred to as lily padding.
Well, if the Hy Vee at Pflumm Rd
and Mill Creek Shopping Center has them, the Wal Mart at SMP & Maurer and
the one at Nieman and 74th, then attempting to place them at 10
Quivira or Shawnee Village Shopping Centers makes more sense, as suggested by
yours truly. Especially with the traffic
at those locations. Much higher traffic
than where city hall is located. Most of
the council agreed with yours truly about letting commercial properties take
the lead on this.
Now his royal
arrogance starts in with “I just don’t get it”.
That’s his favorite phrase when somebody disagrees with him. (In this
case not just me but a majority of the council) A very arrogant statement too,
because it is saying that only his idea is the right one and he can’t
understand why you don’t agree with him.
He feels that the city should accept the $100K worth of equipment on the
chance that down the road we will have a “fleet of electric vehicles”. Which fleet is he talking about? He’s in a dream world. Our police vehicles, fire trucks, public
works vehicles? We only have about a
dozen or so or maybe less, of vehicles used by codes and some other city departments
and those are hand me down police vehicles
My opinion: Not
only was his arrogance at its nadir last night, but he has, at least to me,
confirmed that he has to be one of the dumbest people to ever serve on the council. In two elections he may have fooled the
voters in Ward III, but in the last mayoral primary he didn’t fool the rest of
the city when he didn’t even make it to the general election.
I’m really worried about this man. Maybe he needs to see a doctor to see if he
suffers from Cra-Rec Syndrome**
**Cra-Rec Syndrome aka
Cranial Rectal Inversion, when one’s cranium is tightly lodged in one’s rectal
area and its functionality is reduced by spasmodic pressure, lack of sun light
and toxic fumes
DTJVSD
