Monday, May 18, 2015

Video: Lake Worth Commissioner McVoy on City's Electric Utility: the Hummer vs. the Prius

This has to do with the City's work session on 5/12 vis-à-vis the discussion on the Siemen's proposed performance contract to fix the City's street lights, reduce energy consumption, maintenance, inventory, etc.
McVoy (in the video below) is looking at a graph supplied by Siemens and applies an analogy that he believes sums up the data: he uses the "Hummer" (the current City status) versus the "Prius" (what Siemens is proposing to do for the City). On the face of it sounds ridiculous but it's actually not. City Manager Michael Bornstein, in the video below, emphasizes (at the 1:50 mark) that the analogy has to specify, "It's not a new Hummer."

The video is only 2:30 long and is a decent analogy going forward. Even McVoy acknowledges in a joking way how terrible the situation is concerning the street lights in the City and Bornstein jokingly responds, "You and I need to talk."

Despite the analogy of an 'old beat up Hummer' and a 'Prius' the reality is a lot of work needs to be done to make our neighborhoods safer and street lighting is an integral part of that. There are way too many dark streets in our City; it's a safety and quality-of-life issue for many City residents. You don't want to miss Bornstein's reference to "Fred Flintstone" at the end of the video.

The entire meeting on 5/12 lasted a little over an hour and there was not one single reference to "Dark Skies", rising sea levels, or Climate Change. Simply an observation.