No conflict of interest here. Could this be the reason Mr. Chirico (current Naperville city councilman) demeans and ridicules citizens who come to council meetings to discuss their concerns about smart meters which are another boondoggle costing us tax payers millions?

Without massive subsidization, paid for by us, they would never be done.

Congratulations to Mr. Chirico for plying the system legally and bilking the citizens out of more of their hard earned money.

Could this reporter find out whether he also got a grant from any of the city funds for this installation as it would save another FOIA request which cost the city huge amounts of money?

Does the fleecing of the taxpayers ever end? Why doesn't someone ask Steve how many employees of Great Western Flooring were shifted to the city's healthcare plan upon him taking the job as councilman?

A very smart and irate citizen sent me this to post on this article.

The only thing "green" about this deal is the taxpayer money going to a connected politician to once again subsidize a private company.

What business person would ever deplete their company cash by $250,000.00 to reduce electrical costs by $2,200.00/month, with a payback of 10 years, excluding costs of repair, maintenance, or obsolescence? What business would ever take out a loan for $250,000.00 to reduce costs by $2,200.00 when the monthly loan cost would be $2,531.13 (4% for 10 years)?

It's this kind of government "logic" that is breaking the backs of the Illinois and Federal taxpayers; bankrupting our country. These kinds of “grants” to a few chosen individuals and companies are crony capitalism at its worst. The 5 jobs so called "created" will cost taxpayers $50,000.00 each, from March to May...unless Great Western Flooring is hiring 5 people to maintain the solar panels and they will probably get some kind of grant for that too.

Ms. Chirico,
I for one have no problem with you and anybody else trying to save the world from we free market capitalist but please do it with your own money not ours and other overburden, overtaxed citizens.

Have our council member Steve, tell the citizens if he got grants, of any kind, from any of the Naperville City’s funds for the period he has been elected. If so, how much and for what? If the answer is no, then no problem. If yes, there may be a problem? It's a simple question.

It is a big pond and we little fishes don't intend to be eaten alive by the big fishes.

I think if you have a problem... it is with the standing administration! Steve Chirico has only taken advantage of what the government has allowed. Why must there always be a monster behind every corner? If you are not happy with the grants and incentives that have been allowed... Steve is not your sheep in wolf's clothing... it's what the American people have voted for!

Julie,
Councilman Chirico is part of the local administration who along with the others decided he would not allow a substantial number of citizens 4200 to have their voices heard on the smart meter referendum. In addition he seems to be the spokesperson for the SMAC group (smart meter advocacy crowd) comprised of the city, electric utility, 6 million dollar paid consultants, equipment manufactures and of course state politicians.

Now all of a sudden he ends up with 250k worth of grants for another green project (HIS) and maybe more because he hasn’t answered the above question.

Citizens have the duty and right to know what their representatives are doing with their money and whether it is open and above board. We intend to find out.

No City Councilman should ever receive city grant money. Period. Mr. Chirico should resign his seat, or give back the money. The attitude of the entire City Council is: "we haven't seen a tax dollar that we don't want to spend." It's a beak-dipping culture which needs to be changed, by voting the present beak-dippers out of office if this becomes necessary. It's not Other People's Money,it's OUR money which is getting spent on this crap.

While I respect that everyone wants to voice their opinion and are more than welcome to have those opinions - aren't we blurring lines here? The happenings of local government initiatives are totally separate than what independent, small businesses do. People seem to be making a connection between the two because of personal issues they have with someone and not based on facts of the isolated announcement that we are responding to.

Let me ask this: if the owner of Great Western Flooring was not a City Councilman, would you really be posting all of this right now?

There's a time and a place - and I agree with Julie's comment above: "Steve is not your sheep in wolf's clothing".

Mark the answer from this writer is yes.

The mayor in using the phase," Naperville’s Environmental Sustainability Plan", has no idea where this ideology comes from and thinks he is doing the town a favor.

Nothing is farther from the truth. These schemes, scams and ripe-offs including smart meters are designed to make all energy so costly as to destroy families and small businesses unless you are one of the chosen few. Tell me how a sitting councilman gets the biggest grant from bankrupt IL on a project which could never make it without these huge subsidies?

Naperville doesn’t need an environmental sustainability plan it needs a free market environment which stops taxing its citizens into bankruptcy (home or business) and respects their right to have a say in how they are regulated and their money spent!

Like all big government parasites they milk and bilk the system out of other people’s money (ours). All we want is for government to get out of our lives, homes, health care and wallets, stop redistributing our wealth and let this country once again return to greatness.

I have to applaud Mr. Chirico for being a leader in green energy. The best leadership comes with scrutiny because you're willing to do the things that are right rather than what appeals to the masses. We need more small businesses to step up and take action to reduce their footprint. GWF flooring is a great Naperville company that has helped our community in more ways than we can imagine and we should be celebrating their initiative!

More people, residential and commercial, should be getting electrical solar systems. Since the public apparently needs more encouragement, this is exactly what the government should be promoting.

He didn't step up to the plate, he stepped up to the taxpayer trough! Like most politicians Chirico is good at spending other people's money, for his personal benefit.

If we take solar off of any kind of tax incentives, let's do the same for fossil fuels. Let's see what the free market can do if we give solar a level playing field. For one, I applaud business like the floor company that are willing to take risks.

I like to think of the $250,000 investment that the State of Illinois made in this Solar system as 40 years worth of rent for the solar system. $500/ month rent for a whole roof sounds reasonable to me.

What we get is a back up electrical generating system and increased capacity of our transmission lines. Any electric produced in Naperville reduces the load on the transmission lines from the power plant. With enough distributed power generators such as this, maybe we do not need to add additional transmission lines in the future when we condemn and buy land and spend more money.

If he is willing to invest in the future, I am all for him.

Mr. Chirico is to be commended for supporting clean renewable energy which benefits everyone with the lower environmental impact, reduce health effects, and support for local businesses. To those people complaining about incentives and grants, please research the levels of tax credits and subsidies going to oil, gas, and coal. With these companies reporting record profits, why do we hand them 6 times more than renewables.

It is because of shenanigans like this that politicians are held in less esteem then septic tank workers who at least earn their keep. They don’t suck the life blood (money) out of us poor citizens.

NOT ONE of these ECO SAVE THE WORLD projects has every made it on its own without massive subsidization. As fossil fuel costs rise because of massive and sustained attacks on them by the current administration you will continue to see prosperity, jobs, national security and the dollar’s value decrease. If you want to bankrupt the country you’re doing a pretty good job of it.

Another Naperville citizen upset over this situation

Chirico is not only an elected official but basically a board member of Naperville's electric company. He has not only voted on smart meter and grid issues and funding but he participates on setting rates. He is taking $250,000.00 of the tax payer money to help insulate his private enterprise from the effects of his own votes and influence.

There is absolutely no way, in my opinion, that it is ethical for any board member or elected official to accept any taxpayer funded grants, gifts, or donations at all. It is not acceptable to vote or influence any issue for which he is accepting funds to protect himself from the very laws, ordinances, rates that he is inflicting on others.

By the use of taxpayer money, in the form of grants, for his personal business he will not only mitigate the misery and economic expense of "time of use billing," for himself, but potentially profit from the ability to sell back power to the city for which he makes the rules.

Other business, particularly small business, are not only helping to subsidize Chiricos business to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars, but will have to take out loans or deplete their cash flow to protect themselves against his mandates, rates, and ordinances.

Mr. Chirico needs to resign.

As far as I know these grants or credits are available to everyone. Maybe you should put solar on your home and get all the advantages of a high performance house. If there is corruption, put them in jail.

Gasoline prices are high because the oil companies are exporting a ton of gasoline. They are selling it to China. That is free market.

Gasoline is now are largest export.

If you want lower gasoline prices, lower demand by encouraging people to drive more fuel efficient vehicles or CNG trucks.

It is OK to drive a SUV, but then you give up your right to complain about gas prices.

When you add in the green credit income you will get between a 10 - 15 year payback.

A 15 year paybackis about a 7% return per year. What return do you get at the bank?

7% for 40 years sounds good to me.

Ambassador of Truth, I could not find the report on the $35,000 system that saves $75/mo. My experience tells me that the total price was probably $35k and the home owner portion was about 1/2 of that. The state and federal credits were the other half.

So your level of disgust should be cut in half.

Either way solar panel prices have decreased by about 65% over the last 3 years.
Therefore, any old reports do not represent reality in 2012.

I would rather live in the present and future, not the past.

If you want a detailed financial analysis on a specific project, I will need to charge you my normal consulting fee.

Would you post the link?

This one is worth bragging about too. $24,000 in state and Federal money to save $60 a month. Wow these guys must be good.

Mr. J Adler, proprietor of the establishment will experienced an average saving in excess of $60.00 per month in his electricity bill since the install. In addition, the system was funded by a $12,000 federal grant from the federal government and $12,000 rebate check from the state of Illinois.

Am I missing something? Why wasn’t this project mention in the accomplishment section of Naperville’s Environment Sustainability Plan? Don’t these projects require permits or are councilman exempted from their own laws similar to our Federal government legislator?

It must be nice being part of the political elites who can look down their collective noses at the unwashed masses after all as one person said it is a big pond out there. Best beware 4200 piranhas will beat a shark any day of the week.

Mr. Steve Chirico has the vision of the future where citizens of the United States should be headed for generations to come. The more we can do as citizens to make our lives more independent and less reliable on others for our energy resources the more control we have as individuals over our own lives. As far as the grants are concerned this is the same for our oil imports (which have a very large government subsidy) we should be finding alternative ways to reduce the overbearing demands of foreign oil to domestic oil and eventually to renewable energy for the majority of products requiring carbon based resources. There are a great number of grants, rebates and low cost loans available to ALL citizens as presented by law for Farmers, Automotive industry, Oil, Financial business (banking, wall street, Fannie may, Freddie Mac.,etc),
As far as the biased political comments by a few individual they need to be dismissed as polictical pay back for what is obviously for an axe to grind. Not everyone is fooled by these types of political tactics which is full of misleading and in some case totally inaccurate comments above the State Grant program that could be influenced or under any type of control from a local city official.
If more individuals would be willing to invest in America the way Mr. Steve Chirico has chosen to do it would not be long before Americans could stand proud and independent citizens.

I think it is great this company is on the front foot, taking advantage of subsidies on offer, and installing green energy micro generators. It is the way of the future and we should see more of it. Webmaster from http://forbomarmoleumv.com/

Tom,
So the justification for bad behavior is everybody else is doing it? This country isn’t only financially bankrupt but morally and ethically also. I for one am biased by the utter and complete attempt to destroy all means of energy production relating to fossil fuels. This green movement won’t be happy until people have no homes, cars, electricity, farms, private property, health care or money. (Look up Agenda 21 and environmental sustainability plans)
Not bad enough that our government’s ABC agencies are closing down coal fired power plants, refineries on the entire east coast, preventing oil and natural gas drilling, attacking the new cracking technology now they want to shut down hydroelectric plants (demolish dams) in the far west.
The only acceptable energy generation for these eco-terrorists are wind and solar both of which are the most expensive and inefficient and will never satisfy the electrical needs of this country. They will, however, provide unlimited opportunity for graft and corruptions. Where is the Peta crowd when thousands of birds and bats are being killed daily by these wind mills which use half as much energy as they create if and when they are running?
Yes, I have a political agenda to get government out of our lives, return to constitutional government and free market capitalism, expose this false concern over saving the world using our children and naive adults to rob our wealth and enslave us.

I have noticed that people that complain about "government in their lives" are the first ones to complain to the village when their neighbors burn leaves or garbage.

They complain about other people taking their money and freedoms, yet they are the ones on social security, military or public pensions, get scholarships for their kids or take Lipitor at $3/day from medicare. Some even put their parents in retirement homes on the tax payer after they move the parent's assets to themselves.

They use the FAA for air travel and the courts to protect their patents and trademarks. They are usually big sport fans that watch their favorite team play at the stadium built with tax money.

But the best one of all is, they have had big mortgages that they deducted from their taxes. You know $2000 per month for the the 3,500 square foot house that they need. The taxpayers helped pay for that, but can't use. How does that benefit the other citizens.

Yet when our elected officials decide to invest in the future on things that need seed money, this is a socialist plot. They probably would tell a first grader "kid you have 2 years to pay for yourself or you are out" HaHa. They expect mature, proven markets to exist overnight without any mistakes or wrong turns. If only it were so easy

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Then they often invoke Al Gore and Polar Bears. Anybody who would like to breath clean air and drink clean water is trying to protect the Polar Bears. Perhaps they are trying to protect everyone, even the ones complaining.

These are the same type of people that complained when we enacted laws to require wearing seat belts, install air bags and require a catylitic converter on cars.
Do you remember the complaints, "we will never sell another car they will be too expensive"?

And then there is the magic cure for everything, "the free market."

How many big trucks have you seen blowing huge clouds of smoke from their stacks lately? Do remember getting behind a gravel truck in the old days? Black smoke everywhere coming in through your car windows. There are not many trucks doing that any more. How many truck owners do you think cleaned up their emissions on their own? I doubt very many. The "free market" trucking companies would say it cost more money to put pollution controls on my truck and it does not cost me anything when the truck smokes, so just let it smoke. He did not have to pay for the increased asthma cases. He would be very happy to keep externalizing that cost. The "free market" needs rules and governments to enforce the rules. This is no different than a football game with a ref enforcing the rules. You know what they call a game without rules?

Hockey!

Rationalize all you want Joe or RF or whoever you are. Demonizing the military and retirees both of whom served their country and paid their dues (taxes) only to see political crooks steal their life savings does't change the facts.

Nobody objects to reasonable rules but we are way beyond reasonable and all this tripe about the 1% and the mega homes which you want to convert to multi-family dwellings is just a ploy to deny private ownership,another freedom soon to be stolen away.

By the way have you seen your buddies in congress are now after peoples 401ks to get their greedy, corrupt hands on those selfish retirees’ life savings? No, this is not about clean air or water it is about raw, unmitigated power by the political elite class over the average working citizen. You and your ilk are doming our children to third world poverty and we will not let this happen!

You have a pretty good lists of items that people scam the government on ; you must have personal experience with most of them save the ones that people worked to earn..

When I think of third world countries, I see polluted air, wood burning stoves not solar panels. Your logic that says someone trying to create a country that uses clean sustainable and domestic energy as a demon trying turn the country is into a third world country is ?

As for the social security and medicare you say you paid for, check this web site out, depending on your situation you could have only paid about half. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=412281. On average we all under paid for the benefits we will receive.

As for turning your home into a multifamily home, perhaps you are getting ahead of yourself.

It is hard to listen to people say it is the other guy milking the system when they themselves could be receiving $3,000 to $8,000 per month on benefits from the government. We need to look in the mirror.

We have many problems to fix as a country, but is it worth making enemies over the small things?

Should we save our energy for the much bigger issues. You could eliminate every green energy subsidy and not see a debt in the budget.

From the list above I enjoy sports and use the mortgage deduction.

Oh yes, you must be the only one working in the country. I guess I could never work up to your standards and earn anything.

401 k's only promised to be taxed at latter date. Hopefully that would be a lower tax rate at time of withdrawl do to lower income bracket. Better cash in now because we have not seen tax rates this low in about 60 years.

Do you remember in 1982 the marginal rate for $32,000/yr was 46%.

Have a good day, I will get your response by listening to Rush and Fox "news"

Can't speak to Rush or Fox but can call out graft and corruption when I see and smell it. This deal smells!
See attached article to see the size and scope of the problem.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/11/13/how-obama-s-alternative-energy-programs-became-green-graft.html

They probably had a hard time finding any McCain supporters that had any new ideas in sustainable energy to invest in.

Do you really think all of the $700 billion per year of grant and r&d money the Feds invest in is going to all be successful and only got to Obama supporters?

More unintended consequences of this green junk, Is this what is meant by environmental sustainability?

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/04/28/solyndra-not-dealing-with-toxic-waste-at-milpitas-facility/

Just part of those start up issues that Joe talks about the only problem is the toxics will kill you and your kids.

Unintended Consequences!

You are worried about a few buckets of solvents and heavy metals?

Have you ever heard of the BP oil spill?

Do you have any idea how much solvent and heavy metals was in those millions of gallons of oil? Not to mention the 11 people that died.

Lets talk about another unintended consequence of imported oil. Like about a billion dollars per day being exported to unfriendly nations to pay for imported oil.

That is wise isn't it?

We are paying for both sides of the war.

How about the cost of dead Marines and all that military to defend oil around the world.

What does it do to health of our economy to ship our wealth out every day?

Sure we could drill more and use our resources up faster than we are now.

Or we can invest in things that save our resources for the future. Wow that sounds so crazy. So Liberal. To me sounds like good old American common sense.

Our country is drowning in oil if you greens would get out of the way we wouldn’t have to import a barrel of oil from anywhere for 200+ years. In addition the revenue could significantly help pay off the national debt, make our country immune to oil blackmail from people who kill our troops and citizens, while returning prosperity to our sinking nation and economy.

Instead you folks put your hopes and dreams in technology which is 100 years old and has proven to be inefficient and costly and provides unlimited opportunity for graft and corruption.

See the news today one of your heroes has fessed -up.
Climate Change Alarmist Recants:
‘I Made a Mistake’
British environmental expert James Lovelock now admits he was an “alarmist” regarding global warming — and says Al Gore was too.
Lovelock previously worked for NASA and became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism. In 2007 Time magazine named Lovelock one of its “Heroes of the Environment,” and he won the Geological Society of London’s Wollaston Medal in 2006 for his writings on the Gaia theory.
That year he wrote an article in a British newspaper asserting that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”

You say “you folks put your hopes and dreams in technology which is 100 years old and has proven to be inefficient and costly and provides unlimited opportunity for graft and corruption.”

Let see, oil was discovered about 100 years ago and the oil companies have been notorious for anti trust violations, bribing, land grabbing and “political donations” "(Rockefeller, Koch)

Who are you talking about, you or me?

No chance of corruption or graft with oil companies.

You predict, 200 + years of 100 % domestic oil production. That means we need to double our current production and then pump that amount for 200 years?

Who is the dreamer?

As for Mr. Lovelock, I didn’t know we were talking about climate change.

Why would you bring up climate change?

Climate change is the new name for global warming which was proven to be fraudulent because the scientific crooks were getting huge grants from ours and other world governments to support this nonsense. It is Just a huge scam to kill l fossil fuel usage by onerous taxation and redistributing of wealth from the haves to the haves nots. This is socialism and at its worse communism.

Smart meters are the logical extension of massively, controlling , artificially contrived electricity shortages by greens and corrupt politicians. It’s only purpose to double or triple electric rates by instituting time of use rates.

Who owns oil companies all the people who have 401ks, all the union administered pension programs, most other pension programs and of course individual investors. To attack oil which pays more tax than any other industry is to cut off your nose to spite your face. If you want to destroy this county’s financial base destroy its energy industry. I submit this is exactly what you people are trying to do! The question is why?

Gerard H Shilling are you a shill for the oil companies?

Do you receive any compensation from any person or organization to post these blogs?

Are you invested in the oil industries?

You call me a socialist and communist because I want to be independent. This makes no sense.

A communist believes in government own companies, when have I ever said that.

When did I give you any views on “climate change?”

“If you want to destroy this county’s financial base destroy its energy industry.”

“Instead you folks put your hopes and dreams in technology which is 100 years old and has proven to be inefficient and costly and provides unlimited opportunity for graft and corruption.”

“You and your ilk”

Gee, based on your quotes listed above, I just assumed from your quotes you were speaking to me!

Perhaps oil investments have corrupted some peoples memory or logic?

Some of these turbines are 30 years old.

Do you think they have improved the designs since then?

I can find some pictures of mountain tops that are gone because of coal mining. How about nuclear storage facilities that need to be maintained for about 100,000 years. Or landfills that are leaking but were the cheapest option at the time of disposal of the material. The company at the time made a fortune and now the government needs to clean it up. You don't think companies can go out of business and not maintain their property? Waste Management almost went broke a few years back.

Have you ever seen how many birds die flying into a tall building or smoke stack?

There is no perfect option for power, they all have their issues. But how many use very little water and produce very low emissions over the life of the facility?

We need all types right now.

Keep dreaming Joe. In your utopian land we should convert all food stuffs into ethanol to eliminate using oil which is nature’s quid essential, best energy source to drive transportation. In the electric car world how is electricity to be produced? Why would anybody substitute the best, cheapest, most abundant and efficient source of energy and rob the world of food, use as much energy to produce ethanol as is used and massively subsidize all aspects of the ventures at the direct expense of the tax payers? The answer is graft and corruption. Solar and smart meters are part of the same scam. Accoding to the greens the only acceptable energy sources are wind and solar and they are being turned against by the more radical of these groups.

Well it is good to see that at least you believe in recycling your words, “graft and corruption”

Here you go again changing the subject by bringing up electric cars and ethanol.

Are you sure you are not working off a newsletter from the Koch brothers or some related or funded group?

Do you have an oil alter in your home?

You say “Accoding to the greens the only acceptable energy sources are wind and solar “

In my last message I said “We need all types right now.” Apparently you do not read what I write, so why should we continue this?

Joe,
I know it’s difficult for you to focus and more importantly connect the dots. Facts are stubborn things and when they can’t be refuted just attack the bearer of bad tidings and avoid the issues.

Apparently you neither read news nor listen to it, as on a daily basis, these green scams are coming to light.

There are two types of green advocates those that benefits financially from it like GWF and the people who truly believe mankind is killing the world. The ladder I respect and in many cases even support and help them in their efforts in such things that make economic sense.

The former are just feeders off the corrupt government trough who reward their cronies with mega bucks paid for by oppressed and suppressed tax payers.

Which one are you?

Neither

With more state funding, companies are able to better afford costly solar panel installations. The long term benefits are clear, but many companies must first break the first barrier, which is high installation costs. Great Western flooring is making a good example for similar businesses to follow. - http://www.londonfloorsanding.org.uk/