Michigan City's Street Lights Removed Over Unpaid Electric Bills
The majority of street lights have been removed from one Michigan city that was having trouble paying its electricity bill.
DTE Energy Company has already repossessed 1,400 street lights in Highland Park as a part of a deal to forgive $4 million in unpaid bills going back at least five years. The company expects the rest of the work to be completed by Oct. 31.
The city council calls the plan the "Highland Park Lighting Improvement Project" because it will also replace 200 lights on street corners with more efficient models.
"We're trying to keep (costs) down so the taxpayers don’t have to pay extra money," Mayor Hubert Yopp said Tuesday.
The city hopes that the reduction of service will curb their overall electric bill from more than $60,000 per month to about $15,000 per month.
For obvious reasons, Highland Park residents have been worried about increased crime as the lights come down.
"After they took the street light from in front of my business, someone climbed onto my roof and stole an air conditioning unit," businessman Bobby Hargrove told The Detroit News. "I feel like I'm being punished -- I've always paid my bills on time, but they took the street light anyway."
Hargrove claimed that the Highland Park police officer he spoke to after the robbery tried to use the opportunity to make a few extra bucks.
"He contacted me about a week after my air conditioner was stolen and told me he'd make sure my place didn't get broken into -- if I paid him $650 every two weeks," he complained. "That's like paying protection to the Mafia."
Although Yopp has denied the crime rate is up, city school board secretary Robert Davis also said that at least three schools were broken into right after the lights were removed.
"Thankfully, DTE agreed to put new lights in front of the schools, although they're not all up yet," Davis explained.
..this is so freakin' uncalled for, obscene & stupid, you would think people would be in the streets protesting against it.
Oh wait...
When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in excess body fat & carrying a misspelled sign.
To the Republican America.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." -- Robert E. Howard
You're right of course , sad to say more than a few
DemocratsRepubli-rats have done their fare share to destroy this country along with the Republicon ."The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
Dats a nice A/C unit ya got dere, be a shame if sumting happened to it...
Looks like the cops have cut out the middleman and are shaking down businesses instead of the Mafia.
Why not elect a competent mayor that will pay the f---ing bills?
Yes, because as we all know, in a city government, the mayor is directly, solely, and immediately responsible for paying all city bills. Never mind if tax receipts can't cover those bills, he should be taking them out of his personal account.
Go back to Fox. Or maybe Sesame Street. They have about equally developed reasoning behind thier programming, you'd feel right at home.
"the f---ing bills"
when there is no money.
...No matter how competent your imaginary "supermayor" is.
(maybe if Ben Burnanke was mayor maybe)
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
ffs
I don't know what else to say than that.
Can we raise taxes on the rich yet?
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
Gated communities have homeowners fees. And thier own lights. And gates.
and fear
Well, that's a prerequisite.
fire proof?
No, but that's what the private fire department is for. And the private security.
less than a minute later we were surrounded by Bel Air's private swat team. The rich get value for their money, the poor get beaten around the head.
And someone who owns the local power plant.
Local power plant? No developer would be stupid enough to build a gated community within the same zipcode as a power plant. Those things are dirty, ugly, and staffed by poor people. We don't want any of that near our houses.
if anything happened to those gates.
Buh buh buh but we'd lose all those jobs that the tax breaks for the wealthy have created Ape-man ! What on earth are you thinking ?
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
the really rich people that we need to tax are untouchable.
and the keep their money in places that America doesn't have jurisdiction in.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
of US depositors that was suppossed to be released? Like that was ever going to happen.
This makes zero sense, how much to take the lights down?
Then if they ever decide to put them back, how much does that cost?
What about accidents caused by poor lighting or deaths due to crime, who gets sued?
Small minds at work here folks, move along, move along...
they have to be paid to re-install them.
...creation.
(Obama style)
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
Job security.
One step closer to drowning in the bathtub.
Make a bonfire out of rich people bright enough to burn a hole in the sky.
99%
how about they just cut the power to the lights? What is the point of taking them down? WTF?
It's a repo. The city couldn't pay the backed bills, so the company repo'ed the lights.
...because this is the new "green America"
(everything gets recycled)
nothing goes to waste.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
today about a bunch of high school kids from West Philly who won the award for best mileage (competing against colleges like MIT and corporations) when their car averaged 160 mpg. Way to go kids! Now who wants to bet that tech. never reaches the market - at least not here in the U.S.
I like that kind of shit. (cars are a hobby of mine)
I have always wanted to build one of these "geet" engines...which is basically replacing a carburator with a "fuel vaporizer thingy". ...supposed to double the fuel efficiency.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOrB3huE1Ow
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
Stanley Meyer - Water powered car, 100 mpg.
Poisoned in an Ohio restaurant in 1998.
http://waterpoweredcar.com/stanmeyer.html
99%
fellow in Japan developed a car that ran on water? I wonder what happened to him.
He was a victim of the same conspiracy that discredited cold fusion... seriously, these people either have to publish thier results and have people recreate them independantly, or they are probably either intentionally or unintentionally lying.
You linked to a conspiracy theory website touting free energy. It is poorly written and edited. Everything about it says you should not trust this site. But you did. Energy effeciency is good. Conspiracy theories and consistantly disproven scientific theories, not so much. He never even let the effeciency of his engine be tested. Hoax, fraud, lie... whatever it is, it shouldn't be trusted.
the machine he created, that made more energy than it consumed. I honestly forget what that's called, but it's suppossed to be impossible. Many years ago it was tested at Hughes Aerospace in El Segundo and while it worked, and the scientists confirmed that it worked, their conclusion was even though they witnessed it, it was impossible because it defied the laws of physics - therefore it didn't work.
Go figure.
and has numerous patents in it in the US and internationally. It's not a hoax or a fruad, It uses pulsed, high frequency of very high voltage at only microamperage currents to break water down into it's constituent compnents of oxygen and hydrogen. Because of the voltage (~30,000 volts) and the frequency (20,000+Hz) the cell works like a capacitor in which the dielectric (the water) suffers massive breakdown across it's entire volume. This is unlike a conventional electrolytic cell, that proceeds to completion by far more inefficient and cumbersome reaction mechanics. Wereas a conventioanl electrolytic cell requires 2.3 times the energy input than what is derived from the reaction, and evolves so much heat that it will boil the electrolyzed solution it not cooled by a cooling medium, a Meyer cell proceeds with almost 100% efficieny and evolves, effectively, no heat. It is so efficient that a miniscule amount of waste torque from the engine that runs it can power the entire process, which is a closed loop. The two processes follow completely different quantum electrodynamic pathways. It works....I've played with it in my laboratory. The patents, which cover the basic invention plus several innovative fuel flow, and several related efficiency enhancing modifications, are expiring on this invention, and the Japanese are working with it for their next generation vehicles.
http://green.autoblog.com/2010/11/01/video-16...
That's not the original story I read, but the pic of the car is pretty nice.
Greed and $ , we're goin down folks .It's going to take more than a few occupations and sit ins , would take a unified peoples and all hell breaking lose all over the country to get our country back again , a full blown revolt .
"The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."
always remember...
(they are just one percent)
and we are 99
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
We should have clean expensive power, and everybody will have to pay more! The more people hurt by rising prices the more foot soldiers we'll have to fight the rich!
How long will we all just lie here and let ourselves be raped by the rich and powerful, with the republican party holding us down and telling us to "relax and enjoy it"?
If I lived in a gated community, I'd be shoring up those gates about now.
And saving the world! One street light at a time.
Ah, the wonders of privatization of public functions.
Running government like a business, one repossessed streetlight at a time.
Looks as if the tea party has gotten just what they wanted.
We should all send them a letter of thanks.
Now what's the next service/infrastructure that's going to go down the tubes?
Taxed Enough Already!!
Sarcasm now off.
...we're stepping into the Third World Status column. I can't believe I'm seeing this happen in the USA.
What was that again that we were #1 at? Oh yeah...making and selling munitions. Nevermind.
:)
We're #1!
I'd be living somewhere in Europe now. Probably Germany or one of the Scandinavian countries.
So much for the enlightenment. Back to the dark ages.
to a teabagger's wet dream.
NOBODY 2012
that is the big difference, "protection" paid to a cop gets you basically nothing - while protection paid to the mafia often gets real results.
In Topeka, they've repealed the law against domestic violence and let dozens of offenders out of jail to save money. Hooray! In Topeka, it's now legal to beat up your wife! It's a wet dream for republican filth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/topeka-m...
is considered Christian Domestic Discipline. A family value kind of thing.
One town near me is replacing metal street name signs with ones that light up from the inside. Why? At a time like this, why are communities replacing perfectly good signs with ones that consume electricity and drive up the cost of government?
You got what you wanted, Michigan. Your taxes didn't go up. They didn't raise taxes on the rich, so when you finally win the lottery it will be a windfall for you. You're free of the government!! Enjoy your freedom to be robbed and beaten in the dark.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
protection paid to the mafia often gets real results.
As an Italian American, I concur with that statement.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
We don' need no stinkin' taxes....
crumble on TV.
I had a Street light and was being charged $15 a month by the electric company; that was many years ago.
But if a Business owner really wanted that light he could get the Electric Company to put one in; only he would have to pay for it.
It was just fine as long as other Tax payers were footing the bill.
Donaldd
The no taxers in Michigan better strap themselves and thier family members in real good the next time they go out for a drive at night for that inevitable driver without his lights on. NO TAXES, NO TAXES.....SCRRRREEEEEECHHHHH!!!!!
though the headline makes you chuckle when you read it, this is really very sad.
they actually repossessed the streetlights.
i hope the corporation knows where they can put them! or should i say shove them?
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