Saturday, April 15, 2006

Leonardi Street's Trucks: Egos & Huge UGI

Leonardi Street residents have repeatedly asked City Commissioners and staff to do something about the trucks using their street as a shortcut.
Their concerns have led to thousands of dollars in engineering studies but no solution.
A sign banning large trucks not making local deliveries would suffice.
Our City Manager disdains the people and their concerns. Our Commissioners defer to him.
One of the companies whose trucks use the street is Amerigas, which distributes over 1 billion gallons of propane annually and has operations in the U.S. and other countries, with local trucks dispatched from Houston, Texas.
http://www.amerigas.com/
http://www.shareholder.com/ugi/downloads/UGI2005proxy.pdf
Rather than stand up to a multinational corporation (NYSE: UGI) and its subsidiary, Amerigas Partners (NYSE:AGP), based in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, our St. Augustine City Commissioners would rather talk around the topic.
Residents have repeatedly petitioned respectfully for a redress of grievances for years.
Residents have left meetings frustrated with Commissioners unwillingness to listen, "frozen," FDR would say "in the ice of their own indifference." Commissioner Errol Jones spoke for almost 15 minutes about the history of the street and his childhood memories.
It doesn't take much effort to put up a sigin excluding commercial trucks over a stated weight, just as exist on other City streets, including those where some City officials dwell.
Our country was not founded for public officials to cower to power.
On April 24, there will be yet another City Commission meeting (5 PM, Alcazar Room, Lightner Museum and City Hall Bldg, 75 King Street).
On April 26th, there will be a live conference call and webcast by UGI and Amerigas on their latest quarterly earnings. Saving a few seconds to cut through a residential neighborhood must make a de minimis contribution to those quarterly earnings of else Amerigas would have respected citizens' calls to its Houston dispatcher.
I am sure that UGI and Amerigas' risk analysts and "beancounters" may even be willing to share statistics on it (e.g., the risk of a wreck vs. the time and money saved). No doubt UGI and Amerigas can explain it to us (and Wall Street analysts and other reporters). To participate in the April 26, 2006 4 PM UGI/AGP conference call, see http://www.shareholder.com/ugi/calendar-detail_new.cfm?EventID=26091

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