According to a Star Tribune article, in a burst of fucking utter genius, South Metro cities are doing everything in their power to lower fuel consumption. I’m not quite sure why it took this long for them to decide that idling cars, driving four individual vehicles to a hypothetical water main break and driving dump trucks to carry simple tools was bad for the taxpayers but it did.

In addition to what I’ve listed above Eagan police officers are limited to driving 70 miles a shift unless otherwise necessary, the Parks and Recreation department is modifying unclaimed bicycles to haul trailers for carrying tools instead of using gas sucking dump trucks and their workers are mowing less grass in their local parks. What I want to know is why only now? For 2008 they budgeted gas costs at around $2.75 a gallon and while Eagan gets it fuel wholesale, with predictions from the summer of 2007 estimating cost in the $4 to $5, why would they believe it would be anything less than $3.50?

In addition to Eagan, other South Metro cities and even Dakota County are doing their parts to limit the impact of the higher costs including teleconferencing, carpooling, hybrids, buying sedans instead of larger vehicles, cops on bike, using GPS to optimize routing (which as many of you know isn’t the best way to do things — it will get you there but not always the best way), cops on the beat, etc.

While I’m thrilled that they are doing all of these things, I still want to know why they haven’t been doing it for the last 7 years…

Related posts:

1. South Metro Police Blotter: Ouch!
2. Random South Metro News
3. South Metro Crime Incident Mapping
4. Geocaching with Moe the Sleaze and s4xton: South-Metro, MN
5. 2007 South Metro Restaurant Flashback