The City Council made it through the second reading of five Council bill on the old business portion of the agenda without a dissenting vote Tuesday evening.

The same held true for a change order in the amount of $17,982.30 for Memorial Hall renovations and a requisition in the amount of $241,807.74 for the Golf Course renovation project.

A motion to modify Council bill 02-55 that would authorize the Mayor to enter into an agreement with the Hispanic Soccer League for the use of the utility fields at the Fair Acres Sports Complex resulted in a 5-5 stand off. The tie on the motion to change the name on the document to the Adult Soccer League was broken by the Mayor who voted in favor. Some Council members questioned whether the Council had the authority to modify the league’s name. The issue of whether the contract met City guidelines specified for other similar contracts was also questioned.

The Council also differed on opinions concerning the issuance of a Special Use Permit for a day care on Garrison. Five spoke in favor, while three spoke against.

NASCAR to the Max

Saturday’s running of the Pepsi 400 from Daytona Beach, Florida proved to be a typical superspeedway free-for-all. The track is a 2.5-mile high-banked tri-oval that allows the drivers to drive the race at full throttle.

NASCAR regulates the speeds of the cars by issuing restrictor plates to the teams that limit the amount of air entering the carburetor thereby slowing the cars to less than 200 mph.

NASCAR reasons that keeping speeds under 200 mph protects the drivers and fans from the inevitable accidents.

One byproduct that NASCAR has not been able to remedy is that limiting the power produced by the cars eliminates the ability to accelerate quickly and overtake other cars. This leads to a pack of cars two or three wide and 10 or 12 rows deep. At some point during the race, a driver will make a small miscue that leads to "The Big One", a chain reaction accident that involves a large number of cars. Saturday’s "Big One" came with 25 laps remaining, involved 15 cars, and left 4 of them unable to continue.

After the restart, the race continued until another accident with three laps remaining brought out the final caution of the evening. The debris from the accident was unable to be cleaned up quickly and the race ended under caution with Michael Waltrip taking the checkered flag at a freeway speed of 65 mph.

The win marked Waltrip’s second career win. His previous win also came at Daytona in the 2001 Daytona 500, a victory that was overshadowed by his friend, mentor, and team owner, Dale Earnhardt’s death in the final lap of that race. Waltrip dominated the race and lead 99 of the 160 laps. Following the race every driver interviewed admitted that Waltrip had the strongest car and that even if the race had gone green the final three laps, they wouldn’t have been able to pass him.

The Tropicana 400 will take place this Sunday at the 1.5-mile Chicagoland Speedway just outside Chicago in Joliet, IL. Kevin Harvick won last year’s inaugural event.

In an ironic twist of fate, one of the Council members who voted against allowing the discharge of fireworks within City limits got hit by a bottle rocket July 4th.

The incident occurred while sitting at Muni Park waiting for the fireworks show to begin. The rocket struck in the leg and spread sparks around the head and shoulders. A slight injury to the shin was fortunately the only visible evidence of the intrusion.

Informal reports of Police and Fire personnel indicate the fireworks season was a fairly mild one. Apparently a few areas were littered heavily with debris from spent fireworks, but neighborhoods in general remained fairly calm.

My neighborhood was tested, but a friendly reminder of the law stopped the outburst.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

by

Metcalf Auto Supply

Click & Clack
TALK CARS

by Tom & Ray Magliozzi

Dear Tom and Ray:

My future brother-in-law claims that it’s more cost-effective to use your brakes rather than downshifting. He says this is true for both hills and normal driving. He argues that it only costs him a couple hundred dollars to replace his brakes, while engine overhaul may cost thousands. Is it more cost-effective to use your brakes? -Eddy

TOM: It totally depends, Eddy. "Hills," and "normal driving" are two completely different situations in this regard.

RAY: Let’s take "normal driving" first. It’s not the engine that takes the brunt of downshifting. It’s the clutch that takes the punishment. Think about it. If you shifted up from first gear to fifth then downshifted all the way back down again, you’d be using your clutch twice as often, and therefore wearing it out twice as fast, right? And a clutch can cost hundreds of dollars.

TOM: So in "normal driving," it is much better, as your wise brother-in-law says, to use the brakes to slow and stop the car.

RAY: On steep down hills, however, it’s a completely different story. And you’d be crazy to listen to the advice your knucklehead future brother-in-law.

TOM: If you overuse your brakes on long, steep hills, you can cause the brake fluid to boil. If the brake fluid boils, you can lose your brakes entirely. And if you check with your local body shop and emergency room, they’ll confirm that having "no brakes" is not a very cost-efficient way to go down a hill.

RAY: So on steep hills, you’re much better off putting the car in a lower gear and using the natural braking action of the engine to keep the car at a reasonable speed.