December 6,2016-
Nunley Wins Seat On Tulare Council
Developer Greg Nunley is the winner in a close race for a seat on the Tulare City Council with the final tally posted by the county Friday.
Nunley edged incumbent Craig Vejvoda in the District 5 race winning by just 13 votes. Nunley won with 1819 votes to Vejvoda’s 1803 votes with two other candidates far behind.
Nunley had been critical during the campaign of the lack of new business development in the city saying he knew of no businesses that opened in Tulare in the past five years with the exception of a car wash.
Nunley as well as council member Cartlon Jones, who easily beat Phillip Smith in District 3, have each criticized former City manager Don Dorman over the lack of development activity noting he gutted the city planning department and made little effort to bring in either businesses or develop new residential units in town.
In a press account of a Tulare election forum “ Carlton Jones agreed with Nunley ,saying, “I celebrate Dorman leaving. He wasn’t a good fit for Tulare.”
In the race for the third seat Jose Sigali was the winner over Shea Gowin.
With a new city manger and 3 new council members – sentiment to develop more business may be stronger now and Tulare could see more economic activity.
Tesla Tale
Former Public Works director Lew Nelson says the city under Dorman decided not to work with the tech company Tesla on a plan to build a battery facility at the wastewater treatment plant.
Tesla “sat across the table from us and agreed to install a 4.0 megawatt hour battery to protect the treatment plant from a $25k monthly peak demand charge resulting from fuel cell tripping from a number of causes. We would have saved at least $5k a month on the electric bill, and the battery could have been used with an expansion of the solar plant that had already been designed.
Special energy Counsel and the City Manager terminated the battery contract because they couldn’t figure how it would pay for Tesla. They canceled the solar contract because we weren’t going to have a battery.
Tesla told us that not every project they did was profitable. They wanted to be in Tulare to be able to show off the technology conveniently.”