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Monday, August 06, 2007 How green is your mayor's car? By PAMELA HASTEROK New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who fashions himself as the greenest mayor in America, got caught last week being chauffeured to the subway in a Suburban. The Volusia County Council may have approved Central Florida's first commuter train last week, but it won't be up and running for three years.
So I just had to ask: What do our local mayors — our role models — drive? Are they proudly modeling their Priuses? Are they carpooling with their neighbors? Are they riding the bus downtown? They are not. Of 17 mayors surveyed, not one uses public transportation. Twelve drive large trucks or SUVs. Just four drive vehicles more than three years old. Mayor Mike Thompson of Oak Hill claimed the best gas mileage with 31 miles per gallon in his Honda Accord. Edgewater Mayor Michael Thomas's GMC 2500 pickup with extended cab and 25-inch wheels garnered the fuel-sucking prize at 10 miles to the gallon — but he gets that only going downhill. "I've had gas hogs before, but this is the worst one," he said. "When it sees the gas station, the wheel starts pulling over." Frank Bruno, not a mayor but close as Volusia County's chairman, drives the most, wracking up about 30,000 miles a year in his white Ford pickup. But a handful of mayors, from New Smyrna to Palm Coast, drive fewer than 5,000 miles a year. Lake Helen Mayor Mark Shuttleworth boasts the oldest vehicle, a 1998 GMC Savannah van. He uses a bungee cord to keep the back door closed. About half of our mayors bought cars within the past 18 months. Just one mayor, Allen Green of Port Orange, purchased a hybrid. While Glenn Ritchey, the mayor of Daytona Beach, sells vehicles that use both gas and electricity at his auto dealerships, the prospect of owning one is daunting. (He gets around in a shiny pearl Cadillac Escalade.) “We’d probably spend as much at the orthopedic clinic as we’d save in gas once we cram ourselves into a hybrid,” he said, referring to the trouble tall men like he and Mayor Fred Costello of Ormond Beach have fitting into most vehicles. Costello says he’s holding out for Chevrolet’s swanky electric concept car, the Volt, to hit stores. He’s a self-confessed car nut who drives a Toyota FJ SUV but keeps a Mercedes and Corvette in his garage. A vehicle has to be fast, sporty and fun, or he’s not interested. It would be an understatement to say he and his fellow mayors were uninterested in using alternative transportation. When I asked if they walked, biked, bused or carpooled, a stunned silence invariably followed. They all offered the usual excuses: It’s too far (although many lived within two miles of city hall); it’s too hot; it’s too inconvenient. While Deltona Mayor Dennis Mulder carpools to the gym each day (when he isn’t driving his super sleek, hot yellow Acura NSX), just two mayors go anywhere any way other than by driving. New Smyrna Beach Mayor Jim Vandergrifft occasionally walks the few blocks to City Hall and likes to cycle around town. So does Shuttleworth. “Lake Helen is Lake Helen,” he said dryly of his diminutive town. “It’s not like it’s 20 miles across.” Mayor Blaine O’Neal of South Daytona works it both ways. He drives a four-door Chevy Avalanche around town — a full-size SUV with a truck bed tacked on — but puttered up to City Hall to file his qualifying papers on a Yamaha 50 cc scooter. While the rest of us might worry about global warming and hoard our pennies to fill the gas tank, mayors, for the most part, seem less troubled. “It’s a big truck, bright red, pretty red,” gushed DeBary Mayor George Coleman about his Ford 350 pickup, a vehicle the size of a manufactured home. “It’s my baby.” |
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