this is what i sent initially this afternoon. once again my apologies for sending people off on wild goose chases. what has gone unmentioned the past two days was the story in the briefs of tuesday's strib about art leahy pulling up roots to move to orange county. back in april of this year the Federal Transit Admin. expressed concerns about the management of the hiawatha light rail project. at that time, the state dot was carrying the ball on the project as i understand it and the feds wanted to make sure that the actual operator of the line, metro transit, would head up the project from start to finish. at that time the met council put forward art leahy's name as the man who would run the project which satisfied the fta especially i suppose since leahy had worked with light rail somewhere else. it was also stated at the time that an assistant general manager who would report to leahy and work on transit development. i qoute from the strib of 4/11/00: "that person would have the background to critically monitor the work of the team selected to design and build the line and the consultants hired to manage the project for the Transportation Dept." does anybody know if such a person were hired? beyond that and aside from the reported assurances of jay lindgren, met council regional coordinator, that the council is "in a good position to recruit a new director" does anyone else get a queasy feeling in their stomach? what with the political brouhaha in florida, the brewing storms in the house and senate, both national and state, i worry about the expenditures already made by the city toward lrt. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/
