New on the STRIDE website ( www.stride-mn.org ) are the following questions. Does anyone out there want to venture a guess at the answers?
David Piehl Central >From www.strid-mn.org: Inquiring minds want to know ... There are a lot of questions about this project that remain unanswered. STRIDE hopes that curious neighbors, enterprising reporters, and honest politicians consider the following set of questions (and try to find answers to them): 1 - Who is Smith-Parker? why are they involved in just about every single transportation project in South Minneapolis? Why are they, a law firm, project managers for a transportation project? aren't they also legal counsel to the same corporations that stand to benefit the most from their project recommendations? 2 - Who made the decision to continue with OSM Consultants when the privately funded Abbott Northwestern Transportation Study (of 1997) somehow morphed into the Phillips Partnership's Access Project? After Smith-Parker and other project lobbyists secured federal funding - was there any public bidding process for design services or was the project simply given to OSM? what about when OSM went out of business and some of their staff went to work for SEH - was the project then simply handed over to SEH? - was there any public bidding process then? 3 - Who decided that this should be an auto-focused transportation project? Is that what Smith-Parker did as a way of representing their clients' interests? 4 - How come the 28th Street flyover is still part of the project? has any neighborhood requested the construction of a NEW highway off-ramp to 28th Street? 5 - Why was the PAC forced to vote last December to accept Mn/DOT's ultimatum of HOV lane additions to the project? wasn't that the same thing that Mn/DOT had tried to ram down the neighborhoods' throats just a few years earlier? Smith-Parker representatives at the meeting assured PAC members that the vote would help secure funding, but as of yet, Mn/DOT has no money to pay for the $97 million that will be their share of the $150 million project (and which includes $40 million to "accommodate" those two additional lanes) - and Hennepin County has had to offer to provide up-front funding to keep the project alive - can they even do that? 6 - Why are we spending $40 million to "accommodate" additional lanes on 35W before citizens have a chance to express their opinion on this matter? (Mn/DOT says that they won't even consider building the lanes before 2010) - is it so that ten years down the road, when neighbors mobilize to oppose the construction (paving) of these new lanes Mn/DOT can tell them that $40 million was already spent, and that it would be irresponsible to not make use of this "investment" and pave the lanes? __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:mpls@;mnforum.org Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
