The amendment to remove all funding for expansion of Hwy M (Junction Rd) from the 2009 budget got one vote at the BOE: Satya Rhodes-Conway. (Not all alders sit on BOE, which is why you don't see my name listed.)
No one from the public came to speak about the item. Alder Sandborn claimed that because we had approved the neighborhood plans for the the adjacent areas, we were now obligated to build roads to serve all the drivers in those neighborhoods. He also claimed that no one had come to Council meetings to complain/warn about the roads that would be needed to go with the developments. Brad Murphy and several others pointed out that there have been quite a few discussions over the years about the transportation impacts of certain development patterns. Please direct your comments to Alder Sandborn if you need to comment on the above. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Larry Nelson answered a question asked at the last BOE meeting, and something I've wondered about for years. The Engineering Dept estimates that 17% of the property taxes on the average home go to road maintenance of all kinds: pothole filling, snow plowing, trash pick-up, mowing, etc. Brad Murphy and the Mayor made the argument that we had required the new Research Park (to be built at the corner of Mineral Point and Junction Rd) to be significantly more urban and dense than UW originally wanted it to be. More density => more cars, because most people are going to drive anyway => need for more road expansion for all those cars. That was part of "the deal" with the UW. I do not remember being part of that deal, although I do remember seeing the neighborhood plan at several meetings. The five projects we tried to remove from the budget total $52 million over the next six years - 2009-2014. We are expecting about $16 million of federal funding, so the rest will be coming from property taxes and special assessments. (I don't know how much would come from special assessments, because I missed the Sept. 9 BOE meeting, where I could asks that question. I'll see if I can find out for the future.) Removing the five projects from the 2009 budget would have saved $115,259 on the 2009 operating budget. I'm sure we can all think of other things we'd like to do with that money. Over the next six years, here are the totals for various parts of the County Highway M/Mineral Point project (some rounding in these numbers): Cty Hwy S (Mineral Point) - Cty Hwy M (Junction Road) intersection: $20 million. Cty Hwy M - Cty Hwy PD area: $10.5 million Cty Hwy M - Midtown Rd area: $10.6 million Cty Hwy M - Valley View area: $9 million Cty Hwy M - Watts Rd area: $2.1 million Robbie _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list Bikies@danenet.org http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
