MUMPO to WidenI77: “Time’s Up”

HOT lanes on I-77 is a complicated and multifaceted issue.  Trying to explain it all in ten minutes to a semi-interested group is a tough thing to pull off.  Yet, that was the initial time allotted for wideni77 to make their case to MUMPO.

A number of citizens, at least one mayor and a State House Rep lobbied MUMPO Chairwoman (and Huntersville Commissioner) Sarah McAulay for more time.  As Stallings Mayor Linda Paxton put it:

We (MUMPO) are responsible for making extremely important decisions for how our limited transportation dollars are spent. We should not rubber stamp recommendations from staff without complete understanding of all facts and viewpoints.

McAulay would have none of it.  In fact, McAulay would have less of it.  Originally the agenda called for a five minute Q&A following the presentation.  (Seriously.  Five whopping minutes.) The agenda tonight cut that entirely.  And McAulay cut me off literally in mid-sentence.  More on that in a minute.

While wideni77 was given a scant ten minutes, MUMPO somehow managed to find an hour for… you guessed it… another ‘managed lanes’ presentation by a consultant.  Despite some really bad advice in the past, MUMPO (and NCDOT) don’t seem to mind paying these guys for more.

In this case, MUMPO decided they needed an hour pre-meeting to listen to the Parsons Brinkerhoff guy discuss the results of a year-old survey (not surprisingly favorable to managed lanes) and a 15-person focus group. It’s not like the Lake Norman politicians haven’t been organizing meetings of their own- remember the 1:1 sessions with HOT lane salesmen, and the “public information” sessions?

The P-B guy ran out of slides (and MUMPO questions) in about 45 minutes. MUMPO took a 15 minute break and started at seven.  First up on the agenda: acceptance of the agenda.  At this point, we were expecting (hoping?) a few MUMPO types would pipe up and request we be given more time.  Dumb. Naive.  A motion was made, seconded and the agenda passed in about 30 seconds.

So I made my way to the podium and blasted through a dozen or so slides before McAulay cut me off.  I stopped and asked if there was a Q&A.  “No.”  May I finish?  “In one or two minutes.”

And that was that.  No discussion.  No dialogue.  No debate.  No exchange of ideas.  Which is just how the Chairwoman wanted this to go down.

Regardless of what side of this issue you’re on, a public official who abuses their position to squelch public dialogue is not fit to be a public official.  I would advise you to email her at smcaulay@huntersville.org, but you’d be wasting your time.

Really, Commissioner McAulay- whose interests do you represent?  Take your time answering.  I won’t cut you off.

Kurt Naas
wideni77.org

US TITLE 23,

Para 134 Metropolitan Transportation Planning

(5) PARTICIPATION BY INTERESTED PARTIES

 (A) IN GENERAL

Each metropolitan planning organization shall provide citizens, affected public agencies, representatives of public transportation employees, freight shippers, providers of freight transportation services, private providers of transportation, representatives of users of public transportation, representatives of users of pedestrian walkways and bicycle transportation facilities, representatives of the disabled, and other interested parties with a reasonable opportunity to comment on the transportation plan.

(B) CONTENTS OF PARTICIPATION PLAN

A participation plan

(i) shall be developed in consultation with all interested parties; and

(ii) shall provide that all interested parties have reasonable opportunities to comment on the contents of the transportation plan.