Saturday, January 18, 2014

AMP dog and pony show nearly busted out into a full blown public hearing

".... go to Cleveland. See what a mess it is."
I was not able to attend any of the AMP meetings but from reports in the Tennessean, crowds have grown with each of the several AMP meeting. The last meeting was so well attended that the MTA has decided to have an additional meeting. MTA has billed the meetings as "final design" meetings and not as public hearings on the merit of the AMP project. Announcements of the meetings were worded so as to discourage opponents from attending.  Also the Stop Amp people were late in urging opponents to attend the meetings reasoning that contributing to "final design" meetings would imply acquiescence that the AMP was a done deal.

Local Enclave blogger Mike Byrd attended the West End AMP meeting and reports on how the MTA almost lost control of their carefully orchestrated dog and pony show. Below are excerpts from his report:
Tonight's Midtown transit "open house" or "workshop" (or whatever officials are deciding to call it at the moment) nearly busted out into a full blown public hearing on the east-west connector after one person in the audience asked an Amp engineer who was finishing up at the podium if he would take questions from the floor. .....someone else in the crowd spoke up and asked the engineer to use a microphone so everyone could hear him. The engineer declined to grab the mike and expressed his own wish that all questions be expressed at the tables.  .....a good part of the vision seems already achieved. Haggling over the details at specific intersections does not seem like "visioning" to me.
Read the full report at this link.

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Posted by Rod Williams
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 20, 2014 at 12:38 PM

    I attended the meeting in Midtown, and I was pleased with the amount of open skepticism I saw on display. I wore my STOP AMP t-shirt, so I had several people who said they weren't politically active come up and ask me if this was a done deal or not. From the look of the meeting, the impression Metro is trying to give is that this is a done deal, but both the State and now Federal governments are saying they don't have the money for it. Considering that this project is predicated on getting the federal grant, it isn't a done deal.

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