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ANOTHER
VIEW
Let's
work together to improve roads
By Suzan Rivers
Special to The Macon Telegraph
Roads in Macon
and Bibb County are being built from three sources of funding: local,
state and federal.
If federal money
is used on a road something called an "Environmental Assessment,"
or EA, is required. This is an assessment of the effects that the
building of the road will have on air quality, water quality, drainage,
wetlands, historic resources, etc. If significant adverse effects
are found, then a more in-depth study called an "Environmental
Impact Statement," or EIS, must be done. If the findings of
the Environmental Assessment are deemed "not significant,"
then officials issue a report known as a FONSI, or Finding of No
Significant Impact.
What happened
on Houston Road was this: Moreland-Altobelli, the firm which manages
our Road Improvement Program, was in charge of compiling the EA.
That makes no sense to me. Why would Moreland-Altobelli agree that
the environmental findings were "significantly adverse"
since they, among others, will profit if an unnecessarily large
road is built? This was a sheer case of the fox guarding the henhouse.
The findings of
the EA, according to CAUTION-Macon, were significantly flawed, but
those findings were nonetheless used as a basis for the issuing
of a Finding of No Significant Impact by the Federal Highway Administration.
I would like to know what government officials set up the review
process so that the contractor is at an advantage. The process should
be set up in such a way that the pubic's best interests are looked
after, not the contractors' best interests! The review process is
corrupted.
Since the process
was not taking care of the people, more than 1,000 Maconites gathered
on the courthouse steps in September 1998 screaming, "We want
Walter Kulash!" We had heard that he was nationally famous
for being able to design roads that would not destroy neighborhoods.
After CAUTION's outcry, Kulash was hired by Moreland-Altobelli to
basically give his opinion of other engineers' work. Whether they
were county engineers or private engineers, the attitude toward
Kulash can be summed up in one word: resentment.
This is almost
inconceivable. Kulash is so famous in his field that he has been
lauded on the pages of The Wall Street Journal. If I were a local
engineer I would not resent this man; I would be excited and proud
to have an opportunity to work with him. I would be picking his
brain and developing a meaningful relationship with him.
I was in a RIP
Executive Committee meeting on Jan. 7, 1998, when Tom Moreland himself
stood up and said that there was no problem with Kulash's working
with Moreland-Altobelli, even though Kulash's license was in Florida.
Moreland said he would obtain a temporary license for Kulash. This
was never an issue. The minutes of that meeting reflect this.
The newspaper
confused people by saying Kulash "refused" to work on
Houston Road. That is not at all accurate. He refused to put "Band
aids" on a local engineering firm's design work. He wanted
to be allowed to look at the project "as a whole." The
Executive Committee refused to let him work on Houston Road.
CAUTION-Macon
took the Road Improvement Program and other affiliated agencies
to court because the Environmental Assessment for Houston Road was
a sham.
At the prompting
of State Sen. Robert Brown, the interim State Historic Preservation
officer, Ray Luce, along with Richard Cloues of that office came
to look at the scheduled destruction of historic resources on all
RIP projects with CAUTION-Macon members. Once here they said that
Moreland-Altobelli's Environmental Assessment had not told them
about all the significant historic resources which would be impacted
on Houston Road. After his visit, Cloues asked that Heard School
and other neglected historic resources be considered for the National
Register of Historic Places and given some protection. The Citizens'
Oversight Committee of the RIP is the body which is supposed to
represent citizen interests in the program. They were never offered
a look at any Environmental Assessment, nor were they asked to make
any comments on the assessment.
So, CAUTION took
the RIP to court. We also put Kulash in a car and drove him out
to Houston Road and to every other RIP project and showed him the
whole ball of wax. He had some opinions. We wanted him to tell the
judge his opinions. The judge asked to hear his opinions. CAUTION
paid him for his expenses. He did not do any engineering on Houston
Road. He did not charge us any large fee for being an expert witness.
He just gave his opinions.
Why can't the
county engineers and the locally hired private engineers come together
side by side with Kulash and the citizens to create something that
any other city would envy? Can't we work together for the good of
Macon and Bibb County? CAUTION is and always has been willing to
try.
Suzan Rivers
is a resident of Macon and a member of CAUTION Macon.
Confederate
flag not a symbol of hate
Editors:
The attempts to blame Southerners for slavery and the War for Southern
Independence are dishonest and hypocritical.
The first slaves
in the U.S. were sold in the North to Northerners by Northern importers.
Because the North had become more industrialized, it was not economically
feasible to use slave labor, and most of the slaves ended up in
the agricultural South - not freed but sold to Southern planters.
I reject the idea
that slavery was the primary cause of the war. The principle causes
were differences in culture, business, political philosophy and
high protective tariffs, with slavery being a contributing factor,
between the people of the South and those of the North leading to
a struggle for power.
I think we can
all agree that slavery was wrong, but it wasn't the issue for which
most Southerners fought. Ninety percent of Confederate soldiers,
including all four of my great-grandfathers, one of whom was killed
and buried in Virginia, owned no slaves.
The Confederate
flag symbolizes the fight for the right to secede from the Union,
for home rule, states' rights and decentralized authority. It is
not a symbol of hate, and we should urge all hate groups to quit
displaying it.
Norlis "Skeet"
Chapman
Perry
State flag critic way off the mark
Editors:
Maybe the Rev. Matt Avera (Letters, Jan. 19, "It's time to
change state flag") needs to follow his own advice and cease
to continue to "view life through the rear-view mirror,"
thereby clinging to "symbols that epitomize man's inhumanity
to man."
He could not have
said it better than "Let's quit carrying the sins of our forefathers
and stop fighting their battles."
I have never owned
a slave, just as there is no one alive who has ever been a slave.
What happened almost 140 years ago is history. Avera is right when
he says "let's quit living in the past." I will agree
that have a long way to go, on both sides, to promote racial harmony.
And I will agree that in order to change the flag, it should be
put before the voters of this state. But to change the official
flag of our state just because one group of people does not like
what it perceives it to stand for is wrong. It is also wrong to
believe that anyone who supports and believes in what Avera calls
a "racist symbol" is a racist.
As for comparing
the Confederate battle flag with the Nazis' swastika, that doesn't
even deserve a response, and Avera should be ashamed.
Ron Renno
Warner Robins
Rocker entitled to his views
Editors: Let me begin by saying that I do not share John Rocker's
apparent discomfort at being among foreigners. In fact, quite the
opposite, I love it.
I am drawn to
foreigners by a deep curiosity about their languages and cultures.
I have lived in different countries teaching English to speakers
of other languages as well as having volunteered to teach English
here in Bibb County to Hispanics and people from countries I never
knew existed.
Nevertheless,
I am outraged at the persecution Rocker has received for his comments.
It is the elitist, self-righteous characters who foster the hypersensitive,
Orwellian wasteland of political correctness that makes up life
in the public eye today. The only time, however, that this self-righteous
type deals with minorities is when they do so in a condescending
or patronizing way.
The Bill of Rights
gives Rocker the freedom to express himself. If a person can't speak
his mind in America without the thought police castigating him,
then where can he? After all, part of the reason those immigrants
or descendants of immigrants Rocker referred to came to this country
was because they too may have dreamed of one day making it big and
being interviewed by some big magazine and getting to say exactly
what they thought without repercussions, even if it would be repugnant.
Amy L. Layfield
Macon
Barnes' plan will drive teachers off
Editors:
As a parent of children enrolled in public schools, I feel that
I have a responsibility to speak out against certain aspects of
Gov. Roy Barnes' education reform bill.
The last thing
I want for my children is more standardized testing. Surely there
are other ways to measure the quality of schools than subjecting
our children to these tests and to classrooms devoted to teaching
test content.
The children of
this century need to have an educational environment that not only
provides academic knowledge, but also gives them the emotional support
system to survive in the world of today.
Education funds
would be better spent on continuation of the character education
curriculum, art and music in every school, foreign language, the
study of cultural diversity in a world that is increasingly small,
and science with a focus on conservation of natural resources.
In my experience
as a person who is in a public school environment every day (I am
not a teacher), people who choose education as a career do not make
that choice for economic gain. These people are devoted to the business
of helping children learn. Most of them work long beyond the eight
hours a day for which they are paid. They spend hours after school
and at home planning, meeting with parents and tutoring children.
Teachers and administrators
should not be held solely responsible for low scores on standardized
tests. There are too many other factors to consider such as socio-economic
level, parental involvement and geographic location.
We should be encouraging
our teachers, not making unreasonable demands. With the type of
reform that Barnes is proposing, who will want to choose teaching
as a career? Without people who have a passion for helping children
learn, our school systems can only lose.
Debra Dent
Macon
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