Tuesday, May 22, 2018
Anger Over the Traffic Roundabouts Meeting
I received the below letter from a citizen that was not happy about the roundabouts and the way the meeting where the roundabouts were discussed was conducted......
3 comments:
Abusive, profane, and/or off-topic posts will not be allowed. Unprovoked ad-hominem attacks will not be tolerated. All posts are subject to moderation, posts that violate these policies, spam, posts containing off-color language, and any other inappropriate comments or content, as determined by the blog administrator, will remain in moderation and may not be added on the site. This site is not my campaign site, but in an abundance of caution I will offer the below disclaimer.
I also thought perhaps Commission Robinson left on purpose to delay the vote, plus maybe your ADD on should have been that, an add on at the END. The public has schedules also "you know". I also think that who ever wrote this letter has his pulse on the problem. I know you as commissioners are very busy and also know Politics must come into play. I watched the meeting in it's entirity live on video and truly think that Commissioner May and you also did a Good Ole Boy vote on this unnecessarily to the tune of 6K for the taxpayers when you already know you will most likely scrap this project. I think you should listen to your traffic engineer. Of course we are a civil society and have to rely on your votes and on the board. You could have had a crowning moment and taken down the toll..had them pay their debts and solved a problem with common sense, yet you did not solve a problem and you expounded on the bureaucracy. The Add on, how Steven passed his Land Use ordinance with no back up, plus the public couldn't see the arena proposal back up may be alright to the letter of the law but it is disingenuous. The public is more informed than ever. Let us help YOU!!!! Help ourselves. Many heads can be better than five or better than one.
ReplyDeleteThank you chairman for publishing this letter and letting me comment here. We do appreciate your work and hope knowing we see you that it will help you operate and make decisions based on fiduciary responsibility not private interests or "YEAH GROVER< YOU ARE A GOOD OLE BOY AND I WILL SUPPORT THE COMMISSIONER IN HIS DISTRICT. Five Commissioner Five Votes!!
Chairman Bergosh,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this letter. I attended the public "workshop" at the BCC and the SRIA meeting in the last month regarding the issue of the roundabouts. A couple of things I learned while attending these meetings; 1. the smaller diameter (dictated by the desire not to lose parking places) will lower the gap time between cars and not allow the roundabouts to work properly and 2. double lane roundabouts will INCREASE traffic accidents according to a resident who did her homework (and the engineers agreed with her). Add to that distracted drivers and drinking drivers, plus the fact there is no way to avoid the roundabouts as planned. When I'm not at Pensacola Beach, I'm in Michigan where roundabouts have been introduced over the last number of years. Local county officials there admit the learning curve is much slower than they expected, and they have had to modify the roundabouts in order to lessen the panic (and crashes) by unfamiliar drivers. Why proceed with a plan that has SO many strikes against it going in? In listening to the pat answers given by the engineers and Commissioner Robinson, it seems like not only are roundabouts a done deal, but a stepping stone to something else in a singular vision of what Pensacola Beach should look like.
I've made many suggestions to you and others. One is that there should be a charge to enter the county's largest park (the Federal government does it for their part of the island) and also a parking fee for close in parking. Both would encourage car pooling. Commissioner Robinson said that wouldn't be done because "it's the people's park". This brings me to the hard conversation that local politicians must have with the voters, and that is you can't have it both ways. The Florida business model is someone else (i.e. tourists) pays so locals don't have to. You can't have hundreds of thousands of people come and spend tens of millions of dollars at Pensacola Beach and expect that those people won't take your space or clog your roads - it's the dance with the devil that locals are willing to do so that they don't have to pay their fair share of what it really costs to maintain roads, parks, police and fire, and so on.
Additionally, I don't believe that there has been a study of how roundabouts would affect visitors, and what they think of them. Personally, my wife (who grew up in south Florida) and I have been to many beaches in Florida, as well as other states and countries. There is NO OTHER beach like this....that's why we and so many people come! We come because of what it IS NOW....not what some monied interest would like it to be. Maybe you have to be from somewhere else to recognize how wonderful Pensacola Beach is. We don't need Pensacola Beach to become another Myrtle Beach, or Destin, or Orange Beach! Pensacola Beach's unique beauty and charming single traffic light is the jewel of the county and should be protected and preserved beyond being promoted.
Thank you for listening and also for your willingness to provide a forum for divergent ideas,
Bill Ray
To Bill Ray, well said and I will add. As far as tourists helping with the FAIR share Commissioner Bergosh raise the Tourist Development tax one cent!! You KNOW that was nonsense about it taking food out of the mouths of babies .. Pure NONSENSE rhetoric for the people funding a campaign..raise it please. The neighboring counties have, as you pointed out with the blue plate special blog.
ReplyDelete