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Forest Hill Road
"A vote for the T-SPLOST will create a permanent class of corruption funded off our pennies."
| Erick Erickson |
Bulldoze Bass and Fix Forest Hill Road |
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 No confidence in the T-SPLOST 12:00am on
May 25, 2012 The transportation special
purpose local option sales tax, which we all call the T-SPLOST,
has a lot of good projects in it. I am excited to see
funding for an extension of the Middle Georgia Regional
Airport’s runway. I cannot state enough the importance of
such an extension. It really will create jobs.
I have written two columns in the past several months on the need to expand Bass Road. That is in the T-SPLOST, too. Several other projects I favor are in there as well. So I better explain why I oppose the T-SPLOST. First, you should understand that I do not oppose the T-SPLOST in principle. The Georgia Public Policy Foundation released a report earlier this week that clearly explains why other methods of funding are preferable. But the T-SPLOST was the product of compromise by a bunch of part-time legislators who would rather build a new Falcons Stadium for a billion dollars and fund a Go Fish program while punting tough questions like infrastructure and trauma care to the citizenry. Second, you should know there are programs in the T-SPLOST I fully support and think would create jobs. But I oppose the T-SPLOST because I do not think Georgia has its act together within its transportation bureaucracy and planning. I think if we pass this T-SPLOST with its 10 years of funding we will find ourselves perpetually renewing it always trying to make up missing funds and fix faulty projects. I believe the Georgia Department of Transportation is an unrepentant cesspool of greed and corruption used by lawmakers and other politicians to buy friends and win influence. Every few years, a new report comes out that GDOT has underfunded projects, unaccounted for demands for money, and is otherwise in disarray. The few times our politicians have sought to clean up the cesspool they have sent in reformers who have been defeated, smeared and tossed out with their reputation in tatters only to be replaced by good old boys who have perpetuated the system. If we approve the T-SPLOST, we are agreeing to subsidize greed, graft, corruption, waste, fraud and abuse within our transportation bureaucracy in perpetuity. We all need to be clear on that. The very same bureaucracy and outside organizations, who for years have bumped up traffic numbers on roads to justify expansions where there is little justification, will be subsidized by taxpayers in ongoing boondoggles hailed by politicians as job creating projects of local interest. The political elites, most media outlets in the state and the philanthropic left and right are all pooling resources to pass the T-SPLOST. They will not tell you the cold, plain truth about what will happen because they have long ago accepted dysfunction as the cost of doing business. I think the taxpayers of the state should think twice before, in effect, endowing a permanent system of waste, fraud and abuse without ever forcing our legislators to really attempt to clean up GDOT and reform the insanity of our highway system. The GPPF report makes clear, inside and outside of the metro Atlanta area, there are projects worth funding, but we have an infrastructure system in our state that should first be fixed to work together, not against each other, and now divided into regional problems. Fix the transportation bureaucracy and I will gladly support the T-SPLOST as a necessary compromise. But until then, I vote no confidence. Erick Erickson is a CNN contributor and radio talk show host in Atlanta. |
Erickson: Bulldoze
Bass Road
12:00am on Apr 27, 2012; Modified: 7:17am on Apr 27, 2012 http://www.macon.com/2012/04/27/2004818/bulldoze-bass-road.html I want a Taco Mac at the front entrance of Providence on Bass. I want a stop light there too. But what I want more than anything is to bulldoze Bass Road. Bass Road and Forest Hill Road are the perfect roads to highlight to show the ineptness of our road planning strategy in Middle Georgia. As Forest Hill Road has deteriorated and demographics have shifted, our road planning geniuses continue to demand it be a four lane thoroughfare. Certainly, there are parts of Forest Hill Road, particularly at the intersection of Ridge Avenue, that need reworking, but the road is not as heavily traveled now as estimates suggested. That may be because of the road’s decay, but it is also a fact. Meanwhile, on the north end of the county, on any normal work week, by eight o’clock in the morning, traffic extends from the interstate onramp, past the new Chick-Fil-A, beyond the entrance of Mabel White Baptist Church to the entrance of the Westchester neighborhood. On occasion, the traffic will back up to Kentucky Downs, a distance of 1.1 miles. Headed from the interstate to Zebulon Road at the same time of day, a trip that normally might take 10 minutes can take 30. But Forest Hill Road must be paved. The amount of vacant, commercial land on the Bass Road corridor will be developed as the economy recovers. The number of houses in the area and tenants within apartments will continue to grow. The population in the area will exceed Forest Hill Road. But Forest Hill Road must be a four lane thoroughfare? Already, in both the mornings and afternoons, Providence Boulevard, coming out of the Providence neighborhood, backs up with a steady stream of cars unable to get out of the neighborhood due to heavy traffic on Bass Road. Other neighborhoods have similar problems. The county should put in a light there, but the developers supposedly promised to put one in half a decade ago. Then more and more development came with more and more county approvals. A Bass Pro Shop came, more shopping came, and the county still thinks someone else should put in traffic signals. Perhaps when their constituents start getting killed in wrecks pulling on to Bass Road they will reconsider their folly. City planners plan and road planners plan. They often do not get it right. A city that once centered around Central City Park soon moved in various directions making the city park anything but central. While the road planners continue to be fixated with fixing the bumpy, pothole riddled Forest Hill Road, they ignore where the growth now is in the community. They ignore the steady stream of cars going up and down Bass Road. They ignore the developments springing up. They ignore the people moving in. They want to be proven so right on Forest Hill Road they are happy to be wrong on the rest. Road planners lost the fight for public opinion and public will on their expansive plans for Forest Hill Road. The road still needs fixing. Issues still need mitigating. But it is time for the road planners to address the very real needs on the northern end of the county. It would be far better to act now than wait for the economy to improve and the new developments to start up in that corridor. Erick Erickson is a CNN contributor and radio talk show host in Atlanta. Macon Telegraph
7-6-2012 No Confidence in the T-SPLOST A few weeks ago a “resident of Roswell” Georgia wrote a letter to the editor at The Telegraph calling me dishonest for implying that the Department of Transportation will enrich preferred clients through the T-SPLOST. What the resident of Roswell did not say is that the businesses he represents stands to make millions off the T-SPLOST. My concern has always been that our transportation bureaucracy is corrupt and filled with waste, fraud and abuse. The mendacity of that response is another example. Under the T-SPLOST, the DOT will decide if it or private contractors will build projects and, if private contractors, which ones. Is it any wonder a bunch of well-heeled lobbyists with friends in state government support the T-SPLOST? A vote for the T-SPLOST will create a permanent class of corruption funded off our pennies. We must fix our bureaucracy before we want to seriously fix our infrastructure. Vote no on the T-SPLOST. Erick Erickson is a CNN contributor and radio talk show host in Atlanta. http://www.macon.com/2012/07/06/2085598/no-confidence-in-dallemand.html |
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| Letter published in
Macon Telegraph on March 25, 2011: |
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| (EA) - Environmental
Assessment - Errorsronmental |
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| Stormwater Runoff The EA incorrectly lists the FHR branch tributary of Savage Creek as intermittent, but it is a perennial stream  This stream is easily observed where it flows under a bridge/driveway at 744 Forest Hill Road - residence address. Several hundred feet of this stream will be heavily impacted. Mitigation has not been properly calculated for this constant-flowing stream. |
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Macon, Ga |
| - The Forest Hill Rd Neighborhood Mediation Team: - Carol Lystlund <clyst@att.net> 730 Forest Hill Rd. Macon 31210 - Lindsay Holliday <teeth@mindspring.com> 744 Forest Hill Rd. Macon 31210 - Susan Hanberry Martin <shanberry@stratford.org> 4831 Guerry Drive Macon 31210 - Dan Fischer <FISCHER_DP@Mercer.edu> 489 Ashville Drive Macon 31210 - Alice Boyd <dmbx1@cox.net> 540 Forest Hill Rd Macon 31210 |
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| Macon Telegraph Viewpoints for Thursday, May 5, 2011 Letter to Editors: Several citizens and I met with Mayor Robert Reichert recently to discuss problems with the Forest Hill Road project design. Reichert said he’s afraid to ask for a design change from GDOT, because “someone” told him the project might lose funding if it is delayed for design modifications. Reichert summed up his feelings with this: “we need to spend the money because we have it.” This is nuts. If I called your health insurance company and got approval to amputate your leg, would you let me do it? The money would be there, and you would lose the money if you didn’t go through with the operation. Of course you would never make decisions like that just because the money is there. Road projects are the same thing. Supersizing FHR will destroy a valuable and stable neighborhood for what? The need is not there and the argument that we need to spend taxpayer money is immoral. Mayor Robert Reichert needs to search his (political) soul for a better response. Please. Fix the intersections and make FHR safer for walking and biking. And save taxpayers millions of dollars while you are at it. -- Lindsay D. Holliday http://www.macon-bibb.com/FHR http://www.macon.com/2011/05/05/1549454/this-is-viewpoints-for-thursday.html |
| The 1994 "Road
Improvement Program" SPLOST - grossly
mis-mannaged
- threatens to destroy the Forest Hill Neighborhood. |
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- CAUTION Macon - |