Forest Hill Road  

Macon, Ga

    Meeting with Chairman Bishop - 10-30-07

Commission chairman says he will vote on project however city officials want him to

By Keich Whicker - swhicker@macon.com

Bibb County Chairman Charlie Bishop said Tuesday that his vote on a controversial plan to widen a local road will depend on what the next batch of city officials wants him to do.

Bishop, who has been targeted by opponents of the Forest Hill Road project for his role in shuffling the plan through officialdom, told six City Council members and about 75 residents they've got his vote - for or against the project.

In other words, whatever the city wants after the mediation session the county has called for is how Bishop said he will vote. When Bishop announced that, City Councilwoman Elaine Lucas turned immediately to Councilman Rick Hutto and said: "He's putting it back on us."

Later, Lucas and a handful of other City Council members - and soon-to-be council members - challenged Bishop on his motives.

Councilwoman-elect Lauren Benedict, who attended a meeting this month with the chairman to discuss the project's history and status, said Bishop was trying to shift the burden of responsibility to City Council because he found himself in an "untenable position," politically speaking.

Bishop countered,as he did for much of the night, by saying Forest Hill "has always been a city of Macon project," and "it has never been a priority of the county." He added numerous mayors and city officials have approved the project from their positions on boards and committees associated with the Macon Area Transportation Study and the Road Improvements Program.

Lucas said the council's role on those committees was limited, adding the city has passed two resolutions against the project.

Billed as an "update meeting" or an "informal discussion" about the Forest Hill Road project, Tuesday's gathering of local officials and residents at the Bibb County Courthouse ended up being more about how Bishop said he would vote and how much control local governments have over the $24 million of state and federal highway money earmarked to make the project happen.

If the project isn't aborted, work is scheduled to begin next summer.

Recent weeks have seen increased pressure from residents and activists, who, besides lobbying local officials in private, have demonstrated against the road project at the county courthouse after they learned the County Commission has the power to stop the project cold. Commissioner Lonzy Edwards recently proposed - and the rest of the commission agreed unanimously - to set a mediation session among state and local officials and the property owners who will be affected by the project.

The format of and the date for that mediation has not been finalized, but commissioners have said they want a Superior Court judge to mediate the session, which could include officials from the city of Macon, the state Department of Transportation and engineers from Moreland Altobelli, the company that has handled the bulk of the work in the project. Bibb's elected leaders also insisted the meeting be limited to property owners who directly will be affected by the project's path - a move to exclude many of the vocal activists who have campaigned against the project for years and don't own property along Forest Hill Road.

The project itself, which officials said has been scaled back three times from its original proposal, calls for the current two-lane road to be widened into three- and four-lane sections. The plan's design is based on a disputed set of DOT traffic counts that contain data that has varied widely.

Opponents of the project have argued traffic counts are wrong, and the DOT's plan should be redesigned to lessen its effect on the neighborhoods and reduce the number of trees that would be lost. Tuesday night, a number of project opponents said local engineers "pumped up" the traffic counts to secure state and federal highway money. The project, they said, has been "designed on completely erroneous information."

Van Etheridge, an engineer from Moreland Altobelli who attended Tuesday's meeting to answer questions about the project, disputed that. He said traffic has increased on Forest Hill Road and continues to increase.

"We took traffic counts there a few weeks ago," he said. "The numbers of cars on the road has increased."

Regardless of how many cars are or aren't traveling on the road, commissioners have consistently maintained there is no design money left to redesign the project again, and the county has an obligation to complete the project because it was one of the items approved by voters in a 1994 special purpose local option sales tax referendum.

Although minor alterations to the project are possible, officials said Tuesday night, the state and federal highway money is tied to current design and cannot be dedicated toward the sort of massive redesign many of the plan's opponents would like to see.

However, everyone in attendance Tuesday was not against the project: A few people spoke up in favor of pushing ahead with the plan to widen the road, others nodded in agreement or quietly questioned the position of the project's opponents. One vocal man told Bishop that city and county leaders needed to show some leadership and complete a project that has been on the books for more than 10 years because the area is growing and Forest Hill is a "major" thoroughfare.

To contact writer Keich Whicker, call 744-4494.