Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 19:48:03 -0500 (EST)
From: Brad Page
Subject: traffic jams
I sat in my first traffic jam at age 5. I remember my uncle was driving so we must have been going from Hoover St. in Los Angeles, my grandmother’s homw, to his home in El Monte, about 18 miles on Rosemead Blvd from West LA. The drive took most of the afternoon in the August heat and I often wondered why my uncle chain smoked and groused and the car didn’t move. Nowadays in light traffic you can take an 8 lane highway and the trip takes about 25 minutes. You don’t want to know what rush hour traffic is like now. At that time we sat in traffic because largely rural El Monte was being turned into a suburb of LA and most of the highways had not caught up with the development. Anyone who has ever been to LA knows the highways never caught up with the developers and LA has become an environmental pigsty.
The year I sat in my first traffic jam was 1945 (before air conditioning was generally available in cars) and El Monte, CA is …well, concrete, glass and homes, homes, homes and more concrete and more glass on the way to nowhere anyone really wants to go.
In 1967 I came to Charlotte. The highways never caught up with the developers there either. First there was the belt road – I-485. Now there’s the outer outer belt on the drawing board. Davidson, a quiet community like Chapel Hill was swallowed by development as the bulldozers moved up I-77 and the open land of Mecklenburg County is becoming …well, concrete, glass and homes, homes, homes and more concrete and more glass on the way to nowhere anyone really wants to go.
I didn’t come here to get away from Charlotte. I came to join a religious community in 2005 and part of the reason that community is here is that Central North Carolina is a quiet parkland compared to the bare fields of Mecklenburg County around Charlotte. I do sometimes wonder if Charlotte is going to swallow all of South Carolina and all of the available land west of Asheboro while Raleigh developers swallow everything east of the NC Zoo.
We in this county total 65,000 souls. And, of those 65,000 people about 4000+ are subscribers to the Chatham Chatlist. Of that 4000+ I have no idea how many actually read and keep track of Chatlist postings. Of that number only a few hundred belong to PittsboroMatters. I am happy to be one of those people because 65,000 people count and their future counts and no one, no one has the right or the power to be making decisions that benefit a few rich developers at the expense of the welfare of the other 65000. Experience says this same crossroads faced the elected officials in Los Angeles and Charlotte at different times. Now we’re in our time at we face a similar crossroad.
Now, do we allow our own elected officials to make short-term decisions in the interest of the rich few or do we insist that our elected officials represent the 65,000. We are asking them to represent ALL of us despite the fact that only 10% are registered voters in Pittsboro, Siler City and Goldston and in the last Municipal Election, November 3, 2014 in these three towns only 1400 actually showed up to vote. The previous year in the General Election those who actually voted totalled over 47,000, about 77% of the county. The Town Board in Pittsboro on whom the major decisions rest regarding Chatham Park were elected by a total of 742 voters for two seats in November. I went to the Chatham County Election Results posted at http://www.chathamnc.org/
That puts a lot of respon sibility on the shoulders of very few people. Why does Preston Development want us to shut up? Hmmm
Brad Page