"Stakeholders" meeting - April 14, 2005: 

Original Minutes, or .rtf version with some loss of formating , 

Macon, Ga

    Bibb County's - "Roads Improvement Program"  

    "Stakeholders" meeting - April 14, 2005: 
Review - 2001   1999  

 Posted on Fri, Apr. 15, 2005 p 1B   http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/local/11397966.htm

Forest Hill discussions turn to landscaping, lighting

By Travis Fain

Telegraph Staff Writer

After continued calls from area residents and road construction watchdogs to rethink the widening of Forest Hill Road, stakeholders in the project settled into discussions Thursday - some of them begrudgingly - on landscaping and lighting details along the road.

For three hours a group of people who live, work or have an interest in the area who were invited by planners to participate in the design process - discussed the pros and cons of sidewalks, light post heights, pedestrian lighting and landscaping options.

Despite efforts by road planners and a moderator to concentrate discussion on landscaping and lighting, time and again it shifted to the road itself and the discomfort many in attendance have with the plan.

But that plan - to widen two-lane Forest Hill Road to three lanes from Wimbish Road to Northside Drive and four lanes with a median from Wimbish to Forsyth Road - is not likely to change, said Van Etheridge, the private engineer who manages Bibb County's sales-tax-financed roads improvement program.

Susan Hanberry, a roads program critic and member of the watchdog group CAUTION Macon, disagreed.

"We can change the design still," she said, speaking to the crowd of 30-40 area residents who were mostly asked to keep quiet Thursday during a meeting intended as a forum for stake holders. "Y'all can do this, with political pressure."

Etheridge said he expects another meeting on landscaping and lighting in three or four months, after private contractors have a chance to digest public comments and incorporate them into designs.

Comments will be taken for the next two weeks and Etheridge asked that they be made through the stakeholder committee, which will report the comments to his firm, Moreland Altobelli.

With 10 of 15 stakeholders in attendance for most of the meeting at North Macon Park, complete agreement was difficult to come by on most items. But the following ideas seemed to garner general support:

• A lighting plan that protects the night sky and keeps street lights out of neighborhood homes. Several stakeholders supported street lighting only at major intersections with smaller, pedestrian lights along sidewalks.

• Easy-to-maintain landscaping. Many people said the city of Macon has a spotty record of cutting median grass and keeping up other roadway landscaping.

• Incorporating historic sites into the sidewalk and road plan.

• Using native plants in an effort to replace as many trees as possible after old growth is cut down to make way for the wider road.

Many other issues arose, including concerns about stormwater runoff and pollution, which may increase as grassy ditches along the current roadway are replaced by concrete curb and gutter.

There was a call to add turn lanes at major intersections and abandon other widenings. Lake, who is dealing only with the landscaping and not the road design, said he could appreciate the suggestions. But roads aren't designed for the people living on them, particularly when they are funded, at least in part, by the state, he said.

"That's hard, ..." Lake said. "Forest Hill Road is paid for by citizens who live 200 miles from here, possibly."

To contact Travis Fain, call 478-744-4213

 To submit comments:

Local planners have asked that comments on landscaping and lighting plans along a widened Forest Hill Road be funneled thru a group of stakeholders during the next 14 days. Here are four who agreed to take comments:

- Lindsay Holliday <teeth@mindspring.com>,

- Raymond H Smith Jr <Raymond@smithbrownandgroover.com>,

- Susan Hanberry 478-474-4437,

- Paul Fisher 478-471-9857

Comments on the latest meeting by CAUTION Macon   April  2005

 Outrageous

is the best description of the last meeting

  of the Forest Hill Road (FHR) "stakeholders" on April 14th at North Macon Park. No "stakeholder" at this meeting actually lives on FHR. Why not?

FHR homeowners, who are the "true stakeholders," sat uninvited with their backs against the wall. Their uneasiness and anger was barely contained by a promise from the moderator who said he would "open the official meeting for all to speak later." But he ended the meeting without doing so.

 The minutes will show there was no comment time for the FHR homeowners. Whatever the homeowners may have said to the Moreland-Altobelli, Incorporated (MAI) handlers after the hearing is now lost to the official transcript.

There was only one designated FHR homeowner among the officially chosen list of "stakeholders" - Mrs. Patsy Guy Fried, who was unable to attend. She gave me her legal proxy, but Van Etheridge, MAI Projects Manager, would not give me permission to take her place. So I followed her wishes without the permission of the MAI handlers.

Moreland- Altobelli did not have displayed and refused to acknowledge, even when asked by the stakeholders repeatedly, that they had a map of the road plans available at the meeting. It was only after the meeting that one of the new employees, sheepishly and apologetically offered it for viewing. Pretty crappy way for the roads program, funded by a taxpayer SPLOST, to run a meeting.

FHR residents still don’t know how big their front yards will be.

We were promised that there would be subsequent meetings to show the plans. Of course that did not happen. The landscape consultant had not seen the plans. He didn't know how close the road would come to the front doors of the residents. We were asked to make "context sensitive" comments on the landscape and lighting plans. If we don’t know the context, how can we comment? Sidewalks? How wide? We need to know if this will place it in someone’s living room.

Caulder Clay, who lost his bid for Congress last November, was the only non-stakeholder to be officially allowed to speak. He basically said that it is OK with him to trash the front yards on FHR if Clay's own home on Overlook Ave is protected from the carnage with sufficient barriers to sight, sound and through traffic. Why was he and not other residents allowed to speak?

All local politicians who were supposed to be at the last FHR stakeholders meeting were conspicuously absent on April 14th at 6pm. They stayed away like the plague. But they keep renewing the MAI contract year after year. Why?

Politicians need to attend and listen! Please let our community move ahead!

Let's give the resources of Bibb's Roads Improvement Program (RIP) to someone who will solve all the worst traffic problems at (FHR) within a couple of weekends by simply adding a left hand turn/storage lane at a few intersections. This plan is favored by every Macon resident I describe it to. But it is not profitable enough for Tom Moreland's company, MAI who continues to (mis)manage our RIP. Moreland plans to make more money by tearing up every front yard along FHR and laying down over a typically 2-year construction-warzone, a super-sized slab of pavement with denuded ugliness and drainage problems on both sides. Moreland and company need to go.

After the meeting I was scolded by Steve Duval, Moreland-Altobelli Public Relations Officer. He said I should be ashamed for "messing up his meeting". But I believe the real shame is due his employer, MAI who has damaged my community by these actions:

1- misrepresented projected traffic counts of Houston Road in Federal Court to Judge Duross Fitzpatrick, and then overbuilt a "jet runway" there,

2- designed the murderous intersection at Zebulon and Forsyth Roads,

3- hosted a disrespectful and dismissive "information only meeting" towards homeowners along the proposed South Downtown Connector, and

4- is deeply involved in the malicious intimidation of Shirley Hills residents with the latest absurd alternative for the Eisenhower Parkway Extension (EPE) simply because the residents have expressed reservations about the radical GDOT plans to super-size the I-16 and I-75 intersection.

Shame on Moreland-Altobelli for continuing to place company profits above the real transportation needs of the citizens of Middle Georgia. In fact, Mr Moreland is the only person to profit almost continuously from the EPE plans and delays since he first spoke of it in 1985 to the media as the then Chief Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Transportation.

At the previous stakeholders meeting in May 2002, MAI was charged to bring back more options - like the one mentioned above - to the stakeholders. But they never followed through with that mandate from the 1st meeting. Why would anyone believe Moreland-Altobelli now?

Why would anyone believe Moreland-Altobelli now?

- CAUTION Macon -

Forest Hill Road