Caltrans plugs ears as citizens, officials miss the point
While it appears a bus load of government officials accomplished
a boat load of nothing during last week’s meeting over the Highway
156 project, a vocal minority from San Juan Bautista focused
primarily on their far-fetched intention to have the roadway moved
to another back yard a few miles north.
Caltrans plugs ears as citizens, officials miss the point
While it appears a bus load of government officials accomplished a boat load of nothing during last week’s meeting over the Highway 156 project, a vocal minority from San Juan Bautista focused primarily on their far-fetched intention to have the roadway moved to another back yard a few miles north.
What could have been a platform to dissect the proposal’s illogical twists and turns, however, became theater for absurdly long-dismissed ideas and yet another opportunity for our elected leaders to listen closely, speak rigidly and then bow to every desire of their state magistrates in Sacramento and San Luis Obispo.
At the meeting set up by project opponent and Board Chairman Anthony Botelho, as reported in this week’s edition of The Pinnacle, council members in Hollister and San Juan Bautista joined county supervisors and transportation officials to hash over the proposal and get an update on its progress.
Potential problems within the chosen option – a new four-lane highway with the current thoroughfare staying as a frontage road – should have been the glaring focus. Some residents expressed concerns with parts of the chosen option, which is a foregone conclusion as a whole.
But dialogue on such irrationalities as continued use of stoplights on open freeways – which severely depresses the point of easing congestion – and the plan’s intention to arc out at one point near a school took a back seat to a variably hostile crowd of opponents and a Caltrans spokesman who did all he could to keep quiet.
Instead, project opponents, some of whom have filed a lawsuit attempting to block the project, rehashed the same arguments about losing prime agricultural land that Caltrans’ top officials permanently muted their ears to years ago. The San Juan project opponents must be following that old addage: If the same argument fails 249 times, we might as well try again and make it really count.Â
Most San Benito County residents do, in fact, support efforts to expand Highway 156. It’s just that the vocal minority always shows up to these types of meetings, and that was the case again at the July 16 gathering.
Not that the majority opinion around here matters much to Caltrans, though. Project Manager Richard Rosales from the District 5 office in San Luis Obispo proved it again at the meeting when he continually declined to answer questions, even those inquiring about the chosen option, by using a bogus excuse that he and other transportation leaders can’t discuss such concerns because the comment period for the environmental document has passed.
One resident asked Rosales why Caltrans had not considered using the existing Highway 156 by merely adding lanes to it, and the state official had this to say: “This meeting is to discuss the current project design.”
What does that even mean? What he’s really saying is that Caltrans isn’t willing to converse with tax-paying residents unless they agree with every last detail in his plan.
Clearly, regional and local transportation leaders weren’t willing to answer the tough questions on this ever-pressing transportation matter. They were going to deal with the mass of adversaries and get off the stage and out of the building as fast as possible.
They were willing to handle the pressure of opposition, as long as the citizens and local officials were content running in circles, as long as they could deafen the occasional murmur of logic.
