Referring to your paper’s article about the fight between VTA
and COG over the design for the Don Pacheco Y interchange, I think
COG’s Directors and its executive director have been asleep at the
switch. Nobody from COG attended the three county (San Benito,
Santa Cruz and Monterey) transport summit last summer at Salinas. I
did. Nobody from COG responded to the Caltrans District #5 (Santa
Barbara, San Luis, Monterey, Santa Cruz and SBC) 20-year system
management plan. I did.
Editor,
Referring to your paper’s article about the fight between VTA and COG over the design for the Don Pacheco Y interchange, I think COG’s Directors and its executive director have been asleep at the switch. Nobody from COG attended the three county (San Benito, Santa Cruz and Monterey) transport summit last summer at Salinas. I did. Nobody from COG responded to the Caltrans District #5 (Santa Barbara, San Luis, Monterey, Santa Cruz and SBC) 20-year system management plan. I did.
Why is it that a pro bono, unpaid volunteer private citizen was the only one who participated in the strategic transport planning for San Benito County and the Central California Coast region? What were COG’s Directors elected for? What do we pay COG’s Executive Director for? Why even have a metropolitan planning organization (“MPO” in the language of the enabling statutes, i.e., ISTEA, TEA-21 and now TEALU) if COG is going to let AMBAG run SBC’s transport policy straight to Marxist-Socialist hell?
We might as well revoke the secession vote from 1872 and merge the two counties back into one again. I think that they are so preoccupied with playing Emperor Transit First, spending tax dollars on empty bus seat transport, putting private carriers into bankruptcy court, that they have abdicated their fiduciary duty to the electorate. And why has nobody reported these facts to the public? I believe that the public has a right to know how our government’s servants are derelict in their duty.
Joe Thompson, Tres Pinos
