PUBLIC OPPOSITION IS "LOUD AND CLEAR" TO SOME LOCAL ROAD PROJECTS
Local residents are now taking advantage of what’s known as “public comment time” before town council and commissioners meetings, and pretty much any public forum, to speak out against NC DOT plans for a number of local road projects.
Led by local resident Glen Engleram, residents and business and property owners were at Hendersonville’s City Council meeting this week to take advantage of “public comment time” and express their opposition to NC DOT’s plans for Highway 64 west, specifically roundabouts and other major proposed changes. Looking for support from City Council, they presented Council with petitions signed by over a thousand people and over 700 email subscribers all opposed to DOT’s current plans.
Public opposition to DOT plans has met with some success. DOT is taking another look at plans for improving Kanuga Roadm for example, and Flat Rock residents have expressed strong opposition to changes along Highland Lake road that they fear will change the whole nature and appearance of the Flat Rock community.
And opposition is poised to start to DOT’s plans to widen Highway 191, to four or five lanes, all the way from Mountain Road to the Highway 280 intersection in Mills River.
And there’ also a lot of discussion currently going on concerning DOT’s plans for the south end of Hendersonville, specifically proposed changes along White Street and the Greenville and Spartanburg Highways....again involing roundabouts.
New development and residential and business growth is making changes necessary. And the exaxt form many of these changes will take, and their ultimate effect on the nature and appesarance of the community, is creating challenges for NC DOT, local governments involved, and for planners such as the French Broad Metropolitan Planning Organization.
It’s important to remewmber that these changes will all take time...from planning, to right-of-way acquisition, to actual construction and eventual completion will take years...in some cases many years. And local growth isn’t waiting...and could well move faster than changes to accommodate that growth.
And it’s not just changes with roads and highways that’s getting the public’s attention. A major sewer project, to service the new Edneyille Elementary School, could spur significant growth and development, wanted or unwanted, in what is now apple, farming and agricultural country on the county’s east side.
But as evidenced by members of the public now speaking out, attending public forums and taking advantage of “public comment time”, public participation is increasing and will likely continue to grow....as residents, businesses, and property owners will so much at stake have their say.
The key will be for elected officials, the public, planners, DOT and others to be able to mesh it all together and come up with acceptable and workable solutions in time for the on-going growth and development that continues to come.
By WHKP and WHKP.com News Director Larry Freeman
