Less than a week after its first organizational meeting, a new anti-tolls coalition powered by Southern Indiana businesses already is in position to take the tolling facts to the people.Businesses come together to oppose tolls as Rep. Clere remains AWOL.
With a series of critical Bridges Authority meetings on the immediate horizon in early December, Wes Johnson and Mike Kapfhammer (owners of Buckhead’s and Rocky’s), Chris McCarty (S & S Powersports) and Paul Fetter (Clark County Auto Auction) have committed monies to found a 501 c-6 organization called the Organization for a Better Southern Indiana.
Already a website has been built, and the group has purchased two billboards: On northbound and southbound I-65, both of them just north of the Eastern Blvd exit. Installation could come as early as December 1. The billboard designs are pictured above.
In an e-mail, Paul stresses the importance of the group’s next meeting on Monday, November 29th at 5:30 p.m. at the Buckhead Mountain Grill (707 West Riverside Drive, Jeffersonville, Indiana).
Please remember to invite other businesses to our next meeting. Work on new connections, and try to bring two or three new businesses with you. Remember, this is our fight. We must stay focused and engaged.
6 comments:
Yes! Go billboards...maybe we can buy one for 64?
I'll find out how much this costs. It isn't cheap, and I generally abhor billboards ... but when it's a fight for survival, you do what you must.
Glad to see this but they should be careful with their language. The we're "not opposed to the bridges project" bit may come back to bite them and is somewhat contradictory to their stated goal of promoting "meaningful discussion and planning as to the proposed regional public transportation projects in the community so that we can all be engaged and informed".
As background ...
At the meeting I attended, there was little love expressed for the whole of the ORBP. After a bit, several attendees expressed support for building the East End Bridge and then tolling it once finished.
At this juncture, one of the Louisvillians there (didn't catch the name) said that tolling the finished bridge at Utica would be impossible because of the delicate political trade-offs on the Kentucky side, or something like that.
It was a bit strange. After the Louisvillian spoke, there seemed to be general agreement that anti-tolling speak was job one, and the discussion about the ORBP could come later.
Conceding that the initiative described in this post is the work of four business people, and there were almost 40 present at the meeting, it seems almost inevitable that there'll be confusion.
Bottom line to me is this: There are a considerable number of folks willing to take a stance on the tolls, but who are less interested in considering the overall immensity of the boondoggle. The sheer number of tactical games being played on both sides of the divide seem likely to produce muddle.
Sorting out the implications of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is beginning to give me heartburn.
Most of the people present at that meeting are heavier hitters than me, and I believe we all know what that means in terms of political sympathies.
There was much talk about recent chats with Todd Young and overall support for Republicans.
There was a tea party representative on hand.
I felt very much like the token leftist. And yet: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The flip side is that quite a few of them denounced the cost and scale of the bridges project even as they seemed hesitant to challenge it openly.
It was like a cognitive dissonance seminar. But in a matter of days, a handful pour money into the billboards.
Maybe they felt the same way in reverse: Baylor's here, he's an asshole but useful, and I'll be taking a lot of showers in coming days.
LOL
"You people and all your negativity are what's wrong with this area." - J. Finn, Louisville and Southern Indiana Bridges Authority.
The pretense is that the B.A. has only one job - proposing a financing plan. But the authority is for life. They'll be operating the bridges (or handing off lucrative contracts to do so, more likely). They have no incentive to listen to peons.
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