Taxpayers Opposed to Useless Roads

RIC FINCH GIVES ADDITIONAL DETAILS ON THE CITY COUNCIL ROAD PLAN VOTE NEXT MONDAY

Dear CARA Members,

      Today I attended the Planning Commission's monthly business meeting, held Thursday noon prior to their Monday formal voting meeting. It is at the Thursday meeting that they go over the agenda for the upcoming public meeting. Cynics might say it is at this business meeting that they decide how they will vote at the official meeting. But I don't think it is that simple. City Planner James Mills informed the nine Commission members of the matters the City wants them to consider, decide and vote on at the official meeting. While many Commission members will no doubt be inclined to vote in favor of the City's requests, this business meeting gives them all time to consider matters, perhaps talk to people, and come to their personal conclusions prior to the official meeting when issues will be voted on and finalized.

      Public comment is not allowed at this business meeting. However, at the conclusion of the meeting, I was permitted to distribute a letter from CARA to all the Commission members (copy attached, FYI).

      At the official meeting of the Planning Commission this coming Monday, May 21, there will be time for public comment. And there are matters of concern that CARA members need to speak out on.

1) City is asking the Planning Commission to approve certain amendments to its Major Street Plan. These amendments have to do with the Bennett Road Extension, and --if I understand it correctly-- the City cannot proceed with the Bennett Road Extension project until these changes in the Major Street Plan are approved by the Commission.

2) City is also asking the Commission to approve certain amendments to its Future Land Use Plan, again, amendments that have to do with the Bennett Road Extension. Many of the changes are zoning changes. They want an area on the north side of the new I-40-interchange-to-be zoned Commercial-Industrial Mixed Use....a change from the present zoning, which is (I think) Single Family Residential. They also want to extend commercial zoning from US-70W south along the Bennett Road Extension at least as far as the RR track, possibly further.

      As you can readily see, changing from Single Family Residential to Commercial-Industrial can have a huge negative impact on folks living in these areas.

      One of the striking aspects of all this is that County residents have no representation on the Cookeville Planning Commission, yet the Commission is making decisions that affect folks living in the County and not in the City. That is grotesquely unfair.

      As concerned citizens, what can you do? Attend the Commission meeting Monday and speak out. If enough people speak out on the Bennett Road Extension, and speak out with cogent reasoning, Commission members votes may be swayed.

      Commission Chairman Jim Stafne noted that the Monday meeting will be a public hearing, with public comment invited, but that he will insist that comments stick to the subject. And speakers will not be allowed to ramble on without end.

      So if you want to have an impact, here's what you need to do:

1) Speak logically about the Bennett Road Extension, stating why you think it is a bad idea, giving reasons. Think about what you want to say in advance, even practice it a couple of times.

2) Speak to why the connector road will not be good for our community.

3) If you do not live in the area but are still opposed to a useless road, then mention to the Commission members that you don't live in the way of the road...your comment will have more weight this way.

4) Issues to point out:

      --Road will not help the new business park on the south side of I-40.

      --TDOT's traffic flow projections indicate that the road is not justified.

      --The City has not adequately explored the possibility that the FHWA "requirement" for this connector road can be waived.

      --City finances will be negatively impacted by this project. A tax increase and/or a bond issue may be necessary to pay for it. City's borrowing capacity will be used up.

5) And when you get up to speak, please identify yourself as a member of CARA (if you're on this mailing list, you a member), as that will give our organization more influence.

      If you don't feel like speaking out in public, talk to a Commission member before the meeting begins. You can also register your disapproval of the road by wearing an orange ribbon....they will remember that from the Corridor J road fight. We defeated that unwanted road. Now it is time for CARA members to make another effort for the good of our City and our neighbors homes.

      I look forward to seeing you at the meeting Monday. Cookeville Planning Commission is meeting Monday, May 21, at 5:30 PM in the City Council chamber in City Hall.

      Thank you for supporting what is best for our community.

      Ric

CARA's Letter to the City Commission

C.A.R.A.    COOKEVILLE     AREA    RESIDENTS     ASSOCIATION

299 Allen Hollow Rd.., Cookeville, TN 38501

16 May 2012

To the members of the Planning Commission:

      The membership of the Cookeville Area Residents Association (CARA) believes our City government is on the verge of making a major mistake: the building of the Bennett Road Extension. Here is why we believe this is ill-advised:

1) Bennett Road Extension, if built, will serve no useful purpose. The new business park lies on the south side of I-40; virtually all traffic to the business park will come by I-40 or by SR-111 and then I-40. Regardless of whether business park traffic enters the park via the existing I-40 interchange at Burgess Falls Rd. or via a new interchange at Mine Lick Creek Rd., business park traffic needs no connection north to US 70W, a road no business park traffic will ever take.

In 2006 TDOT released their Needs Assessment study* for a loop road around Cookeville that included the route now planned for the Bennett Road Extension. They found that neither present nor projected traffic flow justified such a route. Furthermore, they found there to be essentially no economic benefit. And they acknowledged in their report that the "citizens were almost unanimous in their opposition" to such a road.

In a recent meeting with CARA representatives**, City officials stated that the road was not needed for the foreseeable future, "probably not in our lifetimes" said one.

2) Bennett Road Extension, if built, will strain City finances. When asked how the City planned to raise the $10 million dollars needed to built the road, raise taxes or float a bond issue, City Manager Jim Shipley responded "probably a little bit of both". At a later date he told CARA representatives that he now believed the City could pay for the road without raising taxes, but that it would "absorb most of the City's debt capacity". What if the inevitable cost overruns occur? What if the City needs money for extending services into annexed areas, a new fire station or other major projects? Having the City's debt capacity used up is poor financial management. Apparently Mr. Shipley agrees, as he was quoted by the H-C (Apr. 27) saying "There are a lot of other things we could do with that money besides build a road."

3) Bennett Road Extension is not supported by the majority of the Cookeville area residents. At a 2004 TDOT public hearing on a proposed road that included the Bennett Road Extension route, over 95% of the 2136 public comments opposed the road. At a 2007 TDOT public hearing on the Northern Connector (the TDOT name for the Bennett Road Extension), 57% of the public comment opposed this connector road. Unfortunately, at the recent "community meeting" (April 26), the City did not allow any opportunity for people to state their support or opposition for the road concept.

*TDOT Needs Assessment PIN #107381.00, prepared by TDOT Project Planning Division, April 2006. CARA can provide a copy of this report to any Planning Commission member who would like one.

**On Friday April 20, CARA members met with City Manager Jim Shipley, City Planner James Mills, City Engineer Greg Brown, and Bennett Road Extension Project Manager Melinda Kiefer. With the possible exception of Ms. Kiefer, everyone present agreed the road was not needed. City officials reiterated what they have said many times before, i.e., that they would rather not build this road, but feel forced to because TDOT told them they could not have the new interchange if they did not build the connector road.

4) Building a new road hurts many people. Generally homes must be razed; sometimes homes are not razed but merely ruined by a noisy roadway a few tens of feet away. Farmland is paved over. Family farms are cut in half. People's lives are disrupted. We accept this price when we believe a new road is for the greater good of the community, but if it cannot be convincingly demonstrated that a greater good will be served, it is simply immoral to hurt families in this manner.

5) Neither City nor County governments actually want to build the Bennett Road Extension. This has been indicated time and again in official City and County resolutions to TDOT, by public statements made by City and County officials, as well as private statements.

      So why then is the City poised to build this road in spite of all the negatives? The answer is simple: they desperately want the new I-40 interchange at Mine Lick Creek Rd. and they have been told by TDOT that they cannot have the new interchange unless they build the road. TDOT says it is an FHWA requirement. Preliminary research by CARA's legal counsel suggests that FHWA policy allows for some exceptions. CARA members believe our City officials have failed to explore directly with FHWA to find out what current FHWA policy requires and under what conditions exceptions can be made to normal policy requirements. We believe that there is a way out of this requirement of a connector road to the north. Elsewhere in Tennessee new interstate interchanges have been built -and recently-- without connector roads on both sides.

      Regardless of what FHWA may actually require, CARA members hold that building the Bennett Road Extension is a mistake. The benefits of the Bennett Road Extension are highly speculative, but the damage that will be done by the road is definitive. It is very wrong to harm the residents along this route when there is no demonstrable need for the road or benefit to be derived from it. It is especially wrong to do so when public commentary shows that the majority of our area residents oppose a road along this route. If not building the Bennett Road Extension means not getting the new interchange, this would not be the end of progress and growth in Cookeville. As Mr. Joe Albrecht said (H-C, Jan. 24, 2010), "The business park will survive without the fifth interchange…" Not building the Bennett Road Extension is the right thing to do.

      We urge the Planning Commission not to modify the Major Street Plan or Future Land Use Plan to accommodate the Bennett Road Extension.

                                          Respectfully,

IS THE BENNETT ROAD EXTENSION A USELESS ROAD?

16 MAY 2012

      It is the belief of the engineering staff at TOUR that this road is beyond useless. First of all it is another north south road. It is settled highway engineering practice since the times of the Romans that a road system needs arterials at right angles to each other to optimize land access and provide for unexpected difficulty along the nearest path between a traffic generator and a traffic attractor. We know today that major roads can be about a mile or two apart to provide mobility and land access inside an urban area. The city of Cookeville has been ignoring basic traffic engineering for years. In October of 2010, even after hiring outside engineering talent from Knoxville to help them with their priorities, they threw out that advice and decided to make the Mine Lick Creek Road and Fifth Interchange their number one priority. History is about to repeat itself when the next planning commission brings forth the new Bennett Extension road plan.

      We already have a system of north-south primary arterials that are congested: Willow and Jefferson Avenue first come to mind. The reason they are congested is that they are used mainly for land access. This means that the businesses along the streets are attractors for traffic and the resulting traffic has fewer than normal chances for diversion away from congestion. This is no minor matter when it comes to fire and emergency medical services. To prove how bad this decision is, try to imagine the small number of people who will, after Bennett Road is constructed, be able to get to the hospital faster. This group of people would have to live south of the Interstate and have direct access to Bennett Road. Over time, the time to get to the hospital from any residence in the vicinity of the construction area will decline as planned future roads that will cross Bennett Road will develop stop signs or traffic lights. The fact that TDOT does not have traffic counts on Bennett road tells a lot about the importance of this road.

      The city plans to build another fire station close to the annexed area containing Bennett Road Extension because the time to respond from existing stations will be unacceptable. The building, the people and the equipment cost of this extra fire station is just another unfortunate consequence to the quest for the Fifth Interchange.

      The only complete east west arterial going through Cookeville is highway 70. It is hardly worthy of being called an arterial since the road, close to the city, is being used mostly for land access. In 2011 the traffic count west of Cookeville and on US 70 was 7752 per day. That does not sound too bad until you realize that it is only a two lane road. It still has mail boxes along the road. In the morning, it is best that you don't need to turn left since finding a space between cars long enough to maneuver safely is getting to be a problem. TDOT does have a plan to upgrade US 70, but it will be a long and slow process and the city is taking no obvious action to control growth or encroachment along the road. The old traffic studies for the original Fifth Interchange already reveal that I-40 is being used as the only real primary east-west arterial going through the south edge of town.

      The question about the Bennett Road Extension is in two parts: Should we build it as part of a loop around the city and should we build it just to compete with the other twenty three industrial parks already on the Interstate in Tennessee? Sometimes a loop road can help when providing primary arterials at right angles is difficult to achieve but before thinking that ring roads solve all problems, look at the rings around Charlotte North Carolina. The city looks like a bull's eye with multiple rings and difficult traffic. The planned Cookeville loop is too far out and unlikely to perform as originally intended. The effort to get the cost down has already degraded its utility to a 45 MPH road with many future connections to provide land access instead of mobility. Making its main function land access can also increase the future cost of converting it to a limited access road. At a lower design speed, the western limb of the loop will no longer attract traffic off of SR 11 at the same fraction that if would have as a limited access road. The idea that the eastern part of the loop will be a road like SR111, with a design speed that is much higher than the western portion of the loop is silly. About 72 percent of people who live in Putnam County work in Putnam County according to census data. The most probable benefit that The Bennett Road Extension will have is a way to get out of Putnam County. Only those who live near Bennett Road will have better access to the Interstate, most people will just use their old routes to work and shopping or whatever they need to do.

      What is technically wrong with this proposal does not matter to the City of Cookeville since the Fifth Interchange is a shameless raid on the Highway Trust Fund to provide a potential benefit other than the mobility that the Interstate would normally provide. These raids have been going on for over twenty years through a program called enhancements and this interchange will be another enhancement that barely has anything to do with mobility. There is an overarching presumption that the goods manufactured or the goods that are raw material need the mobility worse than the people who might work at the factory.

      Mobility is the means and method of providing productivity to the fleets of trucks that carry cargo and the people who need to go somewhere in a reasonable amount of time. The farther you can go, the more opportunities are created. Mobility allows people, employers and businesses to connect with each other over large distances and thus generates the potential for larger hiring pools and larger job opportunity. It is the increase in productivity that brings the economic benefits from the Interstate system, or any transportation system, not the dirt and asphalt. It is the loss of mobility via degradation of utility that is an ongoing threat to our economic well being. By 2030, TDOT plans on the Interstate between Bristol and Memphis to be running at a D level of service. You may also expect to see a European method of capacity enhancement called variable speed limits. It won't make more lanes available, but it will cause the existing pavement to be used to a greater degree. My guess is that this will translate into about a 52 mile per hour average speed. We are betting that the Interstate will never be overwhelmed but that is not going to happen unless things change drastically.

      When the gas tax was first enacted, it was popular because there was a perception that the people who most used the roads used the most gas and were paying the most money. The feeling that people were getting roughly what they were paying for was hard to maintain under a policy of socialization of costs that quickly took hold. The practice of socializing the costs created large classes of losers at the expense of a few winners. If everyone in Putnam County, in 2011, paid an average of $300 transportation taxes per year to TDOT for access and mobility, TDOT would get $21.6 million dollars. The City of Cookeville would get back from TDOT $726,496 in gasoline taxes. Putnam County got back $2,207,083. The two local governments get back about one dollar for every $7.36 that we send to TDOT. Cookeville adds about one dollar for every gas tax dollar to maintain roads. The county adds about three dollars for every eight that it gets in gas taxes. Each then can and do get the occasional grant for more transportation activity. We have no real financial ability to build this loop around the city and it will not be easy to support building the little piece that they currently plan. It will cost more that the total of all of the sales taxes that the city took in last year and if you consider a minor overrun in cost, it will cost about the same as a year of city police protection.

      Socializing costs has a powerful effect on what can be done but it has no power to discover what should be done with transportation dollars. Overinvestment in bad transportation projects is more probable than overinvestment in bad stocks like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because you at least have a quarterly report with stocks and mutual funds. There is no profit or loss statement with transportation investments. You are free to imagine large or small benefits, direct or indirect benefits, delayed and immediate benefits. The calculus of imagined benefits has no master or means of reasonable control. I have never seen an apology for a mistake because the way to detect a mistake has been totally wiped out of process of project selection. To the extent that a good system ever existed, it was perceived by many to be cruel and lacking in social justice.

      The first sign of a string of bad transportation investments is that you experience congestion, delay and a decline of mobility. The distances between vehicles decline. It starts taking you longer to make daily treks to the store or work. Speed limits fall so that more vehicles per hour can use the same pavement. Accidents either increase or the rate of accidents fail to respond to the usual measures. People in urban areas become experts in discovering alternate ways home or to work. The local government tries to get more use out of the existing pavement by opening High Occupancy Vehicle Lanes or High Occupancy Tolling might be tried. Transportation projects shrink in length and dollar size with a concurrent loss of administrative efficiency. When people refuse to pay more taxes, the government responds with tolls. The government becomes mysteriously broke and unable to do anything but maintain what it already has. Once money is wasted on bad transportation projects, the projects continue to absorb maintenance even if it has little or no traffic.

      Most people believe that we still have a system where the people who get the most benefit should or are paying the most money, but the socialization of costs prevents that from happening. For instance, let's take Corridor K in Polk and Bradley County. The latest trimmed-down version assumes costs at only a Billion dollars. The length of the road is not yet settled. Let's say that it is 26 miles. How could the people who would benefit the most possibly pay the most? Socializing the cost among over 6.4 million Tennesseans allows the project to be built when, if left to local sums of money, it would never happen. The combined population of Polk and Bradley County in 2010 was 115,788. To get the primary benefit of the road, you have to be near it or at least drive on it. In the Ducktown area of Polk County a traffic count was about 5286 on the road that Corridor K will totally or partially replace. If everyone in the state sent them $156.25 and there were no cost overruns, there would be no financial problem with Corridor K but, a family of five might have a problem with sending the state a check for $781.25 and still be expected to keep buying gasoline. If you take a Billion dollars and divide it among the population of Bradley and Polk County, it might be imagined that they would all receive a windfall of $8636.47 in transportation benefit. The problem with a windfall is that it is not a true windfall unless and until you convert it to something you want or need. Transportation benefit is no different from any other need or want. It is only worth what you will pay for it or what you can be forced to pay for it. The only ubiquitous benefit in transportation is mobility.

      Let's say that the State can get three cents per vehicle mile on a daily traffic count of 5286 vehicles. That would be $1.5 million per year in gas tax income from both tourist and people who live in Bradley and Polk County. It would take 49 million a year to finance this Billion dollar extravaganza at 4.5%, and over 50 years. The 6.4 million people in Tennessee would lose $47.5 million dollars per year every year for the next 50 years. These losses show up or fail to show up as a lost opportunity to do real mobility projects.

      Yard sales and trash cans prove that people frequently buy stuff they don't need, or they thought they needed or thought someone else needed. The problem with bad pavement purchases is that it cost about as much to tear it out and start over as it does to build it in the first place. No one ever apologizes either. Eventually, the pavement will be used, though the rare case of abandonment does occur. In the state of Tennessee Industrial Access program, a cost-benefit formula was proposed to sort out the good projects from the bad projects. The yearly projected payroll plus the yearly expected tax benefit was the benefit. The yearly cost of borrowing the money, principle plus interest, was the cost. Roads are perpetuated by the highway trust fund and even if the local government agrees to take care of the maintenance, it is likely that all or a substantial part of that maintenance is going to come from the highway trust fund as a result of the local government distribution that comes by law every year. In our case, there is no client so there is no payroll nor are there any taxes from the invisible client. Thus the benefit to cost ratio is zero. The actual cost cannot be calculated either because we don't know what the final cost will be in eight years, when the full road is fully built to FHWA specifications. The $10 million dollar part of it is just the starter road that the FHWA plans to suffer and permit right now. If the total admitted cost of the industrial park were $34 million dollars and that was financed at 4.5% over 20 years, the state would consider this project a break even project if it hired only 64 people at an average salary of $40, 831. Putnam County will lose all of those 64 jobs at the current rate in only 2.3 months.

      The employment payroll certainly provides a source of transportation funds. People buy gas but what if the new industry hires all local people who are already buying gas to work at another location? There would be no incremental benefit to the fund to take care of the incremental alleged benefit. What if a person takes a cut in pay to get closer to home? This state sponsored formula is better than nothing but it has a lot of assumed consequences that don't always end up helping the supply of money to the state highway trust fund. Building for mobility has a proven history of improving economic well being. The effect is immediate an lasts as long as the road capacity is maintained. The benefit of the new industrial park new that can't get a client damages the taxpayer every day. Industrial parks are overbuilt. In 2008 there were 1275 of them. The state took that Economic and Community Development web site down but the TVA has a similar one that has over 500 sites in Tennessee plus others in other states. It is impossible that they would all get a client. There are at least twenty eight for sale in Putnam County. There are at least three on the Interstate already. If the floor space of available manufacturing buildings, with infrastructure, in Putnam County was added up it would be over 21 acres.

REMINDER FROM RIC FINCH

15 MAY 2012

     The Cookeville Planning Commission is meeting Monday, May 21, at 5:30 PM in the City Council chamber in City Hall. According to a recent story in the H-C they will consider matters that relate to the proposed Bennett Road Extension. They may modify the Land Use Plan and/or the Major Road Plan to bring them in line with the proposed road project. Or they may consider areas to be annexed. I do not know any details of the Monday agenda right now, but the agenda will be set in a noon meeting of the Commission this Thursday. Once I find out what the agenda is, I will let you know.

     Public comment will be permitted at the Monday evening meeting and it is important that the Planning Commission receive some comment about the Bennett Road Extension. Those of you who will be directly affected by this new road, this is a chance for you to speak out against it. Those of you who will not be directly affected by the Bennett Road construction, but who realize that this is just the first step in constructing a ring-road around Cookeville, you should be at this meeting to speak out against it. Anyone who is concerned about how the City is going to pay for this un-needed road should also be there to speak out.

     Hope to see you there!

         Ric

WILL TRUCKS GET SPECIAL RULES AND TAXES FOR GOODS MOVEMENT?

11 MAY 2012

Fresh Thinking on the Federal Role in Goods Movement

by Robert Poole

     In the last six weeks, two large and very important policy studies have crossed my desk. One, from RAND Corporation, takes a fresh and much-need look at the federal role in goods movement. The second, from the National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFEP), looks at alternative ways to pay for a new federal freight infrastructure program. Since trucks on highways play such a major role in goods movement, the scope of both reports is limited mostly to truck freight infrastructure.

     “A Federal Role in Freight Planning and Finance” is the 82-page RAND report, written by Sandra Rosenbloom and Martin Wachs. (www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG1137.html). After providing some context about the challenges facing the U.S. supply chain network, the authors carry out a thoughtful discussion of what an appropriate federal government role might be. Their starting point is to list what they see as consensus views on policy objectives for a new federal policy on freight:

  Improve freight planning efforts (at all levels of government);

  Provide “some” financial assistance to local and intermodal projects with sustainable revenue sources;

  Condition federal support on specific performance measures;

  Require supported projects to have substantial user-pay components;

  Reform regulatory barriers;

  Respond to situations where the market alone will not yield the best solution.

     grandiose than many freight advocates have put forward recently (thus far, with no success).

     Most of the report then sketches out four policy elements of a federal goods-movement strategy that is responsive to these six objectives. The first of these, to which they devote by far the most attention, is a new federal freight capital investment program. Unlike most previous proposals of this sort, theirs is premised on using a sophisticated form of benefit/cost analysis (BCA) to

     They go to some lengths explaining how this might be done, and I agree that such a process makes sense, though I remain skeptical that it could be implemented in such a way as to prevent the kind of earmarking and politicization that we have seen in so many federal surface transportation programs.

     Their other three components are equally valuable, but to some extent politically challenging. They are to:

     I’m supportive of all three of these, since they would be steps toward a higher-productivity and better-funded goods movement system.

     The NCFRP report is a detailed look at “New Dedicated Revenue Mechanisms for Freight Transportation Investment.” It is NCFRP Report 15, researched by a team led by freight experts Tioga Group and available from the TRB website at: http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/ncfrp/ncfrp_rpt_015.pdf.

     The research team screened a wide variety of possible dedicated revenue sources for highway freight infrastructure improvements, but narrowed the scope down to three: a fuel tax surcharge, a VMT fee, and an increased federal registration fee on Class 4-8 (heavy) trucks. When they got into the mechanics of how each of these could be implemented, and what the implementation and collection costs would be, things got complicated pretty fast.

     For example, if you increase the diesel tax across the board and use all the revenue for highway freight infrastructure improvements, then all diesel fuel users would pay, even small trucks and the small but growing share of diesel-powered automobiles that would not benefit from the improvements. So you would need some way for operators of passenger vehicles and small trucks to get refunds. If you instead increase both diesel and gasoline taxes at the federal level, the need for refunds (and the cost of the refund system) grows immensely. There are also many trade-offs in devising a heavy-truck VMT fee system. An increased federal truck registration fee turns out to be the simplest, but fails most tests of being a user charge. Another complication is whether to include or exclude service trucks (tow trucks, cement mixers, etc.), which are not really part of the freight logistics system but pay the same diesel taxes as other heavy trucks.

     When they crunched the numbers to compare variants of the three approaches at various scales, they reached some provocative conclusions. Their baseline model involves a target, in each case, of generating gross federal revenue of $5 billion per year. They first adjusted the revenue for behavioral effects, such as some trucks converting from diesel to gasoline to avoid the new tax, and some freight shifting from truck to rail. Then they estimated implementation and collection costs for each variant of each of the three revenue sources (e.g., whether it applies only to the largest trucks, Class 7 and 8, or also to Class 4 through 6, and whether it applies to all trucks, including service trucks).

     Some of the findings will surprise most observers. For example, the per-vehicle implementation costs for a dedicated diesel or gas-tax with a truck ID device (to identify those charged the higher rate) is estimated at a (one-time) cost of $100 per truck. That compares with $250 to $500 per truck for an on-board unit for the VMT fee alternatives, but compared to the cost of buying a Class 8 rig, that’s pretty small. Second, the large differences in implementation and collection costs at the $5 billion annual revenue are much smaller when the program is sized to yield $20 billion per year in gross revenue. The report’s Table 61 shows that for the $20 billion/year program size, the difference between net federal revenue and industry cost is 1% for diesel tax with rebates for non-freight vehicles, 2-3% for diesel tax with truck ID units, and between 6% and 10% for the truck VMT fee alternatives. To be sure, the VMT fees cost more to collect than diesel taxes, but this is nothing like the figures the trucking industry has been using to argue against tolling (20 to 30%, based mostly on backward-looking 20th-century data that includes large fractions of old-fashioned cash collection at toll booths).

     I don’t have space to go into more of this fascinating report, but I commend both reports to your attention as first-rate pieces of work.

INTERCHANGE ENVY A DISORDER BEYOND FREUD'S SKILL

11 MAY 2012

      Anyone who has driven to Memphis has noticed the signs along I-40 that announce that there are six exits to Jackson, Tennessee. You might consider this a tourist gimmick dreamed up by members of the Chamber of Commerce because there seems to be no transportation related purpose to the sign. Bragging about how many exits you have seems to be a fad that has taken over the Economic Development Community in Tennessee. This fact speaks volumes to those who believe that more exits must translate into more industry and more jobs. Nothing encouraging can be found in the facts. Madison County, with its city of Jackson and its six interchanges, has lost more jobs than Putnam County according to Bureau of Economic Analysis Records. It is possible to look at the employment data and conclude that interchanges are causing job loss rather than preventing it. The theory that more interchanges mean more industrial job losses is just as silly as its opposite because both try to make a complex situation be explained by a simple rule.

      During the period from 2001 to 2010, the BEA records that the entire state lost 149,858 industrial jobs. That is about twice the population of Putnam County. Most of the losses were in large urban areas that have plenty of interchanges. No one yet has explained in classic Chamber of Commerce speak why this urban asphalt is losing its magic. Davidson County lost nearly 8 percent of Tennessee industrial jobs, Hamilton County, with its VW plant that we all paid more than $240 million dollars for, has lost about 5.5 percent. Knox County lost 5.4 percent of total jobs and it did not even get a VW plant and it recently had an upgrade of interchanges along I-40 as well as additional lanes. Bradley County will be getting a new connector in a few years but they have already lost 4,391 industrial jobs in the last nine years of BEA records. Bradley County is next to Meigs County, which is another county that gained jobs but does not have an Interstate. Claiborne County was another winner with 483 more industrial jobs gained than in 2001. They don't have any Interstates in Claiborne County either. Cheatham County which gained 216 jobs in nine years only has one I-40 Interchange. Perhaps we should dig up some dirt there and put their magic dirt on our interchanges? If we get caught stealing, we could just plead insanity or that we were practicing the Economic Development religion.

REVISITING THE INTERCHANGES-MAKE- INDUSTRIAL-JOBS MYTHOLOGY

10 MAY 2012

      If you spend too much time being marinated in the economic development speak of the Chamber of Commerce, you will find yourself being brainwashed into believing that more interchanges mean more manufacturing jobs. The data however refutes this, at least in Tennessee. It takes no computer research to conclude this since there were more jobs per interchange in 1979 than at any time since about 1965. Since 1979 the number of manufacturing jobs has been going down and the number of interchanges has been going up. The Bureau of Economic Analysis keeps tabs on jobs and manufacturing jobs on a county by county basis and from 2001 to 2010, only four Tennessee Counties actually gained manufacturing jobs, Cheathan, Claiborne, Meigs and Fayette County. Even the Federal Highway Administration has bought this myth hook line and sinker. It even sneaks into interchange justification studies and is quoted as a reason for having an interchange and preparing for a surge of traffic as soon as manufacturing boots up to the new interchange.

      Even though manufacturing jobs are disappearing nearly everywhere, the dollar amount of compensation paid by Tennessee manufacturers has shrunk only about 2% from 2001 to 2009. This does not mean that fewer people are taking home more money because inflation has not been factored into those data. From 2001 to 2010, a dollar lost 80 percent of its purchasing power. The myth of the long term reliability of manufacturing jobs still enjoys an undeserved reverence both in the law, which allows for condemnation to build industrial parks, and at Chamber of Commerce circles where county commissioners and mayors are tricked into the latest and greatest sure-fire policy to land another factory.

      Tennessee manufacturing compensation was $20,564,620,000 in 2001 but it fell to $20,127,391,000 in 2010. If that were adjusted for 2001 dollars, the compensation in 2010 should have been $25,367,815,000 to keep even with inflation. This represents nearly $4.97 billion dollars not paid as wages in 2010 compared to what was paid in 2001. When The state paid massive subsidies to VW, the economic development claim by UT Knoxville analysts and proponents was that it would have an impact of $511.1 million per year in personnal income. The ratio of what was lost all over the state and what was allegedly to be gained gained by VW activity is nearly 10 to one. One might say that things would have been worse without the subsidies but it could also be said that the decline was 9.7 times bigger than the expected benefit. Even when the expected gain is expressed as a percentage of the total production before the alleged impact, it is still a tiny fraction of total activity. The tax benefit is even more tiny since only 60 percent of personal income ends up being subject to sales taxes.

Only 16 counties out of 95 managed to have an inflation adjusted manufacturing payroll in 2010 that was greater than it was in 2001. The only county that managed to increase manufacturing jobs and end up with more manufacturing payroll in the last nine years of records was Fayette County. I don't think their success had anything to do with an interchange being built though two have been considered on opposite ends of Fayette county. Just talking about an interchange does not save jobs or Putnam County would not have lost 3,210 manufacturing jobs during the same nine year period that Fayette County gained 621 manufacturing jobs and Cheatham County gained 216. Claiborne county was another winner with 483 industrial jobs gained and Meigs County gained 72 industrial jobs. If there is any common factor between the gaining counties, it seems to be that none of them are overly blessed with Interstate interchanges since Meigs and Caliborne don't have any.

SOCIALIZING THE COST SOUNDS GOOD BUT WE ARE SOCIALIZING THE BENEFITS TOO ?

09 MAY 2012

      The illusions of the limited costs and the alleged extravagant local benefits of the Fifth Interchange are perpetuated by the idea that the large cost can be spread over a lot of people, while at the same time concentrating the benefits to a small group of people. Helping manufacturers is particularly problematic since they pay for their product from sales of as many customers as they can get. Thus, the benefits cross city, county, state and international lines. This begs the question: Why should we provide bribes, subsidies, special tax privileges, free golf club memberships, infrastructure, cheap land and no telling what else to have those benefits go all over creation? In normal commerce people exchange their money for a good that they want and in the ideal exchange, each party feels better off after the transaction. Normally, there is no need to delve into the details of what each party then does with the exchanged item.

      When the government gets involved, there is no voluntary exchange but there is still the expectation that there should be a reasonable relationship between what was lost to what was gained. We are, unfortunately in the grip of a three tier government structure that thinks that we will not notice the pain if it can be divided by over six million Tennesseans, 72,000 residents of Putnam County or 30,000 residents of Cookeville. The last fiasco that the city got into was a law suit in which it was ordered to pay $16 million dollars to the Upper Cumberland Electric Membership Corporation. The yearly payments for damaging their business by excessive annexation seem to be deposited within the budget of the Cookeville Electric Department, so that cost will be socialized over less than 17,000 electrical customers.

      When the Fifth Interchange was first proposed, we treated it like a free road since about 80% of the cost was to be paid by the federal government and 20% was to be paid by the state government. That deal died when Corridor J moved and the new deal is that the city will pay half of the cost and the state will pay half of the cost. If you look really closely at the fine print, the city pays the real costs not the estimated costs and it is due suddenly after the bids are opened. We know nothing about the manufacturer who will bless this community, its product, its suppliers nor anything about how the product is distributed. We don't even know if the new manufacturer will compete and kill an existing industry. What we do know is that the local government will bribe via favorable rental, purchase or whatever means to help lower the cost of production.

      Most likely, capital cost will be about 5% of the product cost but that really does not matter when trying to imagine where our tax money goes, since some of it will be integrated into the business in order to lower the cost of the item manufactured. Helping them make cheaper widgets certainly blesses the universe of customers of the unknown client of our empty industrial park but, it assures that the local benefit will be as diluted as the cost would be diluted by dividing by a very large number. This discussion of cost is not limited to tax money. There is a fairness issue with picking out a special class of activity to get special dispensations. What about retail, wholesale, finance, medical and the other sectors of the local community? Are they not being slighted or ignored? What real civic benefit will local government cast aside to get the next client at the Business Park?

      A really good example of growing manufacturing in the state of Tennessee is Fayette County. This county is growing and people and businesses are most likely fleeing the crime and taxation of Memphis. This growth of manufacturing is in stark contrast to Bradley County which is adjacent to Chattanooga. For some reason, the nearby Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga is doing nothing obvious for Bradley County. Bureau of Economic Analysis records of Fayette County shows a remarkable increase in manufacturing output while Bradley County is showing a loss of manufacturing output. They both have plenty of interchanges and the governor wants to build another on the county line between Fayette and Haywood County. The Fayette County manufacturing output however is not turning into a concurrent and equivalent increase in per capita income. This is because the product is shipped elsewhere. It is used, taxed and provides benefits elsewhere. The miracle of manufacturing productivity means that fewer people are needed to produce more stuff. As machines get smarter and smarter, the level of skill needed to operate those drops and so can the average wages. It is not a hard thing to imagine that the manufacturer might demand more and more of the infrastructure while, at the same time, give back less and less in local taxation.

      Giving special privileges to manufacturing predates the 1979 peak of US industrial workers, yet nothing shows any change in perception of their value. The smart thing seems to be what everybody else is doing, which does not work either. This old policy needs to be revamped to take into consideration the new realities. Nothing has reversed the decline of net manufacturing jobs. The same end zone dance seems to be in order for a job moved across a city, county or state boundary as one that was truly made brand new. We are doing nothing but increasing industrial habitat and making that habitat more complex by putting infrastructure in it. Increasing the habitat may work for animals that have a natural proclivity to breed and few if any predators but there is no natural tendency for manufacturers to exist.

      What right does your local government have to serve the needs of other jurisdictions? If your local county insurance company found out your police were patrolling another county, I think they would want an adjustment on the insurance rate. The Fifth Interchange is an example of an emotional argument that has gone beyond sanity. Rationality cannot prevail because there is no basis of figuring out if the cost is worth the benefit. We have to use coercion, bribes and advertising to influence the behavior of people that we cannot control to do things that they might not have done anyway. We don't even know where the benefit is going to be or when it will happen, if ever. This is the modern day story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Our local and state governments believe in the magic beans and are buying them up. The more unlikely they are to bear the jobs promised, the more magic they are claimed to be.

MESSAGE FROM RIC FINCH

08 MAY 2012

CARA Members--

      1) Cookeville Mayor Matt Swallows sent the e-mail below to a concerned and active CARA member. It looks like we have gotten the City's attention and that they are actually looking into FHWA requirements (something they should have done long ago, rather than just accepting TDOT's word on the matter). And they are enlisting Congressman Black's help. They would not have done this if CARA members had not spoken out. So there is a small victory.... Let's hope it turns into a large victory for all of us, including the City.

      2) Attached is the latest LTE (letter to the editor) that I have seen. Written by a new CARA member. Good work. We need more like this. We need LTEs and personal conversations with City officials to get them thinking of maybe NOT building the Bennett Road Extension....even if it means no interchange. CARA does not oppose the interchange, and we support the new business park. But the Northern Connector aka Bennett Road Extension is too high a price to pay. A "road to nowhere" that will hurt numerous homeowners and family farms along the route. PLEASE SPEAK OUT!

      Ric

Begin forwarded message:

----- Original Message -----

From: Penny Greene

To: Ric Finch

Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 10:43 AM

Subject: Re: Bennett Road Extension

From: "Matt Swallows"

Date: May 3, 2012 4:58:46 PM CDT

Subject: Bennett Road Extension

      Jim Shipley and I have spoken again about this and he called Paul Degges the assistant commissioner with TDOT. Jim reiterated the fact that the city would rather not build this road and that there are several citizens that are also opposed to the extension. Paul was also aware of Ric Finch and several others that have contacted his office and he understood everyone’s stance on the issue but he said the fact is if we do not agree to building the road the FHWA would not approve the interchange. So the bottom line according to Paul was you do not have to build the connector road but if you want the exit/interchange you have to. Jim also had a meeting with Diane Black Tuesday morning in regards to the business park and the connector road, he told her our concerns and she said she would go to FHWA and let us know for sure what they say in regards to the connector road being the linch pin for the interchange.

I told you we would try everything we could, so I will keep you informed as to what Diane Black comes back to us with.

Matt Swallows, CIC, CRM

The Swallows Agencies

P.O. Box 3267

Cookeville, TN 38502

Phone: 931-526-4025

Fax: 931-526-7059

IS THE HERALD CITIZEN HELPING TO RAISE YOUR TAXES...AGAIN?

Monday 07 MAY 2012

      At the last county commission meeting there was a question about where to get $200,000 for a horse barn at Tennessee Tech. In typical fashion, the county commission was softened up by an economic development report that assured that people come to Cookeville and practically throw money out the window for horse show events. Then came the pitch that there would be a horrible waste if the county and the city did not throw in to prevent the injustice of people having to go elsewhere to show their horses. Those poor Tech students could now keep their horses at the new barn. We will be known to the world as people who have brought order out of chaos. The county executive assured the commission that there was still $6 million dollars left in the budget. This probably aided the commission in their decision to conditionally give money for the horse barn provided that the other two governments came up with their portion of the project.

      Now that the children are in danger of falling into permanent stupidity if we don't pony up another $2 million plus dollars, the Herald-Citizen has been seized with a fit of amnesia over the $6 million that was burning a hole in the Commissioners pockets at the last meeting. I probably should exempt Commissioner Jonathan Williams since he did try to postpone the transfer by studying it through the usual process rather than make what was clearly an emotional decision. The reason the group could not wait on the check was that they were going to see the governor the next day to beg for more state money for the same project. Showing up without the county support might make the state less likely to grant their request, I suppose. The exact opposite would make an easier theory to defend since both the city and the county have lately been doing what I consider a lousy job of stewardship of the people's money.

      After the April meeting, which ran at least three hours, the Herald-Citizen took all week to report on what happened and they did it in such a way that people are still protected from the truth by denying them the facts. The county Commission attacked Johnny Stites, of J&S Construction, in a shameful way and tried to fire him after he brought them bad news which sounded a lot like the bad news that the sheriff has been trying to tell this commission and the previous one for years. This county needs two schools and a jail or some kind of jail fix. Either way, we are broke and are carrying a higher per capita debt than most large cities in Tennessee including Hamilton, Knox and Shelby County. It should be no surprise that the county has a slightly higher per capita debt than the city of Cookeville because the city gets more sales taxes per sale than the county. Neither the county or the city can afford this extravagant industrial park in addition to the other one that lost all its magic because it was not on I-40 . The demands of the Highlands Industrial Park are well in front of security, education and all other normal government functions in this county.

REINING IN THE FIFTH INTERCHANGE

Monay 07 MAY 2012

      A little known spending reform in Congress called the REINS ACT may be an effective tool in the future to correct misguided and rogue agencies like the Federal Highway Administration that approves gratuitous interchanges for the purpose of building speculative interchanges on the Interstate system. The act was intended to correct regulation by agencies like the EPA and others that are spewing thousands of regulations that are impacting the ability of the US to compete in international trade and preventing a speedy recovery from this longest recession in American history.

      The theory is that any regulation that has an impact on the economy exceeding $100 million dollars must be reigned in and brought under the control of congress. The regulation must be made public law, not by unaccountable bureaucrats, but by members of congress. It is not likely that this legislation will be passed by the next lame duck congress but it could be passed as a means of fighting the problems of federal debt and excessive spending. The federal government and all governments cannot afford to speculate and build interchanges that have no clients in waiting.

      A quick study on the Fifth Interchange will know immediately that the Fifth Interchange would not qualify because of its $15.7 million dollar price tag plus the federal portion of the road costs is below the threshold. The FHWA, however, has already permitted many speculative connectors to come into existence in Tennessee and presumably other states in spite of the laws that seem to forbid them. By creating a pattern of legal exceptions, the FHWA has become a rogue co-speculator. I wish fervently to see people treat Industrial Park speculators with the same enthusiasm as oil speculators.

      One of the worst case situations is the O'Neil Road Interchange in Cocke County. According to the public documents still available on the internet, this flyover bridge was holding up a gravel road with half of the traffic that our Bennett road sees in a day. Robertson and Sumner County have another speculative interchange valued at $28.5 million. Wilson County got its speculative Interchange under the MPO process but a very important reason was that it served a nearby industrial park. If you add all this up and add the one in Fayette County associated with the solar farm and maybe a new Mega Site that has been passed over numerous times, the total easily bumps the $100 million limit. Nowhere did I detect any hint of local money going into the connector road, if one was built, or interchange, even though Mt. Juliet, in Wilson County, is way more able to afford this than Cookeville.

      This Fifth Interchange was never anticipated in the federal regulations governing transportation money. Title 23 of the United States Code, Section 133 declares that a project connecting to the Interstate(or other major arterial) cannot even be considered if it is connected to a local or collector road. The Federal Highway System is mostly arterial highways including the Interstate System. In the past, the Federal Government has been careful to limit both the miles of the Interstate and the National Highway System Mileage. This fact implies that interconnections with the Interstate and other arterials are to be rare.

      Bennett Road is a collector road both now and after its extension. Mine Lick Creek Road is a collector road. Collector roads and local roads are rarely designed for heavy truck or Semi traffic. Has anyone thought how the emergency Interstate traffic is going to be routed in the event that 80,000 pound semi's are routed off the Interstate and onto US 70 over Bennett Road? The last transportation bill had a provision to raise the legal weight to 97,000 pounds. I guess the new Industrial Park will be designed for manufacturing Nerf footballs. Unfortunately, the Secretary can generate an exception to any such rule but maintains the responsibility for consistency throughout the US. This begs the question: Has the FHWA gone rogue all over the country or just in Tennessee? This also poses another question that the taxpayers might ask: Is the Federal Government required to pay the usual 80/20 split with the feds for the $15.7 million Interchange or is this cost all on TDOT because the interchange violates eligibility standards for the Surface Transportation Program?

      The FHWA originally approved a four-lane highway for the connector road that had a design speed of 70 MPH and was limited access. These previous decisions perfectly reflected the prevailing theory on interconnection. The city is trying to get this $34 million monster trimmed down to a $10 million dollar goat trail with a 45 MPH design speed. Forget about getting to the hospital quicker or the fire department getting to your house a lot quicker. The intersection of Buffalo Valley and Bennett Road will have a poor man's traffic light, better known as a four-way stop sign on it and all of the access roads that were promised to get a good public review will eventually slow down traffic more. We keep being assured that the city is talking to TDOT, but it seems that the city needs to be talking to the FHWA, since they apparently have the right to approve nearly anything.

RIC FINCH COMMENTS ON THE CITY AND THEIR PUBLIC MEETING ON THE BENNETT ROAD EXTENSION

Wednesday, 27 APRIL 2012

CARA Members and Concerned Citizens:

1) The City held its dog & pony show last night. I saw at least 16 CARA members there, and undoubtedly more attended than I recognized, since I do not know all of you. CARA members present included several people who do not live anywhere near the project and will not be directly impacted if the road is built. They were there to support their fellow citizens who have a lot to lose if the road is built. Thank you all for attending.

2) Note that the City is suddenly now calling the Northern Connector the "Bennett Road Extension". Whether or not this is an innocent new name or an attempt to confuse people I leave to you to judge for yourselves.

3) Disappointing aspects of the meeting: The meeting was set up so the City could hear local landowners comment on route details and points of access. They frankly did not want to hear people say "We don't want this road." So the meeting was arranged in such a way that there was little opportunity to record this feeling. Second disappointment: TDOT did not send representatives to this meeting (as they should have, inasmuch as TDOT is the agency telling the City that it has to build the road if it wants the new interchange), further limiting opportunities for citizens to say the road is not wanted.

4) A copy of the H-C's story on the meeting is attached as a PDF. The article says "some 130 people showed up"... That, I am certain, is a pretty significant under count. Probably that figure reflects only those who bothered to sign in, which you did not have to do.

Two statements in the article, attributed to City Manager Jim Shipley are worthy of note: He stated that the City had a lot of other uses for the money it will take to build the road. So, once again, we have a city official stating, in a round about way, that they really would rather not build this road.

      Shipley further stated that claims that the city could avoid the Bennett Road project are being looked at "carefully." This would appear to be a reference to the information given the City by CARA a week ago regarding the possibility that FHWA regulations or policies will actually allow, in some cases, an interchange to be built without connector roads on both sides of the interstate. Well, we certainly hope they are pursuing this diligently.

5) Getting FHWA to allow the City an exemption from the requirement of the northern connector will almost certainly require intervention from higher up, i.e., Washington. The City doesn't want the financial strain of building this road. Everyone who looks at a map showing the proposed new I-40 interchange and the business park on the south of I-40 knows that a connector road north to a dead road like US 70 is truly a waste of tax dollars. The great majority of the home and landowners along the route don't want it. And the people of our community have spoken out against a road along this route time and time again, for over 10 years! So why do we have to have it? Because TDOT says FHWA requires it. But is that really true? The only way to find out is to get someone powerful to go to FHWA and find out what they actually require and whether or not an exception can be made in a case where the connector road is unwarranted as well as unwanted.

      We believe that Congressman Diane Black is well-positioned to help us out with FHWA. CARA urges you to contact her and ask her to help both the City and her constituents out. Here is her contact info (and BTW, the preferred title is Congressman, in spite of her gender):

Congressman Diane Black

1531 Longworth HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Phone: (202) 225-4231

Fax: (202) 225-6887

You can also go to her website and send an e-mail: http://black.house.gov/ A hard copy letter probably carries more impact than an e-mail, but the choice is yours.

6) As you know, CARA representatives have already talked to Congressman Black's local field representative. Last night at the meeting, City Councilman Alma Anderson was informed of this and she said she would contact Black's local office in her official capacity to re-emphasize that City government would like not to have to build this road.

      I had a chance meeting with County Executive Kim Blaylock today and a bit of discussion followed. Kim stated that she too would contact Black's office to say that local goverrnment does not want to build this road.

      If enought people will ask Congressman Black to aid us, the wheels may turn.

7) Where do we go from here? First of all, please contact Congressman Black. Later will be further opportunities to comment on the road, such as City Council meetings when funding the road must be approved by the Council. Also public hearings on annexation and modification of the city Major Street Plan (May 21st being the next one). In the meantime, you need to exert your influence on public opinion by speaking out to your friends and neighbors, by writing letters to the editor of the H-C, and talking to any City officials you know, urging them to enlist help from higher up to get the alleged FHWA requirement waived.

      Thank you for speaking out!

    Ric

RIC FINCH ALERTS US TO THE HERALD CITIZEN PRINTING A RARE EDITORIAL CRITICAL OF THE INDUSTRIAL PARK/ NORTHERN CONNECTOR/BENNETT ROAD

Wednesday, 25 APRIL 2012

CARA Members and Friends---

1) Attached is a LTE (Letter to the Editor) published in last Sunday's H-C. Short, but makes the point well. The Northern Connector or --as they are now calling it, the "Bennett Road Extension"-- is a waste and should not be build. Kudos to Mr. Fox, who is not a CARA member. I hope some of you on the CARA mailing list will go and do likewise--- CARA influenced public opinion about Corridor J by writing a slew of LTEs to the H-C. You can do it again!

2) The City of Cookeville's Pubic Hearing on the "Bennett Road Extension" --don't let them confuse you with the new name, it's the same old Northern Connector, a segment of the same old unwanted Northern Loop that we shot down earlier-- will be held in the Leslie Town Center tomorrow, Thursday April 26, from 5 to 7 PM. Please attend this important meeting and let your opinions about the Bennett Extension - Northern Connector be known.

Note: The City has invited comment on details of the road location and where connections should be. They have not invited and do not really want to hear people say "We don't want the road at all." But this is what they need to hear. They need to hear this loudly and repeatedly.

3) CARA representatives met today with Mr. Michael Detwiler, a field representative for Congressman Diane Black. The purpose of our meeting was to make Congressman Black aware of these salient facts about the Bennett Extension - Northern Connector:

--the majority of the people in this area don't want a road along this route.

--the City of Cookeville doesn't see the need for it and doesn't want the financial strain of building it.

--the City has been told repeatedly by TDOT that they cannot have the new interchange (that they do want, badly) unless they fulfill this FHWA requirement of building the connector road.

--a review of current FHWA policy as stated in the Federal Register suggests that the connector road requirement may be flexible; it may be that exceptions can be made.

      Mr. Detwiler will be communicating these ideas to Congressman Black and we will see what her response is. Today's meeting was an opening session, but we hope it will lead to a solution to this problem that will suit the City as well as city and county taxpayers.

      Hope to see you tomorrow at the Public Hearing!

BENNETT ROAD A WASTE OF MONEY

Sunday Herald Citizen, 22 APRIL 2012

    Input was asked and, for my two cents worth, I think Bennett Road is another waste of taxpayers money for something we do not need! The wide and well built Highway 56 is very near, so why would you ever consider cutting up all those beautiful farms for another road this is not needed? (I do not own property affected by Bennett Road.)

      Don't we have enough waste all around us, including the mansions, resorts, and parked $100,000 plus buses that our taxes have purchased?

     Ask around and I think you will find many are sick and tired of waste!

Johnny W. Fox

Cookeville

CITY MEETS WITH COOKEVILLE AREA RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION ON FRIDAY 20 APRIL, 2012

Saturday, 21 APRIL 2012

CARA Members and Supporters--

      Two CARA representatives met Friday morning with four City of Cookeville officials to discuss the Northern Connector and whether or not it is actually required by FHWA. City officials present at the meeting were: City Manager Jim Shipley, City Planner James Mills, City Engineer Greg Brown and Melinda Keifer who is Cookeville's Economic & Community Development Coordinator (and, if I understood correctly, officially in charge of the Northern Connector project for the City). Below is my summary of the meeting.

      1) As I have stated repeatedly in CARA bulletins, the City does not actually want to build the proposed Northern Connector. There is considerable evidence to this effect in public documents, in addition to private statements by City and County officials. [See section two of the attachment.] Most of the officials at our meeting Friday reiterated that they would rather not build this connector road, and see no need for it in the near future. I came away from this meeting more convinced than ever that they really don't want to build the connector, but feel forced to, to get the interchange they do want.

      2) City has been told repeatedly by TDOT that FHWA will not allow the new I-40 Interchange at Mine Lick Creek Rd. to be built unless the Northern Connector is also built. [CARA has letters from TDOT that substantiate this as TDOT's position.] City views the construction of the new interchange as critical to the success of the new business park, therefore CIty is prepared to build the connector, to pay for much of it by whatever means necessary, be that a bond issue or a tax increase.

      3) During our discussion it was mentioned that City officials have not actually talked directly with FHWA officials on the subject of the connector road requirement and what flexibility FHWA might have regarding this requirement. City has accepted TDOT's position that FHWA requires the connection, but has not explored that directly with FHWA officials. The main purpose of our meeting Friday was to make City aware that current FHWA policy on new interstate interchanges does not appear to always require connectors such as proposed by TDOT. We believe the City is definitely interested in a way out of building the connector road, at least until the City sees a real need for it, which is not for many years to come. Further research into the regulations and policies defining the necessity of a connector road will be done. A political solution, or way out, may be possible in light of shrinking state gas tax revenues and road building funds and the state's need to pay for the maintainence of existing roads, bridges, overpasses, etc.

      4) Melinda Keifer went to some pains to explain how diligently the City has worked with TDOT to modify the nature of the connector road, should it indeed have to be built (which remains the City's understanding and working position: as far as they know, the connector road is required by FHWA). The original plans for the Northern Connector were for a four lane, divided, limited access, high speed road. The present plans, negotiated by the City with TDOT, call for: a) a reduced ROW strip (but still wide enough for four lanes); b) the initial construction of a two-lane road (the remaining two lanes to be added at some unspecified future date, when needed); c) access to the connector road at several points, so that local land owners don't get cut off, and (from City's view point) may actually benefit from the new road...local businesses could locate on the new road; d) a grade crossing with safety gates where the connector road crosses the Nashville & Eastern track (rather than an expensive overpass as originally planned).

      I report the above modifications so that CARA members will understand that the City has worked to ameliorate the negative aspects of the connector road. That is all very commendable, but the Northern Connector is still an unnecessary and destructive road that City would prefer not to build, and should not be forced to do so by either TDOT or FHWA.

      5) During the conversation it was brought to my attention that I had sent out some mis-information in a previous CARA bulletin, specifically, my statement that seven homes would have to be re-located if the connector was built. This information was taken directly from TDOT's 2006 Environmental Assessment document for the connector project. Apparently the City's current plans to build (initially) only a two-lane road means that some (all?) of these homes are no longer threatened to the same degree as they were by the original TDOT plans. That is good, though sometimes homes are effectively ruined by a road passing too closely, even though the home does not have to be re-located.

      6) The up-coming Public Hearing on the Northern Connector will be primarily an opportunity for the public to comment on the City's plans for the connector, especially such aspects as where access points should be. James Mills was quoted by the H-C as saying that the route of the Northern Connector was non-negotiable, but actually the City does have some leeway as to the exact location within the corridor that has been designated and environmentally analysed. It would be appropriate to comment at the hearing on how the new road will impact affected or adjacent properties and natural features like wetlands, streams, etc. CARA members should know that TDOT representatives are expected to be on hand at this meeting, and TDOT officials need to be told emphatically that the majority of the people in this area do not want the Northern Connector to be built by any route. And that we don't appreciate TDOT forcing City to spend millions to build an un-needed road just to satisfy some vague FHWA policy.

      We encourage CARA members and all concerned citizens to attend this Public Hearing, find out what the plans are, and speak your mind about them. Please spread the word! This community meeting will be held April 26 (this coming Thursday) in the Leslie Town Center (1 West First Street) from 5 to 7 PM. For further information you may call Cookeville Planning Dept. at 520-5271

      Thank you all for participating in this discussion of an important issue that will affect us all, one way or another, regardless of whether you live in the city or in the county.

      Sincerely,

           Ric

Why The Fifth Interchange is Immoral and Unethical

Monday, 16 APRIL 2012

      Even an atheist should be able to understand that this Fifth Interchange is wrong, but for a community of Christians who believe in the Bible, it is even more distressing to see the conflict over this project. The seizure of other people's property under color of the law is in two distinct phases. First is the tax money and second in the property that must be bought and converted to a different purpose. When the Fifth Interchange was rejected as the Corridor J Fiasco several years ago, many people were outraged that the government would spend money on Putnam County because the federal program that was spending the money had a mission to serve economically underperforming counties. I first noticed this phenomenon not in Putnam County but at a public meeting in Livingston. Putnam County is not an underperforming county and in a lot of ways is performing better than Hamilton County with their VV plant and Montgomery County with their acquisition of Hemlock Semiconductor. Both of these counties have been a frequent example of how to get economic development.

      One of the biggest problems with living in a Republic is actually letting the government represent you. The presumption that they are doing the right thing and doing their job and really representing you is often relied upon to let the average person get on with the rest of their life. The Bible says in Titus 3:1 that Christians should be subject to magistrates and governors appointed over them. Somehow that meant to some that no governor or magistrate is immune from a bad decision or never rules in an unrighteous way. This quote from the Bible was used to justify Slavery, another kind of theft, and Nazi occupation of Poland that leads to the round up and extermination of Jews.

      The government was always involved in economic development because it could, at little per capita cost, generate a safe environment where normal exchange of goods could exist. It could provide transportation and communication at a cost that would be to the individual difficult to provide. The government provided legal protection and a court system to make regular trade between different people in different jurisdictions. Economic Development used to be good government and low taxes to generate the environment for economic development. The dark side of Economic Development began to manifest itself in the United States at about the time of the Interstate or 1957. Massive resistance to the economic threat of the Interstate to some businesses that were in the wrong places or bypassed forced the federal government to dispatch people from the Commerce Department and smooth over these concerns with sophisticated arguments about Keynesian Economics and assurances that the money or impact `would actually multiply if the government spent it. Libertarians took it all the way to the Supreme Court.

      Government could or would be a blessing to the people only to the extent that it could operate on truth and do justice. Even in the best of times, that was never a perfect world but it is even a more imperfect world now that the government has fully embraced the dark side of Economic Development. A government could take your property and promise something and could easily provide the benefit that was promised only so long as it stuck to the basics such as schools, jails, security and basic transportation. The justification for taking someone's property or taxes is and was much better founded when what was promised became a material reality. You may not like your property to be taken for a road, but when that road helps your neighbors or even improves your property value in spite of your opposition, the needs of the many can be seen as superior to the needs of the few. The constitution provides for compensation to those who lost their property and from that standpoint, the government could at least be prevented from stealing. This perception remains today and is used to bludgeon anyone who stands in the way or speaks out against this Fifth Interchange or Industrial Park. But, what is not considered is the change in Economic Development that is caused by embracing the immoral Dark Side of Economic Development. You might be paid for your property but you cannot assume you will get the promised universal benefits that trick everyone else into believing it is a good project.

      Economic Development in the Twentieth Century crossed the line in the depth of the Depression. Bribes were formulated to entice industry move from one part of the country to another. The government suddenly felt forced not to provide something that it had but to provide something that it did not have. In order to do this, it must assure the behavior of people and groups of people outside of its normal sphere of influence. In the case of the first bribe in the United States to acquire a stocking manufacturer, it worked, but the manufacturer could not be bribed to stay in that business and changed from manufacturing to the financial business, presumably banking. Bribes were shown to work but you have to keep them available and ongoing. The government did in fact promise jobs and did get some jobs for most of the contracted period of time.

      Bribes or subsidies became so common that the existence of bribes was normalized. All of the smart people and politicians were offering them. All of the smart people and the politicians were suddenly in competition with each other. In 1979, the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States began to decline and they have never recovered from the constant downward spiral. In spite of this, the yearly value of manufacturing continues to be about 20 per cent of the world production. Even on a county by county basis it is easy to find places that have had manufacturing job losses yet the value of manufactured goods is on an upward ramp. To fuel the fires of economic development and make it easier to separate the people from their tax money, it became common to blame foreign manufacturing and international agreements for the dwindling supply of industrial jobs. Certain facts, though true, can become lies when contradicting and mitigating facts are not mentioned. Jobs are not all going to Mexico. Manufacturing is not disappearing. We just cannot afford to use as many people as we used to in the manufacturing process. The constant upward pressure for increased Social Security and taxation of labor is providing a constant pressure to get rid of labor.

      The generation of fear in states and counties became a common thing to take some kind of action. Some poor counties have been seeing their children leave to other parts of the state or nation for years to get jobs that the local economy cannot provide. It is normal and human to want to keep family and friends close by providing those jobs. It is normal for cities and county governments to worry about losing the base of jobs that provides money to operate the essential services of government. The deep well of good intentions can have a lot of bad things at the bottom of it. Should we bring in an industry that might compete with an existing one? Might one industry kill the other through excessive competition and all of our bribes be wasted? Maybe a good catch at the industrial park might take away our good workers who would leave for better paying jobs? A really good catch might bid up the price of good workers all over the area.

      In about 1984, the number of industrial jobs in Tennessee peaked and has been going down every year. It does not matter who was president or the state of the economy. A disappearing commodity, industrial jobs, means that the bribes have to get bigger, while at the same time, the promises are much more likely not to be fulfilled. Instead of saying we are going to bribe someone to get you a job, the more truthful statement is that the probability of success is declining.

      If you had heard that the supply of fish or rabbits had declined since the last time you went hunting or fishing, you would probably not respond by taking along more fishing tackle or more ammunition on the next trip. In the Economic Development game however, that is exactly what has to been done. More and more land and more and more infrastructure have been purchased to make bigger and bigger bribes. For some reason it looks better to have large continuous parcels of land appearing to be an industrial ghost town than to have abandoned buildings with infrastructure scattered all over the county or the town. Most counties and cities and government in Tennessee have some sort of Industrial Development plan or planned achievement. The result is that no potential manufacturer needs to worry about paying a lot for the land or even the building that they intend to use. This habit of providing free or below market-price land has driven the average capital cost per manufactured good down to about 5% in the United States. When people come to look for industrial development land, they are going to find cheap land because the government owns or controls most of it. According to our County Mayor, we have to have land to prevent a potential manufacturer from coming to town and failing to find land to establish a factory. Some abandoned manufacturing buildings and infrastructure are not seen as good buys because of the government subsidies for new locations and new buildings. It is the purpose of an industrial park to interfere with the free interchange of negotiations between buyer and seller and make sure that the jobs are not lost because the capital needs could not be satisfied.

      The competition to host the next factory is so intense that it has been accepted without a fact check that to get a client you not only have to have cheap land but existing infrastructure. Never mind the fact that the existing buildings in the county that have been shut down already have infrastructure in the form of power, water, sewer and even parking lots and some have loading docks. To prevent the empty industrial park from giving off the appearance of an industrial ghost town, adding the occasional park and beautifying the area is often suggested at additional cost to the taxpayer. Now they are not only turning our tax dollar into bribes, they are turning our water, sewer and power lines into helping hands to the water, power and sewer in the industrial park that have no customers or inadequate customers. We pay for infrastructure with spinning meters but the industrial park meters are not spinning, so the taxpayer has to support those losses with their utility bills. Building infrastructure for a non-existent or pretend client is problematic because the designer does not know how much is too much. The only answer is to over provide and hope for the best. Examples are legion of cities getting a serious client and having to make modifications to the property boundaries, cut vegetation or relocate utilities.

      Economic studies are also problematic but very useful in leading people to a positive attitude about economic development that is not deserved or based in facts. The economic study for the Highlands Business Park, called the Wadley-Donavan Report says nothing about buying 500 acres of ground and building an interchange. These consultants from Atlanta, Georgia were used for cover in a scheme to get the dream park with the dream interchange that would save and create all the jobs we would ever need. The only problem is that Putnam County has lost over 3000 industrial jobs in the past nine years of available data from the BEA. This data comes during the good years and the bad years and is average. In spite of this bad news, per capita income has risen every year during the same period. The property value in the city of Cookeville for the last ten years has risen about 6.4% per year. This begs the unspoken question: Why are we doing this? The two counties that got miracle industrial clients, Volkswagen in Hamilton and Hemlock Semiconductor in Montgomery County, have experienced a decrease in per capita earnings in the last year of data. Hamilton County has lost 9000 industrial jobs from 2001 to 2009, the last year of BEA data. This job lost comes even though they built their interchange to nowhere and the state sent $240 million dollars into the bribe pile to get the VW plant. A VW plant is suppose to provide 2000 employees. Putnam County has lost one and a half VW plants in about nine years. How many more industrial parks and interchanges do we have to build before we stop the loss of industrial jobs? We already have industrial zoning on three out of four interchanges. What will industrial zoning on a Fifth Interchange do? What proof do they have that the loss of industrial jobs is caused by the lack of Interstate access?

      Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, except in the well meaning world of economic development. Available industrial parks are over built. It is a special category of real estate that is part of the real estate bubble. Spending tax money on this bubble is dangerous and endangers other fundamental and more critical services that are legitimate and contribute to the quality of life. These extraordinary claims are not as much fact as they are prophecy. Spending on this enterprise is gambling and a bad gamble at that. Manufacturing does not need help with capital costs as much as they need help with people related costs. The raising of taxes to afford this white elephant makes wage demands go up and the likelihood of having an affordable workforce go down.

      People who want this industrial park, no matter what it costs, are quick to characterize the resisters as being against progress or negative and maybe anti-social. They point out that the use of condemnation to get what the city needs is normal and is legal. But, just because something is legal does not mean it is right. When a government promises something, it has an obligation to produce it and to maintain it for the welfare of the community. The promise of more industrial jobs is more like a promise to buy more lottery tickets. This connector road is not for the purpose of transportation, it is for the purpose of getting the best industrial park our tax money can buy. There is way more money spent on this park than the city will admit. According to Ronnie Meyers, at the UCEMC, the city has agreed to pay the Upper Cumberland Electric Membership Corporation a settlement of $25 million dollars at a million per year for annexations associated with the industrial park. According to City Financial Statement dated 2009, the amount was 16 million with 6 million down plus ten years at one million per year. This shows that the City scrambled to mitigate a large unexpected financial hit. Either version of the UCMC settlement shows the city has a limited ability to finance surprises.

      There are several empty industrial parks on interstates in Tennessee and the base price of land is cheaper. There are at least 25 of them in the TVA web site and two are alreeady in Cookeville. In fact, there is industrial land available on the Baxter exit west of the proposed interchange. No one is counting the cost of the tax revenue lost while this Highlands Industrial Park remains empty, nor is anyone concerned about the tax money lost through the taking of this Bennett Road Extension.

      The idea that you have to have a manufacturing facility on the interstate is ridiculous. There are existing manufacturing locations all over the state that are miles from the nearest Interstate. If you ship your product 500 miles to a customer, what is another mile or two? If that is a make or break proposition, then that business is not going to survive anyway. What kind of business really needs proximity to an exit? It is not a manufacturing facility; it is road side services like hotels, motels and restaurants. This is exactly what is taking place in Hamilton County at their interchange near the VW facility. It is going to turn into a Bass Pro Shop and a motel. There is no foul here since no one in Hamilton County was promised that this interchange was going to be an industrial interchange. While all the condemnation was going on in Putnam County the emphasis was in the industrial nature of the acquisition and then the term mixed use came back into the vocabulary after the Certificate of Need was issued by the state to the Highlands Industrial Park.

      Not only is the park bad for the county and the city, it is bad for the state of Tennessee. If this road costs $25 million dollars and it has a life cycle of 40 years, it will represent a cost of about $1,358,578.67 per year to pay back over 40 years at the rate of 4.5%. This is also about $45 per person within the city limit, every year for the next 40 years. If the state of Tennessee gets about 3 cents per vehicle mile and the year is divided into 365.25 days over 40 years, the traffic count on that road needs to be 38,214 per day for the investment to pay back. In the environmental assessment, for this project, TDOT projected that Willows and Jefferson Street would be carrying somewhere between 26,600 and 32,000 vehicles per day in the year 2030. Both were projected to carry half of that in 2010. The projected length is 3.47 miles so every trip generates a sum of about 10 cents. This road needs about 13.6 million vehicle miles per year on it to get enough gas tax money to sustain the total state and city investment. If the state and the city split the cost, then Cookeville only needs half of that or 19,107.11 per day. This is more than the predicted 2010 traffic count on SR 135, or Willow and SR 136, South Jefferson from the traffic study done in 2000 within the environmental assessment. Try to imagine 19,107 cars per day passing a single observer in 24 hours. That is a vehicle every 4.52 seconds. If you figure that there will still be four lanes with a center turning lanes, a vehicle every 18 seconds is required on four lanes with no rush hour traffic no slump after midnight.

      The state road aid to the city was only about $726,496 in 2011 according to the 2010-2011 Audit. The city will get a lump sum from the state no matter what the traffic count is. If the city manages to borrow the money for the Fifth Interchange connector, it will take 94% of the state revenue that is normally given to manage all roads to afford to buy this one. The temptation to use property and sales tax will be enormous and property tax is already being used to supplement state aid. The temptation to get the lowest possible start up cost will also be beyond their collective ability. The real costs will come much later in the project. It is often said that it is easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission but I doubt that we will even get an apology. The pattern has been that all previous expenditures are a justification to future expenditures.

      The failure to generate unrealistic amounts of traffic means that the state will lose money in their trust fund just on the initial construction. The city will lose even more because it will have to do pavement replacements and maintenance for the state as a part of this agreement and the gas tax money from TDOT is inadequate to carry this new responsibility plus what they already have. Over a 40 year life cycle you might expect three pavement replacements, signing changes, paint stripes, lighting and if you have enough accidents, traffic control devices. The city must also feel that their cops are not busy enough already without taking in another two square miles.

      This industrial park has been a shape shifter from the day in 1988 that mayor Grogan declared that it was going to cost $1,000,000 dollars plus $500,000 to extend Gould road to it. The public meeting concerning the original connector got public approval because the people were told it was a free road and that there would be no connector road. The letter that was sent out to local residents failed to count all of the costs already incurred like the sinkhole study, the law suits to condemn land and the 25 million dollar settlement with the Upper Cumberland Electric Membership Corporation. The new residents of Cookeville will not get the legendary low electric prices that everyone else is getting because, in that suit, the city agrees to take no more UCEMC property for 25 years.

      We have devolved as a society where we apparently believe that stealing is wrong unless the government is doing it to procure some possible and even improbable benefit. We also seem to believe that gambling is good as long as the government is doing it for our own best interest. It is obvious that the county has come to the point that they can no longer afford this industrial park. They may have to raise county property taxes 40 cents to pay for the next two schools and continue debating what to do about the jail. All of this talk of a wheel tax won't even pay the interest on one school. The County and the City have nearly the same per capita debt. For people in the city, that combined debt, is over $3500 each. We are quickly approaching the same per capita debt that bankrupted the county around Birmingham Alabama. The number of dollars owed to the city as delinquent taxes has nearly tripled in the past three years.

      Proverbs 27:4 says that Wrath is cruel and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand against envy? We are in the middle of a whirlpool of covetousness. We want but do not stand responsible for the cost. We won't even hold responsible those who have lead us to the brink of a major mistake. We are about to build a road that has no ability to pay for itself, much like the people who bought homes that caused the housing bubble. The state will send no one to help us. The permitting agency that certifies Industrial Parks never turns one down unless there is a legal challenge to it. The legislature provides no protection of the average citizen from foolish plans and ideas. There is no legal limit on the debt that our local governments can accrue. We were pitched a free road and a free interchange and a cheap industrial park Now it is going to cost us more than the benefit that we will ever see. If we cannot say no to this, can we ever say no to anything?

PLEASE GO TO THE MEETING ON 26 APRIL 2012

Monday, 16 APRIL 2012

CARA MEMBERS and FRIENDS--

     1)Please note that we have an important meeting coming up April 26. Please try to attend this meeting and voice your opposition to the Northern Connector.

     According to the H-C article (today's paper, Sunday Apr. 15), City Planner James Mills says the route is non-negotiable. If that were true, there would be no point in holding a public hearing. Don't believe this hooey-- nothing is non-negotiable. The entire Northern Connector concept may yet prove to be negotiable...it may not be a requirement at all. And if you will come out to this public hearing on April 26 and speak out against this wasteful and destructive road, you will help us build the case that it should not be built and does not have to be built.

     2) In the CARA bulletin sent to you this past Friday we informed you that CARA's legal counsel has investigated FHWA regulations and found that the current FHWA policy on new interchanges on the Interstate System does NOT appear to require a connection to the nearest major highway.

     Within an hour and a half of this bulletin being sent out to you, City Engineer Greg Brown called me. Someone on the CARA mailing list had forwarded this message on and it got to City Hall (which is OK; we were obviously going to share this info with the City) where it created quite a stir. They are VERY interested. They really don't want to build the Northern Connector. We expect to meet with City officials later this week to discuss this. We hope to help the City find a way out of building the Northern Connector and thereby saving millions in tax dollars.

     3) If you haven't already, please do call your two County Commissioners and ask them to vote against any Commission resolution in support of the Northern Connector.

     Thank you!

         Ric

MESSAGE FROM RIC FINCH ABOUT THE FIFTH INTERCHANGE

Friday, 13 APRIL 2012

CARA Members and Friends,

      It is CARA's official policy not to oppose the new I-40 Interchange at Mine Lick Creek Rd. We can see how it may benefit the planned new business park. But we must oppose the Northern Connector, because it is an absurd waste of tax dollars. It is not needed and will not be useful for a business park on the south side of the interstate. It will be destructive, forcing seven families out of their homes, and destroying prime farmland. TDOT concluded long ago (2006) when they studied the proposed Regional Economic Development Corridor, that a road along this route would not be justified. City officials and County officials are on public record as stating that they do not see a need for the Northern Connector, and that they do not want it. As pointed out in an earlier CARA bulletin, the cost of the Northern Connector to Cookeville taxpayers is far higher than reported by the H-C.

      Why then is the City prepared to build this road? Only to fulfill an alleged Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) requirement. TDOT says the FHWA will not permit them to build the new interchange on I-40 unless the Northern Connector is built. CARA's legal counsel has investigated this and the current FHWA policy on new interchanges on the Interstate System does NOT appear to require a connection to the nearest major highway. There is a good chance that someone in FHWA and/or TDOT is beating Cookeville over the head with a big stick that is not actually backed by a legal requirement.

      Please contact your County Commissioner before Monday and urge him/her to vote against any resolution in support of the Northern Connector. This road is not needed. It is a very bad idea.

      Thank you,

      Ric

  ANOTHER CHANCE TO DERAIL THE FIFTH INTERCHANGE?  

by TOUR editor Danny Newton

      Another chance to delay the Fifth Interchange may be in the making after the Local Fish Wrapper, better known as the Herald Citizen, reported mixed reviews to the city's proposal that the county help them get control of the property needed for the northern and southern connector road. Apparently TDOT wants to make sure the connector roads are well underway before finishing the connector. Finally the city stopped calling it an industrial park and now calls it a Business/Industrial park. This means that we may be getting our next motel soon, although the data on jobs at motels is declining in the past nine years according to the BEA.

     What is to be gained in this transaction is a delay of maybe one year in the city taxation for the 137 households in the annexation zone.

     Does anyone remember when the county was so rich that they were asked to loan the city the money for their part of the Fifth Interchange. Apparently something has happened. The county needs about $50 million dollars just for the new schools and the jail repair seems to be costing about three times the estimate. We need a new jail but we are patching up the old one.

     Does anyone even remember how the city and the county was suppose to go equal partners on this project? I certainly remember Kim Blaylock assuring the Certificate of Need Committee in Nashville that the City and the County were very good about working together with projects. I guess she was talking about the ball fields and the rail trail.

     It would help a lot of people get their mind in the right place if the county would put this project on a ballot. I know that most people have been lied to numerous times or at least been allowed to believe things that were not true but, as a hail-Mary pass and last ditch effort, I think this project needs to be on a referendum.

     Does anyone remember the good old days back in 1988 when the interchange was going to cost only a million dollars and the extension of Gould Road was going to be half a million dollars? We were told it was going to be a free road when it was part of Corridor J. Now we have to pay half of it and do the maintenance besides. We were told the city and county were partners but now...not so much. We were told it was going to save lives as a four lane but now it will be a two lane that morphs into an four lane maybe eight years later. Does anyone remember the Wadley-Donavan Report? That was the outside Economic Development consultants that were paid to tell us what to do about economic development. I got a redacted version of the report and a complete version from my neighbor and I could not find anywhere the Atlanta experts said to get $5 million dollars worth of land and spend another $14 million on infrastructure plus additional money on legal fees and sinkhole studies. We were told that was just going to be the connector and not the road. We were told that the connector was going to be a modified cloverleaf but when the drawings came out it was a low capacity diamond interchange. In 2003 the Mayor of Cookeville said that the road could be Phase II. Now it is Phase I...? We were told that the road was going to cost $34 million dollars as a four lane and now they are going to do it for $10 million? The connector is suppose to be $10 million. If you figure the county as 72,000 people,that would be about $300 each. We were told that The connector would take traffic off of Willow. The subsequent traffic study predicted no signifigant difference in traffic on Willow. The certificate of need committee was told that the project was favored by a majority of people who went to the public meetings. That interpretation was made possible by counting those in favor of road and connector and those in favor only if there was no road in the same category against the people who wanted the no build option. We were told by TDOT that taking the road through Kennys Auto Salvage would not be necessary and it would avoid an environmental clean up. Now the H-C says the road ends at Kennys Auto Salvage and there is not mention of the cost of the clean-up.

     There is no way to legitimize this project as a valuable county or city government sponsered project even assuming that there is a great revival of manufacturing jobs in this park. The fact that we have already sunk millions into this project is no excuse for wasting more. There is no assurance that the benefits will stay within the county lines. Even the study done by UT admitted that the benefit of the VW plant could go to outside counties, some of them not even in the state of Tennessee. Many people come here to get work from surrounfing counties. We should not mind being an incidental blessing to our neighbors but our local government should not force us to be a benefit to other counties. This project is more in the realm of a state project and the matching money does not make up for the discrepancy. Our county cops do not patrol adjacent counties just because our government can force us to pay for it. We don't house their prisoners for free and they don't house our prisoners for free.

     Over 3000 manufacturing jobs have left the county in the last ten years. This is equal to a VW plant and a half. How many jobs can this park absorb, especially since a lot of it is not usable because of the sinkholes and wet lands? Do we need to build a connector every ten years? When Chattanooga got VW, the state dove in with over $240 million dollars. I expect the state to do the same if we ever get our VW plant. For the last ten years, the personal income earned from county manufacturing has declined an average of 1.33% per year. Even though we have lost manufacturing jobs in this county, the average wage per job continues to rise. So, what is the emergency? What is the problem that the Chamber of Commerce seems determined to fix? Moreover, is there any end to what they will make us pay to get this dream park?

     If there is a true problem it is the government growing larger than the citizens ability to pay. In the state of Tennessee, disposable income took a dive in 2009 and 2010 but the spending on local government in Putnam County went up, possibly because of stimulus spending. Many more people are retired and find their income to be smaller than it used to be. Yet the city and the county marches on thinking that bigger is better and there is a never ending list of spending priorities that goes well beyond just the basics of security, transportation, education and utilities.

I will see all of you at the next County Commission Meeting on 16 APRIL 2012.

  CITY MANAGER SHIPLEY SPILLS THE BEANS  

Dear CARA Members and Supporters--

      I had a conversation with City Manager Jim Shipley yesterday. Jim was very forthcoming and informative. Also a bit shocking, considering what had been reported in the H-C Monday regarding $4 million costs for the connector road from the new interchange north to US 70 W.

      First of all, to clarify the H-C article: They refered to $2 million for the northern end of the connector and another $2 million for the southern end. I misinterpreted this "southern end" to mean the connection from I-40 south of to SR-135. This is incorrect. The "northern end" refers to the segment from Buffalo Valley Rd. north to US-70 W. The "southern end" refers to the segment from Buffalo Valley Rd. south to the new interchange on I-40 at Mine Lick Creek Rd. So the entire $4 million mentioned by the H-C is to be applied to the Northern Connector.

      Now, if that wasn't bad enough, apparently the $4 million costs noted by the H-C are less than half the actual cost. Mr. Shipley told me the actual cost of the Northern Connector is now estimated to run $10 million....and city taxes will probably have to go up to pay for it.

     Here's what Mr. Shipley said:

1) The 50/50 grant the city is trying to get will be from the State, a Local Interstate Connector grant. This grant is based on $2 million for improvements from I-40 north to Buffalo Valley Rd., and another $2 million north from Buffalo Valley Rd. to US 70 W. Of the total $4 million, the State will put up $2 million, which the City of Cookeville will have to match with $2 million of its own.

2) The four million in costs mentioned in the H-C article Mon. 3/12 is by no means fhe full cost. Mr. Shipley told me the cost estimate for ROW alone for the Northern Connector is $2 million. And construction costs are now estimated to run to $8 million.

3) City will finance the entire project; the connector will be a "city street"; Putnam County will not be involved. City has not yet annexed all the area that the Northern Connector will cross, but they will eventually. because "you don't want a city street where you cannot control development".

4) When I asked how the City will come up with $8 million, would they raise taxes or float a bond issue, Mr. Shipley replied that it will "likely be some of both."

5) When asked if the taxpayers have any say in the matter, Mr. Shipley replied that the city charter allows for residents to force a referendum on any city resolution passed, so city residents, by collecting enough signatures could call for a referendum on any city resolution increasing taxes or authorizing a bond sale to raise funds for the Northern Connector. But Mr. Shipley pointed out that it is difficult to get enough signatures to force a referendum; and if enough signatures are collected, then, of course, you still have to get enough votes for the referendum to overturn the city resolution. Short of a referendum, the City Council can raise taxes or issue a bond as it chooses.

6) Southern Connector: There is no "Southern Connector" equivalent to the Northern Connector, i.e., new 4-lane divided highway. But connectivity IS REQUIRED. City will improve Lee Seminary road south down to SR-135. Improvements will consist of adding a lane to make it a 3-lane road and straightening a major curve.

7) Mr. Shipley re-iterated that he personally, and other local government officials, do not want to build the Northern Connector....at least not at the present time. He had hoped they could have an agreement with TDOT / FHWA that would postpone the construction of the Northern Connector indefinitely, "until it was needed". But FHWA will not allow this. They will not approve a new interstate interchange unless connectivity is assured on both sides of the interstate to the nearest major artery; the City will be required to sign contracts with TDOT and to have the connector project well under way before the new interchange can be built..

      To make sure I did not accidently mis-state anything Mr. Shipley told me, some of the above points were further verified/clarified by an e-mail exchange with Mr. Shipley today.

     The long and the short of it is this: The City Council wants the new interchange so badly that they are willing to spend $8 million to build a road that neither they nor city nor county residents want. A road that serves no purpose other than to fulfill an FHWA requirement. And to get the $8 million they will probably need to raise taxes on city residents and float a bond issue too!

Is this wise government?

Ric