Monday, March 7, 2011
End of the line?
The deadline for filing bills in the Legislature is this Friday according to Rep. Kleinschmidt’s and Strama’s offices. As of this morning, neither Representative is planning to file the contentious bill that would create a Special Utility District for the proposed Central Texas Airport due to ‘lack of support’.
Communication with the City of Bastrop and emails and phone calls from outraged citizens influenced the decisions.
An interesting side note is that Mr Carpenter has evidently been as absent in the Capitol as he has elsewhere regarding the proposed airport project.
So keep fingers crossed that maybe just maybe we have dodged a bullet on this one. Barring unforeseen events it will likely fade into oblivion in the ‘really bad idea’ file.
Now if we could only get the 381 Agreement to do the same . . .
Sunday, March 6, 2011
StopCTA PSA on TV!
Upstart, which operates our local Bastrop Community Access Television is soon going to start airing the StopCTA PSA which graces the homepage of this site. You will be able to see it on Time Warner Channel 10 and AT&T’s UVerse Channel 99.
In addition, Upstart will be broadcasting another PSA which you can view here.
Both videos were created by April Macaraeg for a Motion Graphics class at the Parson’s New School of Design in New York city. Kudos to this very talented student who has a brilliant career ahead of her!!
Enjoy!
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Fer, agin’ or huh?
The argument that there is no huge groundswell of opposition to the proposed Central Texas Airport - that our numbers are small and therefore irrelevant - has been occasionally seen in the local press and heard around town. Well, that’s not what we experienced last Thursday when StopCTA distributed information outside the BISD community input meeting at the Wilhelm Center. Since it was pretty well attended, we got a good feel for what citizens of this county are thinking about the project.
There were very few people who didn’t want to take a flyer. Either they were already informed or they have a habit of declining handouts (something I often do myself).
One man quipped, “I love airports!” Which may or may not have any relevance to the CTA per se. No one else even tried to defend the project. The very tired and erroneous ‘pot of gold’ defense was not heard once.
Then there were the folks who had never heard about the proposed Central Texas Airport and just said, “Huh?”. Or, “What?”. They seemed genuinely surprised and more than a little shocked about the idea.
Finally, there were quite a few attendees who said, “Oh, I know all about the airport. It’s TERRIBLE idea!!”
This little unscientific survey might not count for much in the realm of statistics but it does indicate that there really is not much support for the airport. And that when people learn the unsavory details, they quickly come to the conclusion that it’s a really, REALLY, bad idea.
And of course, it is just that . . . a really, REALLY bad idea.
Spread the word!!
