500 people showed up & just as it was getting hot, they shut it down!
The Northeast Gateway Turnpike would run on the east side of Lake Lavon.
Wow! There's just something about these private toll road scams that get under the skin of Texans.
Last night was the public hearing on this mysterious private Blacklands toll road through Greenville to Rockwall in Dallas and Collin counties. It's been re-routed and re-named the Northeast Gateway Turnpike. The tollway is being done through a completely for-profit private corporation, the Texas Turnpike Corporation, whose parent company is named Public Werks, although the environmental study is being conducted by the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG).
The statute that allowed this company to build private toll roads using EMINENT DOMAIN has since been repealed. Texans changed the Texas Constitution to protect them from eminent domain for private gain, and yet this company was grandfathered in (this is why we opposed the bill, SB 18, because it was chalk full of LOOPHOLES like this!).
The meeting facility only held 250 people and 500 people showed up! But no one said a thing about the capacity crowd until the meeting started to get hot. Conveniently, BEFORE the public comment began, the Fire Marshal shut it down and said they'd have to get another venue that can hold more people and reschedule the meeting in 10-14 days. This is a classic method by bureaucrats and planners to quell public opposition.
Of course, they put it off in hopes of demoralizing the opposition and to thin out the crowd. Remember, the MOST important way to oppose a toll project is to get your opposition ON THE OFFICIAL RECORD through oral or written public comment. You can submit comment orally at the microphone during the hearing or sometimes to a stenographer/court reporter off to the side at the hearings or in writing via email (usually within 10-30 days AFTER the hearing).
ACTION ITEM FOR NEXT MEETING
We need folks to turnout in even BIGGER numbers when this meeting gets rescheduled. We plan to have volunteers staff tables with clipboards to collect contact information of those opposed to the toll road so we can stay in touch and organize.
If you can help, please contact Terri Hall at terri@texasturf.org
. It has nothing to do with commuter traffic. Even if Greenville’s population doubled in the next 20 years to 50K (which now I know why it will), a tollroad cannot by sustained and profitable by a city of 50K. It has to do with huge tracts of land that The Walton Group Inc from Canada has purchased on the south side of Greenville and there are plans to develop thousands of houses there. This toll road is about nothing but the players involved devising a way to get the building materials there and make a profit off of that too. If you go back and listen to the meeting they had with the Rowlett City Council they admit they see it as mainly being truck traffic. Now I know why, and it is just another part of the scheme of them lining their pockets at our expense. Think about all of the noise and particulate pollution that will be for the city of Rowlett. There is so much political cronyism and back scratching going on with this between members of the NCTCOG, Public Werks Inc (TTA) and the Walton Group, that even I can see it.
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