After having already made plans for tonight's Tri-Rail meeting up in Hollywood at City Hall, to discuss long-term funding, late last night I received word from a friend in-the-know about an 11:00 a.m. meeting on Broward County's Fiscal Year 2009-2018 Transit Development Plan (TDP).
It's set to "receive comments on major public transportation issues and how to improve public transportation in Broward County," and will be held at the Broward County Riverland Branch Library, 2710 W. Davie Blvd., Davie, FL 33312
Don't know how long they're scheduled to meet, but I know that when it comes to the public comments section of the agenda, I've still got plenty of pithy and insightful comments and criticisms to add to the melting pot.
Ones that I never got the opportunity to make at last September's Broward County Transit Forum at the Broward Convention Center, or, mention at the last Broward County Charter Review Commission meeting, where the fate of an elected mayor and a strong MTA was up for consideration.
You may recall from my previous posts here that it was at the latter meeting, which provoked great gnashing of teeth across the county among many people of my acquaintance, due to the Herald and the Sun-Sentinel not even bothering to mention in their articles the following day how the individual members of the 19-member group voted on the the various agenda items being discussed for possible inclusion on November's ballot.
A simple tally box or graph would've sufficed, but they didn't even bother to do that.
I'll be posting two items about that Charter Review Commission meeting within the next few days, both of which are not only negative, but actually cut-to-the-bone compared to my usual efforts here, as they're about the Herald's very poor coverage of the CRC and the way the voting went, but also about the City of Hallandale Beach's transparent and ultimately pathetic attempts to affect the voting outcome, which only highlighted my disregard for certain people at City Hall, who can't ever seem to see the bigger picture.
Trust me, I've been holding these two already-written posts in the South Beach Hoosier freezer for months, just waiting for a day to open the door and let 'em loose when I'm good and mad.
Well, all I can say is, "Open sesame!"
For what it's worth, Rep. Elaine Schwartz organized the Tri-Rail meeting, and based on media reports, School Board member Eleanor Sobel and Senate Minority Leader Steve Geller are scheduled to appear.
It's slated to go from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Hollywood City Hall Commission Chambers, 2600 Hollywood Blvd, Room 219.
Given that primary elections are in less than five weeks, I fully expect that there will be more than a fair amount of pols glad handing in the background thereabouts, so consider yourself warned.
I'd personally suggest you show up early because my own experience is that if the Hollywood City Hall security system is up and running again, when you enter thru the east ground floor side, have your photo ID handy, because the machine is very poky and is one person at a time.
Anthony Man commented on the Tri-Rail meeting in the Sun-Sentinel Broward Politics blog:
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2008/07/panel_considers_longterm_fundi.html
See SFRTA's Planning and Capital Development webpage for interesting facts and figures aboput what they're up to: http://www.sfrta.fl.gov/planning.html
Tri-Rail stories in Sun-Sentinel:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/search/dispatcher.front?Query=Tri-Rail&sortby=display_time+descending&subheader-search-button=Go&target=article
You also might want to avail yourself of the last Planning Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC) meeting for which Minutes exist:
http://www.sfrta.fl.gov/docs/CommMeetings/2008/PTAC_Agenda_Complete_052108.pdf
As to the Norman Braman v.Miami-Dade trial, I've decided to go back down to Flagler on Friday for the Braman trial, since with the Tri-Rail forum starting at 6:30, I doubt I'd make it back in time from circuit court unless I took my life into my hands and tried the 95 Express.
Hence, Flagler on Friday.
Gabriel over at Transit Miami had some astute comments about what to me, at least, is already a failed experiment: http://www.transitmiami.com/2008/07/15/95-express/
So, where's FL Sec. of Transportation Stephanie Kopelousos while this experiment crashes and burns? She's MIA, as per usual!
You'll recall that my chief criticism of her http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Stephanie%20Kopelousos is that regardless of whatever else her particular strong suits may prove to be in the future, so far, at least as it involves South Florida, she NEVER seems to actually be anywhere except at functions full of either schmoozing politicians, engineers or industry people, and is NEVER anywhere that citizen taxpayers can ask her questions, and make her accountable for the FDOT policies and process that she's legally responsible for giving direction and leadership to.
Which is to say, all the myriad FDOT problems down here in South Florida, of which the lack of appropriate signage placement in advance of the I-95 Express experiment starting, is but the lowest hanging fruit -of many from which to choose.
Compare what she did in her hometown of Jacksonville, when FDOT's grand plans met reality, and what's happened down here, despite how entirely predictable this all was: http://www.floridatrend.com/article.asp?aID=46992
By the way, I discovered this bit of news about the Tri-Rail forum completely by accident Tuesday night while up at Hollywood City Hall, after attending Hollywood's important CRA meeting on the WSG project up at Young Circle, which was given a continuance until Tuesday July 22nd, at 3:30 p.m.
I expect quite a large turnout at that meeting next Tuesday afternoon and can only hope that for once, local South Florida TV stations will actually have the good sense to show up before the beginning of the meeting, and not just cruise in at the end to shoot some B Roll for an anchor V.O. at 11 p.m., with zero context.
But I won't hold my breath.
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