City Passes Construction at Wyndham

The City of Franklin voted to approve Carsensen's plan after multiple plans were put forth. Surprisingly enough nothing substantial was changed to address the effects that the development would have on the secondary environmental corridor. Despite testimonial on the harmful effects of the plan from at least two Landscape Architects, the city chose to pass this plan. The Army Corps of Engineers under the Department of the Interior supported the plan and saw its adverse effects to be minimal. Most of the opposition came from organized senior citizens looking for more shopping and an instant relief from current high property taxes. The funny thing is...with the proposed pedestrian plan, the seniors with oftentimes limited mobility, will not have a chance at crossing 1) a busy street with a PROPOSED sidewalk (evidently the city must pay or it will not be built) and 2) large swaths of parking stalls.

I encourage you to visit this link to a picture of the Pedestrian Plan by Mark Carstensen. John Michilig explains the plans attempts to encourage pedestrian and where the plan fails to follow through.

I encourage all interested to go to the city and ask for a copy of the latest plan. Frankin's Plan Commission hasn't gotten the minutes from that meeting up, but hopefully the public will soon know who of their representatives voted for this and who did not. Here is a LINK to the Plan Commission's archived agendas and minutes.

Time and opportunity. The citizens of Franklin seem to have fallen for a philosophy used in many marketing ads...buy now or the opportunity will pass. It's too bad, because this is the kind of fear based rhetoric that pits honest people looking to improve their community against honest people trying to preserve the integrity and natural history of that same community.

It's called "poor against poor." Neither side wins, but the developer with a halo of "done good for the community" and the corporation "brining you the lowest prices" make out like bandits.