FDOT Transportation Secretary at Lakeland Meeting

The secretary for transportation, Stephanie Kopelousos, was the guest speaker at the Lakeland CSX/FDOT meeting last Friday. And she was met with a less than warm and fuzzy crowd.
Lakeland was the main focus because their state senator Paula Dockery and representative Dennis Ross had arranged the meeting.

It was a passionate crownd starting with a presentation from Jim Studial of Lakeland. Jim had serious concerns with the project including the fact that an Environmental Impact Study was not being done on the site along with the DRI and that the DRI process was being fast tracked by the state.

Ron Weaver, the state wide well known land use attorney, who was hired to represent Lakeland spoke on the injustices to downtown Lakeland. He always makes excellent points!

I will say the most moving part of the day was when Julie Townsend asked the secretary 10 very hard questions. They were questions on everyone's mind and each one was met with a thunderous applause from the audience.
One such question was if the traffic from the Orlando intermodal site was harmful to Orlando and Orlando has tried to get rid of this thing for years, why does the state think it will be good for Polk County? (More thunderous applause!)

A few of us had time at the end to get up and speak on the impacts to us on the eastern side of the county.
Pam Childers, Johnny Guest, Eldon Tipper, Wayne Guest and others all had very good points and were well received.
My statement pointed out that by having this $500 million in hand and waiting to hand it over to CSX / Evansville railroad, at this point the state and federal governments would be just as liable and criminally negligent for the harmful impacts of this site to myself, my family, my neighbors and the thousands of unsuspecting Polk County residents who have had no representation and would be harmed by this.

I also want to point out that it's amazing that my own state senator, Senator JD Alexander when asked about this topic at last week's delegation meeting, thought it was the next best thing to sliced bread and didn't want to hear any different. Could it be that he would be one of those "fat cats" we hear about who stand to gain the most from this.
He needs the Heartland Parkway to go through so the state will buy all those glorious acres from he and his friends for the road, thus profiting him directly and secondly with a booming parkway in place his surrounding thousands of acres would be worth a fortune instead of just cattle land as it stands now. And what better way to ensure the future of the Heartland Parkway than to justify it's need with the thousands of semi trucks to an ILC site.
Where is Eastern Polk's representation when we need it? Do we not pay tax dollars also?

Any questions on that conspiracy theory?