Who Cyclists Should Vote For . . .
Dear Gainesville Cyclists, and All Pedestrians,
The Gainesville Cycling Club Board on which I serve is not endorsing in the Democratic Primary for Alachua County Commissioner on August 26th, but the choices are stark, and the Primary will most certainly decide the final election. At stake are the environment, how we spend our money on transportation, and the very nature of public governance versus governance by private corporations. Elections are County-wide, so you can vote for all the seats.
Those Primary choices should be Harvey Ward (D) for District Two. He faces big money in “Democrat” incumbent Lee Pinkoson (D). The other choice is Ken Cornell (D) for District Four versus an honorable campaign by Reverend Kevin J. Thorpe (D). Gainesville Citizens for Active Transportation (an umbrella coalition of multiple groups) has made the same endorsements.
The land speculators at Plum Creek want to build a city of tens of thousands out near Windsor, be-heading a precious Florida wilderness corridor and violating our democratically achieved Comprehensive Plan with malice. The locally grown standbyourplan.org is calling out allegedlly Progressive and “Green” big money Democrats who supported Plum Creek’s multi-million dollar propaganda campaign. And so are Harvey Ward and Ken Cornell.
Our incumbent Lee Pinkoson has claimed he legally has to be silent on the issue, but the County Attorney has told him it is okay to speak out. He still refuses. Lee has voted 38 of 39 times with the anti-bike Tea Party and Republican majority during 2012 and 2013, a third of those being transportation and infrastructure issues that affected bike-ped, transit, and roads infrastructure. I have no doubt he will do the same on Plum Creek. Kevin Thorpe fell back on a legalistic interpretation of allowing Plum Creek to “go through the process”, but considering this process has been gamed and fixed by powerful applicants for permits, we should have no faith in that.
Harvey Ward and Ken Cornell both support the Transportation Surtax and the 5% set-aside for bike-ped. Lee Pinkoson tried to pass a cars-only tax last cycle (and GCC voters helped defeat it), and he voted recently to fundamentally undermine the tax and our democracy by placing Chamber of Commerce appointees on fixed seats with the Citizen Oversight Committee. Pinkoson admitted in a GCAT/GCC candidate forum that his model was an Oversight Committee that could “change the programming” of any democratically achieved Surtax. I believe corporations are not people and that the traditionally anti-bike-ped Chamber should no more have a seat on that Committee than a church, a small business, or even our cycling club.
For Our Environment, and For Bike-Ped,
James Thompson
Cycling Commuter and Pedestrian