Meeting Announcement: Save Waterworks Park
Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Place: 3808 Kingman Blvd., Des Moines (2nd house west of the corner of 38th
Street and Kingman Blvd., on the south side of Kingman--white house with blue
shutters)
Contact: For more information, contact Tom Mathews, 515-274-4710,
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The Issue--
The north portion of Waterworks Park in Des Moines is threatened by a road
building project. A segment of Martin Luther King Parkway is proposed to
connect the already constructed portion of the roadway from I-235, the Des
Moines Freeway,  to the portion of MLK that has been built south of downtown
Des Moines. This would require building two bridges over the Raccoon River as
well as extensive destruction of trees and land in Waterworks Park.

We believe that there are reasonable alternative routes, using existing city
streets, to connect the portions of the roadway that have been built, without
going through Waterworks Park.

Strategies and Agenda Items:
1. The law prohibits using federal funds to build a road through a public
park. We have filed a lawsuit to stop the road-building through Waterworks
park based on this law.

AGENDA ITEM: An update on this lawsuit from our attorney, Wally Taylor, and
discussion of the future of the case.

2. As reported in The Des Moines Register on March 1, the City of Des Moines
has run out of money to build MLK through Waterworks Park. The City is asking
the federal government for additional funds for this project. We need to work
on the political front to convince our Congressional delegation to oppose
this funding.

AGENDA ITEMS: Discuss strategy for getting the word our US senators and
representatives to stop further funding for the MLK Parkway project. Discuss
involving other elected officials, such at the Governor, and other
organizations, such as Sierra Club. How to make this an issue in the fall
City Council election.

3. Fund raising is needed for legal fees.

AGENDA ITEM: Discuss methods of fund raising, such as t-shirt sales, a
benefit concert, phone calls; AND whether to use the existing fund raising
structure (bank account, mailing list, etc.) of an existing organization such
as NNRPP for fund raising.

THE IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE:
If this portion of MLK Parkway is built through Waterworks Park, there will
be tremendous pressure from some public officials as well as from development
interests to build the portion of MLK north of I-235 up to I-80, and beyond.
That is why we must stop further construction of MLK now!

In looking at the larger picture, we see that the City of Des Moines has, for
at least the past four decades, concentrated on building infrastructure for
automobiles: the Freeway (I-235), street widenings, and numerous downtown
parking structures and surface parking lots. All this building to accommodate
cars has had the opposite of its intended effect. Instead of making downtown
Des Moines and the central city more healthy and prosperous, it has
contributed to the exodus of businesses and people to the surrounding
suburbs, a phenomenon called urban sprawl. This concentration on making the
city more accessible to cars has encouraged more automobile driving, thus
wasting huge quantities of energy, while contributing to global warming and
to our dependency on foreign oil.

Instead of just doing more of the same--more road building--and calling it
progress, Des Moines needs real change in transportation policy. We need to
build alternative transportation, including public transit and safe
pedestrian and bicycle routes.

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