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From: 1000 Friends of Iowa <[log in to unmask]>
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Sent: Monday, February 27, 2012 11:35 AM
Subject: NE Polk County Beltway Hearing TOMORROW, February 28, 2012
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NE Polk County Beltway Hearing
TOMORROW
February 27, 2012
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1000 Friends of Iowa
3850 Merle Hay Road
Suite 605
Des Moines, Iowa 50310
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www.1000friendsofiowa.org
NE Polk County Beltway Back on the Map - Hearing February 28, 2012
The Polk Planning and Zoning Commission passed a newly revised route for the NE Polk County Beltway in January. The Polk County Board of Supervisors will hold a hearing TOMORROW, February 28, 2012 at 9:30 a.m. in room 120 of the Polk County Administrative Office Building, 111 Court Avenue, Des Moines, IA. The purpose of the hearing is to take public testimony in connection with the proposed Zoning Map amendment to the Official Zoning Map and a proposed map amendment to the 2030 Comprehensive Plan Map.
Please let as many Polk County residents as possible know about this meeting. Once the road is on the 2030 County Comprehensive Plan, it will advance to the DMAMPO map and will then qualify to request federal funding. We need to keep the beltway route off the map and remind Supervisors that citizen input has been opposed to the NE Polk County Beltway for the entire history of this project.
Iowa and Polk County can and should do better. The DMAMPO and Greater DM Partnership recently received a $2 million grant for sustainable planning for the 17 city metro area called The Tomorrow Plan. It seems ill-conceived to be amending the comprehensive plan with such an expensive and land altering project as the beltway which is currently contrary to The Tomorrow Plan's more sustainable planning. Since Polk County is a member of the DMAMPO they are well aware of this grant for sustainable planning.
Additional information on this issue can be found on the 1000 Friends of Iowa website, http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1109367502808&s=470&e=001yqie06qemDCuBeCZqE51QyhWBT87lMCfcI9qtwYQ0StPalGECl0LQuPPzfiA7sZJtr5kXStbRXnYEYvTWhSNE3CbbsXkbCd3yWERS1v2NwEYWT_oExzyVD3Y5K-iuWXQqHIbxk9aHAtpsBxTkARhzxM-8tj9WXwsfQUxzmAb_Hk=, as well as history and talking points below.
Northeast Polk County Beltway History & Talking Points
The Northeast Polk County Beltway is a proposed traffic corridor around the northeast side of the metro area through the last expanse of Polk County's prime farmland. The proposed beltway would extend from Altoona at I-80 north to the edge of the city of Elkhart and west to Hwy 69.
The Northeast Polk County Beltway proposal began as a concept to bring a high-speed beltway from Altoona north to Elkhart, then west to Polk City and across Saylorville Lake's mile-long bridge. Opposition to the project included the impacts to an 800-acre federal wildlife preserve near Polk City, owned by the Army Corps of Engineers. This opposition led Polk County to end the study area at Iowa Highway 69 north of Ankeny, and consider alternatives to the project that would carry it much farther north. After federal funding for planning ran out, Polk County revamped the Beltway plan again.
Talking Points:
Above all, we need to convey that any alignment for a new beltway in Northeast Polk County is too costly and unacceptable. The "build it and they will come" approach to handling traffic is an expensive cycle of sprawling development on prime farmland that society can't afford in the face of high gas and food prices. Farmland, selling for $11,000 an acre for agriculture purposes, can no longer be thought of as a pallet to draw lines of concrete on.
The Northeast Beltway would exacerbate sprawling, auto-dependent development with taxpayer dollars
* Proposing highways and interchanges on the urban fringe attracts land speculators to purchase land and puts development pressure in rural areas and wildlife corridors.
* Sprawling development on the urban fringe increases the miles people drive to get places and inefficiently consumes land. This results in increases to auto-related greenhouse gas emissions.
* This beltway, which would cost at least several hundred million dollars of public money, would amount to a huge public subsidy for big-box stores, chains, and other businesses with deep enough pockets to afford to buy land along the beltway.
* Development along the beltway would inevitably lead to neglect of existing under-utilized urban land. The Northeast Beltway proponents have not promoted meaningful public participation in the planning process
* The public has not been involved in the discussion about the need for the beltway. The few public meetings held were gathering input about the road's location, not the road's necessity.
* The alternatives presented have not included sustainable alternatives, such as alleviating interstate traffic through modest improvements to existing roads. We don't need to build a beltway only a few miles parallel to an existing interstate.
* Of the hundreds of citizens who have commented on the beltway and attended meetings, very few were in favor of the project. Polk County officials continue to pursue this unpopular concept and further it through the process of qualifying for funding.The Northeast Beltway would impact prime farmland, natural areas, and the area's overall quality of life
* Local residents value their communities' small town flavor and rural way of life. Development along the beltway would destroy what citizens enjoy most about the area.
* Northeast Polk County is home to some of the finest, most productive soils in the world. Once farmland is lost, it cannot be reclaimed.
* Wildlife corridors and natural areas like prairie and wetlands could be disrupted in the beltway location under consideration.Across the nation successful and often expensive efforts have been undertaken to undo exactly what our policy-makers are trying to foist upon the public with this road proposal. Global climate issues, loss of farmland, increasing food prices, increasing petroleum prices, increasing tax burdens all point to the need to reverse our automobile-dependency. Defeating this road plan will address these impending issues our policy-makers continue to ignore or gloss over. Not building the road will eliminate the need for radical and costly change that has taken place in other parts of our nation. There are economic, political, architectural, and personal solutions that can steer us out of our auto-dependent lifestyles and help to halt our march onto prime farmland in Polk County while adding to the economic base of infrastructure
that already exists in our towns and cities.
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