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, [log in to unmask] 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. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To get off the IOWA-TOPICS list, send any message to: [log in to unmask]