My column is in response of the Opelika-Auburn News’ Frederick Road editorial published Feb. 25.
Some folks voted for a change in November 2008 and the rescission of $7.4 million in Opelika-Auburn-Lee County MPO funds was certainly a change that we didn’t want or need. Worse, the State of Alabama Department of Transportation lost a total of $175 million which included our money.
I cannot adequately express my anger and disappointment when I learned this funding had been taken away from the city of Opelika as well as Auburn and Lee County.
It generally takes a number of years to accumulate enough money in the MPO to fund a project such as the widening of Frederick Road from TigerTown to the Auburn city limits.
That’s why this project, from Long Street to the Auburn city limits has been more than 15 years in the making. Of course the decision on which segment to do first was decided many years ago … long before anyone thought of TigerTown.
If our city leadership had known then what we know now they most certainly would have started at the end of Glenn Avenue and moved east to Gateway Drive (U.S. Highway 280). I can assure you that Frederick Road is and has been our top priority.
My intent is to propose to the city council that we move forward with this project.
Of course, we’ll have to borrow the money, but I believe this road must be improved and sooner, not later.
In the meantime, I suggest folks use I-85 to travel between exit 58 and exit 57 and avoid this road. You’ll be interested to know that when I contacted our U.S. Senators and Congressman about this they explained that the House and Senate couldn’t get together on a Highway Transportation Bill because all they could talk about in Washington was health care.
Having just returned from visiting and talking with our delegation in Washington I don’t believe our $7.4 million or the state’s $175 million is coming back anytime soon. I believe that our citizens expected, when they hired me and the city council, that we would be good stewards of their hard-earned taxpayer money. And, we have been.
We were all under the impression that this money was ours and that the best use of it was Frederick Road. Now we must come up with our own funding to do this project and I’m confident that somehow we will. I suggest the editorial board of the Opelika-Auburn News point the finger in the right direction and criticize those really responsible. That would be the Federal Government and the Obama Administration in particular.
Gary Fuller is mayor of Opelika.
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