A1: "Council pulls plug on traffic-calming barricade"

I was at the meeting because I live in the neighborhood affected by this issue. First I'd like to say that I'm pleased the Courier didn't feel the need to cover the excessive, racism-tinged ranting about the brown peril that we all had to sit through before Council could get to its agenda.

Cindy Barks' story focuses on the specific barrier on Prescott Heights Drive that focused discussion, but she apparently ignores the real issue that got Steve Blair hot and actually moved the Council to talk policy: that the advisory Traffic Control Committee was effectively setting policy on its own, and the barrier went up without input from Council or the city manager.

What's funny about this is that Blair admits that he and Council voted to set things up this way, assigning policy power to the committee by default if Council didn't object. They apparently didn't read the memo the TCC sent them, and everyone just did their jobs -- except Council, of course.

Cindy writes, "'When somebody closes a road down, it's not traffic calming; it's traffic closure,' said Councilman Steve Blair, who allowed that such measures had been 'a sore spot with me for a long, long time.'" Here she or the editor distorts what Blair meant. I remember him saying it, and the "sore spot" was the way the TCC is handling policy decisions. He doesn't like closing streets either, but let's try to keep the quotes straight. This concern will lead to a larger change than removing a street barrier, but the Courier story doesn't tell us that.