Now here’s a gift idea from the folks who brought us Proposition A, the closing of Branson’s Business Highway 65/MO 76 Bridge across Lake Taneycomo (the bridge) for a year. Oh the gift, if it comes, will not come from who you think it’s will, no indeed.
Some might think that it will come from the steering committee that elected to use the power and clout they had with the Taney County Commission to combine a proposed sales tax increase for the funding of their pet projects with the funding that could have provided a solution that would have avoided the closing of the bridge for a year. The individuals who either knew or should have known that a tax for their pet projects alone didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hades of being approved by the voters. Yes, the very ones who made the conscious decision to gamble the one chance that those using the bridge every day had to get the financing that might have kept it open by tying the funding for their pet projects into a tax for financing a new bridge. Well, the gift is not coming from them.
Others might think that the gift is coming from the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT), the organization that will actually have to close the bridge so that it can be repaired. In a kind of self fulfilling prophecy, there are those who say “It’s a state bridge they should repair it.” Well, the good news for them is they are getting just what they asked for. Absent a miracle, MoDOT will fix the bridge starting early in 2009. The bad news for them and everyone else however, is that with the funding currently available not only will the bridge be closed for a year but the fix will not eliminate the current traffic congestion.
But at the end of the day, with the funding available to MoDOT and considering the total transportation needs and priorities of the state, MoDOT alone could not have prevented the closing of the bridge. They have no choice but to close it now for a year and repair it or, according to its engineers, close it in about two or three years permanently because it was not repaired. No folks, the gift isn’t coming courtesy of MoDOT, they are just trying to do the best they can with what they have to do it with.
Well how about the elected officials and senior staff for the cities of Branson and Hollister, certainly they could have done something to stop it. They tried, they worked together, communicated with each other, and participated in the MoDOT Value Engineering Study. Unfortunately, they not only did not have the funding necessary to finance alternatives but were powerless to stop the one entity that did from squandering away the one opportunity the community had to get the financing needed for an alternative fix to closing the bridge. The cities of Branson and Hollister are not the ones who will bear the responsibility for giving the community the gift of the bridge being closed for a year.
That gift, if it comes, will have been gift wrapped and been presented by the Taney County Commissioners. They and they alone, bear the responsibility. It was Taney County Commission that succumbed to the pressure of the steering committee to, not only combine the financing of their special pet projects with the financing needed to solve the bridge problem but, to rush it on the ballot before there was a concrete plan to fix the bridge that the voters could consider. In terms of having the financing necessary to finance such a project, they and they alone had the means to take the leadership role and get it done. Instead, we are in the position we are in today.
Without the gift of leadership at the county level very soon regarding the bridge, next year, about this time, those using the bridge on a daily basis, will be getting the gift for the person who has everything, a notice that the bridge will be closed for a year starting early in 2009. Dare an Ole Seagull hope that they will correct the situation that they helped to create and give us the gift of the leadership that is going to be necessary to prevent the closing of the bridge?
