“City leadership supports the Pellissippi Parkway extension and I believe it would be extremely short-sighted not to complete this project that was started many years ago,” said Maryville City Manager Greg McClain. “As city leaders, we have an obligation to plan for future needs while we manage the present constraints. The extension will have a significant impact on reducing traffic congestion now and for decades to come.”
“On three separate occasions over the years, Maryville’s City Council has supported the project by resolution. We are sympathetic to those who believe this not to be a positive move, but with an eye on the future of the community and constraints on current roadways, we believe it is a necessary project,” McClain said.
Most of the affected properties and environmental impacts will occur outside the city limits, of course. Blount County Commission requested the state transportation department hold an actual public meeting on the design phase of the project following a widely criticized virtual public input option offered in April.
And when Tuesday came, and citizens came together, they had a lot to say – and yell.
According to The Daily Times and Hellbender sources, the majority of attendees who spoke were opposed to the parkway extension, but that’s only a sampling of those in attendance.
Of the estimated 250 people in the auditorium, 31 asked questions or spoke during the public meeting. Only one speaker supported the project.
The transportation department’s Region 1 Director Steve Borden told the crowd, however, “There’s an equal number of people that are passionate about this project.” The audience responded with jeers, asking “who?,” and suggesting the Blount Partnership, basically the chamber of commerce of Blount County, was the real driving force behind the parkway extension push.
“Blaming us for a roadway — not sure I understand that,” Blount Partnership President and CEO Bryan Daniels, told Daily Times reporter Adam Crawford after the meeting. He added, however, that the Blount Partnership was on record supporting the parkway extension.
But speaking to McClain’s point that the project has been decades in the making, Nina Gregg, a board member of Citizens Against Pellissippi Parkway Extension, asked: "How can you help us imagine or prepare for a sustainable way of life for future generations instead of persisting with this outdated and short-sighted 20th century idea?," according to reporting from Crawford. Original plans for the project were developed in the car-happy suburban push of the 1970s.’
CAPPE has persistently argued that the project’s foundation of traffic metrics was outdated, and essentially based on a nearly 50-year-old planning process.
Opponents of the parkway did say Tuesday’s public hearing was much better than the virtual option provided earlier for design-phase comments.
CAPPE president Jay Clark offered this statement following the Sept. 21 meeting:
“This was definitely better than the virtual meeting, and this wouldn’t have happened without the County Commission. The TDOT guy said, ‘your public officials,’ not elected officials.
“The County Commission hasn’t voted up or down on this since 2011, and only two or three commissioners we have now were on the commission then. I think our county commissioners now are really concerned about unsustainable growth and not wanting to have to raise taxes to build new schools. I think our next steps are to encourage everyone to call their county commissioners and say they don’t want this.”
CAPPE offered a follow-up statement Sept. 22, the day after the meeting:
“At last night’s meeting, the questions from the public and TDOT staff’s boilerplate responses made clear to everyone the familiar conflict between the rigidity of our institutions and the necessity of being able to adapt to real world conditions.
“We hear a lot about ‘nimble’ organizations, when in practice most organizations are inflexible and stuck in procedures from decades ago.
“To be fair, the issue is more than that they won’t adapt; in many cases they cannot adapt,” according to the statement.
“The establishing statutes, procedures and vested interests won’t allow them to act differently, and conventional training of managers is not to be flexible but rather to control.
“In this instance, the Pellissippi Parkway Extension is a 50-year-old idea aligned with a 20th-century paradigm of community planning based on the assumption that more roads are the solution to congestion and that high-speed roads are necessary for economic growth.
“Opposition to the PPE is not new, but what is new is the related growing alarm here about how and where development is occurring in our community and reasonable questions about how we will pay for public services and how we will maintain the quality of life that makes Blount County distinctive,” CAPPE said in its statement the day after the meeting, a meeting that left people both frustrated and fired up.
