Lately, the City Council has mostly heard from Tom Elmore and his Union Station supporters. Jeff Bezdek and colleagues presented a nice proposal for the streetcar project last council meeting. There just needs to be more voices speaking up before the council to give a more robust picture of citizens’ desires.

I would love if the mayor would put together a few town hall-style meetings around the city to both explain his thoughts and to get public input (I still think the MAPS3.org website can be better utilized to continue to get public feedback). However, I would not let off other council members so easily. With the apparent recent comments by Councilmen Kelly and Walters, they need to adequately explain themselves if we are to take their criticisms seriously. They can hold their own town-hall meetings within their Wards to get public input. I do not live in either Kelly or Walters’ Wards, but I would love to be there to hear some of their explanations. It appears that if there is any discussion at all, it is behind closed doors. I still don’t have much of a problem with that, if discussion is really going on and the public is not shut out. For now, are either the mayor or any council members giving interviews to discuss their current thoughts on MAPS? It seems that the current thought is that there will be no more interviews or public discussion by city government members until MAPS3 is unveiled which tells me that the MAPS3 proposal is essentially set.