Audio By Carbonatix
You have hundreds of families who are going to be displaced over the new runway that was approved by a 6-3 vote yesterday. It’s a decision that basically paves the way, literally, for Fort Lauderdale to become a metropolis. It’s probably the biggest issue there is and there has been a lot of false and misleading information out about it, some of it coming from the FAA itself.
But you have a daily newspaper — behind its new publisher, Howard Greenberg — that cheerleaded for it in moronic fashion. And you have a mayor (and erstwhile lobbyist) in Josephus Eggelletion who is bullying speakers from the public who dare to go over their measly two-minute time limit and even had activist/lawyer Brenda Chalifour arrested for daring to keep talking.
Where did you have to be that was so important, Mr. Mayor? Have a rendezvous with another of your former high school students from Dillard?
My patience is worn out with that guy. But the funny thing is that I have to admit to being ambivalent about the new runway and what I want Fort Lauderdale to be. Part of me wants it to become a great city and I’m not sure that could happen without the runway. Part of me looks at the reality — the water, the sprawl, the heaping on of us squalid masses — and thinks it’s absolutely insane to want to build this place up any more and make it a big-time urban area. The only thing I’m certain about is that the way our leaders handled the issue was small-time in the worst way.
UPDATE: Just got off the phone with a trusted advisor, asked what they thought about the vote. “I probably would have voted no, but I don’t really care,” they said. “This place is already ruined anyway.”
