The power of the vote

Why Metro is catering to Tigard and Tualatin... 

...and why it isn't concerned about Lake Oswego.  The citizens of Tigard and Tualatin returned to themselves the power to decide what would happen to their hometowns.  Only the public can decide if high-capacity transit is placed in their city, and where it will be and how much it will cost.  Lake Oswegans have no such protections - no vote to decide some of the most critical issues facing the city and their quality of life.  

We should not give up the power to control our future.  Representative democracy is not without its flaws.  The cure for inadequate representation is direct democracy - but only if people are willing to seize it.  We should not surrender this precious right for expediency or the passive comfort of allowing others to make decisions for us.  When do you want to vote directly on something affecting your community rather than go through a representative?  

We don't lose all our freedoms in one big event, it happens in bits and pieces - and each bit of liberty needs to be protected.  Like endangered species, when freedom is gone, it's gone.

"A man without a vote is a man without protection."    -- Lyndon Baines Johnson

"Elections belong to the people. It's their decision.  If they want to turn their backs on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters."    -- Abraham Lincoln

"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."   -- Thomas Jefferson

Southwest Corridor leaders to meet Monday, discuss shift in study direction 
Metro News, December 5, 2014  By Nick Christensen

A committee looking at transportation in the southwest part of the region could change the study approach Monday, in part in response to voter initiatives in Tigard and Tualatin.

Earlier this year, members of the Southwest Corridor Steering Committee told Metro to get some former numbers on what kind of transit line could be built between downtown Portland and Tualatin, by way of Tigard.

They were originally scheduled to make a decision in November on what to study in a Draft Environmental Statement, an exhaustive, federally-mandated document for a big transit project.  The statement, often shortened to EIS, has to look at the potential impacts of construction down to the presence of Native American artifacts and the effects of a project 
on endangered species.  

The fewer transit options that are studied in an environmental statement, the cheaper it will be. 

A change of course could mean going back to a more local look at transportation in all of the cities in the study area, including Sherwood, Lake Oswego, Durham, Beaverton, King City and Portland.  

"If high-capacity transit is a tool that benefits that aspiration, then it's something you want.  If it doesn't, then you're agnostic or concerned because of what the negative impacts and costs are going to be," [Tualatin Mayor] Ogden said.  "They're not based upon the it, they're based upon the aspirations of what you want your community to be like."


- See more at: http://www.oregonmetro.gov/news/southwest-corridor-leaders-meet-monday-discuss-shift-study-direction#.dp