SPACEPORT VISITORS CENTER by Peron

CLOSE THE CITY YARD NOW!
April, 2011

To: Don Armijo, City Yard

cc: David Weiser, City Manager

I have lived at 225 Birch for 3 1/2 years. Increasingly I feel nauseated when I open my door and the smell of the fumes from your City plant (yard) almost knocks me over in my breathing and lungs.

This plant seems to be growing and expanding and there is much activity all day long, from Monday thru Friday. All kinds of city trucks and equipment; fumes, gasoline, diesel, coal, tar, etc. Literally, it stinks and is polluting this part of the city near Ralph Edwards Park.

My question is why would anyone build a plant like this in a residential area (ZONED RESIDENTIAL) next to a children's park? Why would there be a toxic plant near an elderly housing residence(s)?

Since I've moved here I have seen many elderly dying and getting sick with lung cancer, upper respiratory problems, breathing problems and pneumonia. I really think this plant could be seriously causing or contributing to these problems of health and well-being. Especially as I experience on a day to day level that I am being affected in my heath in a negative way from your fumes.

I really think it's time to move this plant away from here to a non-residential area: perhaps off Date Street somewhere.

Seriously, if I could move away from this situation I would. But my health is not good enough to consider this.

Sincerely,(Redacted)

PS: There is a big difference in the quality of the air on weekends when the plant isn't in operation. I feel much better in my heath then.

Attached is a petition with signatures asking to close the City Yard.

It would be so much better across the river. Lots of open space.

stumbleliar wrote:

It would be so much better across the river. Lots of open space.

At Ralph Edwards OR across from Riverbend are POOR choices.

The downtown infrastructure of T or C has been breaking down for years, all the side streets are in very poor shape, and too narrow. A traffic pattern for tourism (imagine a bus driving by the fishing pond and trying to turn onto Austin going towards Riverbend) could not be supported.

The town cronnies and diehards just can't get past their own special interests, right Forestners?

Any economic developer (with foresight) knows you have to take tourism to the traffic - that's at I-25. Spaceport authorities have already stated that fact.

So lets give more money to Ashbaugh? Thats really the only viable property for something with those traffic needs and open land. Well, at least he's a local.

stumbleliar wrote:

It would be so much better across the river. Lots of open space.

THREE QUESTIONS:

1) Exactly how does one drive across the Rio Grande, or provide city utility services to a development on the other side of a federally recognized "navigable waterway," without building a new $2 million bridge?

2) Who will be paying for that new bridge, AND the associated lift station required for the wastewater treatment, electrical substation, AND the thousands of feet of new water line, sewer line, and heavy-gauge electrical line all necessary to provide city utility service to a development on the other side of the Rio Grande?

3) Who besides a property-owner delinquent in tens of thousands of dollars in taxes to Sierra County, and a sitting Sierra County Commissioner and his wife, will realize any immediate financial benefit from siting a "Welcome Center" across the Rio Grande?