Carolyn Cooper and Beth Dillaha have worked to kill commuter rail for years.
Cooper walked door to door to get signatures to put commuter rail on the ballot in 2007 with the hope of killing Winter Park’s participation. When she lost that vote she claimed the voters were not asked the right questions (questions she helped to write).
Cooper helped Beth Dillaha get elected in 2008. Dillaha faked support for commuter rail with the voters, and then immediately went to work trying to kill it after she was elected.
Dillaha tried to kill the commuter rail agreement with Orange County in 2008 and 2009 and Cooper was right there at the podium making the same unsubstantiated claims in support of killing the agreement. See City Commission meeting minutes of September 8, 2008, November 10, 2008, January 22, 2009, January 26, 2009.
Cooper will sidestep with double talk, but voters need to judge her by her actions. Here is Cooper congratulating State Senator Paula Dockery in May of 2009 for (temporarily) killing commuter rail in the State legislature:
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Carolyn Cooper wants to kill commuter rail. Period.
Thirty three people (including Carolyn Cooper) contributed to a political action committee in 2007 to kill Winter Park’s commuter rail stop at our downtown train station. Of those 33 people, 27 have contributed to Carolyn Cooper’s 2010 City Commission campaign and 24 (including spouses) have contributed to Tom McMacken’s City Commission campaign (as of February 17 with more to come). Click here for 2010 campaign reports.We have to expect that if elected Cooper and McMacken (along with Beth Dillaha) will kill our commuter rail stop regardless of what they say now.
The State legislature approved commuter rail in December 2009. The Federal government just committed $1.25 Billion to support the Orlando-Tampa high speed rail line.
We can only secure our commuter rail stop by voting FOR David Lamm and Peter Gottfried.
Other writing on Winter Park Commuter rail:
Commuter Rail Update
Commuter Rail is an opportunity
I will vote for Gottfried for reasons other than rail.
I think the rail –subway, trolley — idea is only appropriate for population dense cities where citizens have access to transportation within reasonable walking distances from their residences. In such cities rail or something like it is imperative.
One must always keep in mind a fundamental axiom of governance: A County or city government can do any stupid, idiotic, egregiously dumb, wasteful, confounded, perplexing, senseless, imprudent, maddening waste of public resources it wants to do—so long as they do it legally!
That’s it. Pure and simple.
Martin,
Thank-you for your comments. Please check out my thoughts on this. “Commuter Rail is an opportunity, not a threat.”