Letter to the Editors: Help Us Protect the Ferries

Please join us at the Public Hearings this week & next week. 

The NC General Assembly gave local citizens a voice in our local transportation needs, specifically including decisions about ferries in coastal counties.

Please attend your local Public Hearing (complete list at end of this email).  Contact your County Commissioners and RPO members.  We must speak truth to our local Rural Planning Organizations, specifically to the Transportation Advisory Committees.  

Ferry tolls will never raise sufficient funds to purchase a new ferry for any route. Tolls will cause grief and hardship on local citizens, without raising significant funds.

Bureaucrats at the NC Dept. of Transportation are threatening local transportation planning organizations.  They are trying to coerce the local boards into requesting ferry tolls on all untolled ferry routes.  They claim the Legislature mandated this action in the 2014 Budget Senate Bill 402/Session law 2013-360.  THIS IS NOT TRUE.  See the actual language on pages 308 and 309 of the Budget.  NO ferry tolls can be added without a request from the local citizens through their RPO.

NC Dept. of Transportation launched bureaucrats into ferry counties to threaten us with disingenuous information and tactics.  They claim the local RPOs MUST vote on ferry tolls.  NOT TRUE.  On January 9, 2014, the Chairman of the NC Board of Transportation announced, “In adopting this methodology, …we approved tolling...”  Listen to his statement on the 1/09/14 meeting video around minute 28:51.

Your local RPO must NEVER ask request a ferry toll.  Why?  Here are the reasons:

  1. Ferry tolls will never raise sufficient money to purchase a new ferry for any route.

Very little net proceeds will be raised from tolling the untolled ferry routes.

  1. The NC Board of Transportation in Raleigh may “adopt a methodology” which includes imposes ferry tolls.  But they cannot force local boards to ask for tolls.
  2. The Raleigh bureaucrats do not know the many limited income people who rely on the public ferries to get to work, medical care, and necessities.  We do know & care for these people.  We must speak for our local citizens.
  3. Tolls will hurt local citizens in economically depressed areas without providing promised benefits.
  4. Ferries cannot pay for themselves, and never have, any more than mountain roads have ever paid for themselves or can pay for themselves.
  5. Your local RPO has one & only one method to keep our local ferries toll free.  DO NOT BRING IT UP FOR A VOTE.
  6. NEVER request a ferry toll.
  7. Once you request a toll, you lose control over the process permanently. Once you cede this power, DOT can raise tolls annually, remove all exemptions, and delete ferry routes without your permission or approval.
  8. DOT has prepared a list of exemptions, but what is granted today can be removed tomorrow. DOT will certainly exempt school buses or emergency vehicles in order to entice your RPO to vote for a toll. 
  9. You have NO GUARANTEE any proposed exemptions will remain.
  10. Any proposed levels of minimum & maximum tolls can be changed by DOT at will. 

Please attend and encourage other citizens to attend.  Come 30 minutes early, register to speak, and express your opposition to ferry tolls.  Remember, you are really speaking to persuade your local friends and neighbors on the RPO.  Be courteous, respectful, and brief.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions.

Best regards, Henri and Joe McClees

McClees Consulting, Inc.

Post Office Box 430

Oriental, NC 28571

Office (252) 249-1097

Fax (252) 249-3275

www.mccleesconsulting.com

Joe’s mobile (252) 671-1585

Henri’s mobile (252) 671-1559

 

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