BOYCOTT: The Gas Station on the New Roundabout

Fairhope has been cited for many national awards for its beauty. But, it deserves awards for more than just flowers. Placing a gas station located on a safety roundabout in a residential area on the city’s gateway, Fairhope Avenue and 13, only two blocks from three other filling stations/convenience stores, certainly will be an American oddity; and altogether deserving of an Onion American Planning award. This is so bad in terms of safety negligence that it even beats building a fire station on a dead end road (Parker); or having an open sewer line regularly discharge into Mobile Bay, along with all of Trip Pittman and Tim Kant’s expensive BP anchors.

The Fairhope City Council unanimously refuses to support economic and community development as a department. However, it unanimously approved a $40 thousand handshake deal our previous mayor made, without any invoice, work order or paperwork. Jack “Come Fly With Me” Burrell contends there is no good ole boy network in Fairhope. The council’s actions speak otherwise.

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Let us not forget the “Jack Burrell Come Fly With Me Municipal Airport” serving less than 1% of the community and receiving more in appropriation funds than any of its schools, which are overcrowded because of the good ole boy developers. The present and past Fairhope City Councils have all had education committees strive to increase school performance. A city school system has been beat to death by an overwhelming opposition. Our schools are facing the same problem as the entire county: unbridled growth; and we did not rank in the top 25 schools in the state. This is not a teacher problem; it is a population problem, fitting too many people into an area without the needed infrastructure investment.

Back to the roundabout.

This was all done in the last administration. Beavis and Butthead (Boone and Come Fly With Me Burrell) were there. They dealt with this (chose to do nothing) along with Mayor Kant and County Commissioner Elliott. All chimed in on the issue before the election, assuring that it would not happen. The construction of a gas station on the roundabout became a dead issue and most people thought that was the end of it. Well Kant lost and the good ole boys had already secretly paved the road to the roundabout, literally.

ROUND AND ROUND WE GO

Baldwin County has recently been introduced to the traffic intersection known as a roundabout.” The modern roundabout is a beautiful thing. Traffic flow is improved, they look nice and they are safer than traditional intersections. In the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Status Report about Roundabouts, they cite research from the University of Maine that found a 39% reduction in crashes, a 76% decrease in injury-producing crashes, and a 90% decrease in collisions involving fatal or incapacitating injuries when studying a sample of 25 intersections turned into roundabouts.

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The roundabout provided the needed infrastructure for the gas station. Correction–you, the tax payers, did! Councilmen Burrell, “Come fly with me,” insists there is no such thing as the good ole boy club or network. Well go drive your kids through the roundabout a hundred times and repeat to yourself, “There is no such thing as good ole boys,” also known as “The Good Ole Boy Network.”

Ask yourself a question: “Who thinks to put a convenience store on a roundabout; and who allows them do it?”

The entire purpose of the roundabout is to slow traffic in a safe and efficient manner. By placing an entrance and exit to the gas station on the roundabout, the safety of the roundabout is forever compromised. Where was ALDOT? This is an embarrassment to the city and county planners and I predict—like I have repeatedly and successfully—there will be a future lawsuit regarding this mistake.

Someone in government dropped the ball. Whether or not a payoff was involved is suspect, but it certainly would explain the stupidity of it all, as greed is what motivates the good ole boys…as it is certainly not “the citizens…the citizens…the citizens” (Jack “Come Fly With Me” Burrell).

BOYCOTT THE IGNORANCE and NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT OF A GAS STATION ON A ROUNDABOUT AND BLOW YOUR HORN AT THOSE WHO SLOW DOWN TRAFFIC AND CANNOT WAIT TO DRIVE TWO BLOCKS!