Huntsville and BRAC
Jaysus jumping on a pogo stick…the morning commute in Huntsville has been crawling through some gnarly thick traffic lately. Back in sixth grade I was sure we’d have a hovercraft in every garage and flying car lanes by now (there ARE some fly-only lanes in the latest Star Wars flicks, but technically they’re in another galaxy, and special effects don’t get me to work faster…)
This isn’t all bad, because I just downloaded a new book from www.audible.com that’s been on my “to read” list for a long time, but it kept getting superseded by others, like Whitley Strieber’s latest, The Grays (hold onto your hat before opening that one!) Anyway, the book I just downloaded is Robert M. Pirsig’s 1974 classic, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. As I was saying, traffic isn’t all bad because the more jam, the more audio book before getting to work.
But metaphysical glass-half-full cogitation aside, it ain’t gonna get mo’ better soon.
The 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) is relocating 4,700 federal jobs from Washington, D.C, to Redstone Arsenal. An equal number of support contractor jobs is expected to arrive. In fact, Colonel John Olshefski, garrison commander at the arsenal, says the region should prepare for a total influx of up to 20,000 defense-related jobs. Add the service jobs required to support that many people (fast food, retail, teachers, doctors, plumbers, hookers, lone sharks…) and you get ripple-effect vertigo.
The fed moves don’t have to be complete till 2011, but most of the influx will happen over the summer of 2007 and 2008. The effects are already being felt. For instance, 600 new kids in the county school system this year. I mean, things haven’t even got rolling yet, and thirty-something portable classrooms have taken up a huge chunk of the parental visitation parking lot at Monrovia Elementary–a parking lot that should be expanding is actually shrinking.
“I don’t think people have really grasped the significance of what’s about to happen here,” says Bob Harrison, Madison County Commissioner. Jaysus jumping on a pogo stick…
And that doesn’t even take into account all the immigrants pouring in from Central America! :-)
Now for perspective: over 30,000 children starved to death yesterday; slow traffic isn’t really that big of a deal.
Related Articles
