Free Republic

The majority of residents from Walker and area counties made it clear Wednesday night how they feel about the proposed I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor. They are strongly opposed to it. An estimated 800 people took action on the controversial issue. The second town hall meeting in Huntsville, offering a chance for open dialogue between residents and the Texas Department of Transportation, took on a different tone than the initial meeting Jan. 23 at the Walker Education Center. With the main building at the Walker County Fairgrounds able to accommodate the large crowd, property owners and other residents expressed their dissatisfaction with Gov....

BELLVILLE — In what is becoming a regular occurrence in Southeast Texas, more than 1,000 Austin County residents and interested outsiders jammed a county fairgrounds exhibit hall Monday night to let a panel of state transportation officials know that the Trans-Texas Corridor was not welcome here. State Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, opened the public remarks to thunderous applause when she told the panel, "You all thought I was crazy in Austin when I said my people don't want it and I don't want it." The panel, which included Texas Department of Transportation Executive Director Amadeo Saenz and Deputy Executive Director...

Gov. Rick Perry's ambitious Trans-Texas Corridor plan, and his advocacy of toll funding for future roads, hit the skids in a skeptical Legislature last spring. The road shows no signs of getting any smoother as state transportation officials try to sell the plan to Houston-area audiences. "This will wipe me out," Dee Bond told a panel of corridor advocates at a town hall meeting in Rosenberg last week. The panel, which included Texas Transportation Commissioner Ned Holmes of Houston and Steve Simmons, deputy executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation, was there to explain and gather comment on a...

Austin County residents get their chance Monday to comment on a massive “superhighway” that could be coming through their county. And if the public meeting in Bellville is anything like those already held by the Texas Department of Transportation, it will include hundreds of angry property owners lining up for a chance to lambast the proposed project, called the Trans Texas Corridor. Gov. Rick Perry first proposed the TTC six years ago. If completed as much as 50 years from now, it would roughly parallel interstate highways with up to a quarter-mile-wide stretch of toll roads, rail lines, pipelines and...

Leaders with the Texas Department of Transportation sought to allay fears about the Trans-Texas Corridor Thursday night in Rosenberg with a “town hall” meeting. The meeting proceeded fairly smoothly, but hardly seemed to put a dent in the large crowd's seemingly uniform opposition to the proposal of a massive transportation corridor. Hank Gilbert, a regular speaker at TTC events and leader of an anti-TTC non-profit group, drew cheers for suggesting TxDOT officials have failed to make the case for a large, privately owned transportation cluster. “No good argument has been made for the TTC that would allow farmers to be...

More than 800 people packed a meeting hall in Hempstead for a public meeting on the Trans-Texas Corridor. Seven more public sessions are scheduled. Residents are speaking out about a controversial highway that would cut right through the state. The state plans to build a 4,000-mile network of super-highway toll roads. In Hempstead on Tuesday, many residents said that road could cost them their property. Odis Styers owns hundreds of acres north, east and west of town. But the traffic that now travels through on State Highway 290 could interrupt his peace. A TxDOT super highway could soon plow through...

Student Pulled from Class for Wearing Hempstead Shirt ATLANTA -- The town of Hempstead, New York, has a message for school officials in Gwinnett (gwih-NET') County, Georgia: Look at a map. That's after a student at a suburban Atlanta high school was thrown out of class for wearing a shirt that said Hempstead on it. Hempstead is the name of his hometown. But school officials apparently thought it was a reference to marijuana. His family says Terrell Jones was pulled out of class at Grayson High School Monday -- and wasn't allowed to return until he persuaded school officials to...

Arlington, VA - James Garner, Mayor of Hempstead, NY issued the following statement addressing Sen. John Kerry's record on jobs, health care and education: "From jobs to health care to education, America's mayors realize that John Kerry's rhetoric doesn't match his record on the important issues facing our cities. Kerry's economic plan would destroy jobs by raising taxes on all Americans. During his first 14 years in the Senate, Kerry sponsored just two bills related to health care and Kerry missed 36 of 38 votes on last year's Medicare prescription drug bill. Kerry's attacks on the No Child Left Behind...

<p>June 12, 2003 -- DNA evidence paved the way for the release yesterday of three men convicted of the brutal 1984 rape and murder of a Long Island teenager.</p> <p>The convictions of John Kogut, 39, John Restivo, 44 and Dennis Halstead, 48 were vacated by a Nassau judge after tests showed that semen found on the body of 16-year-old Theresa Fusco of Lynbrook did not match any of their DNA.</p>

<p>An unlikely exterminator will take the helm of the U.S. Conference of Mayors — a black Republican mayor from the eastward outskirts of New York City.</p> <p>Mayor James Garner of Hempstead, N.Y., whose business savvy in pest control earned him a delegate appointment in 1986 to the White House Conference on Small Business, officially will lead the 1,200-member group for a year starting June 10.</p>