Citizens fighting to keep Beltline Road from being renamed rallied public support Saturday afternoon with an informative meeting on the topic.
Kevin Prociw and Scott Reynolds, administrators of the Facebook page supporting the name Beltline, hosted the meeting.
Early last month, Gov. Ted Kulongoski and the Oregon Transportation Commission made public their decision to rename Beltline Road after Eugene businessman Randy Papé, who died in November 2008.
Opposition to the move began shortly thereafter, fueled by conflicting statements by spokesmen for Kulongoski, OTC and the Papé family regarding the origin of the plans to rename the highway.
After about a month of protests over the plan’s $250,000 bill and some negative press concerning the plan’s origins, on March 31, Gail Achterman, OTC chair, announced a new plan that would add only two signs to the highway, one at each end, at the reduced cost of $1,500. The new plan would call for the renaming to take place over time “as the remaining signs reach their useful life,” she said.
Patrick Cooney, spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Transportation, said the revised plan quelled public opposition to the renaming.
“Once we removed that cost factor, many of the people opposing the renaming came around to it, except a small group of very vocal opponents who do not want a renaming under any circumstances,” he said.
On April 5, Prociw and Reynolds released a statement via Facebook titled “Blurring the Boundaries Between Public Property and Private Interests,” which outlined their issues with the renaming.
“They kind of pulled a sneaky trick,” Prociw said. “(The OTC) normally have a policy for how they rename highways and other state assets. One of the criteria is that the rename have broad public support. They knew they didn’t have it going into it, so in order to bypass the policy, they asked the governor to ask them to do the rename.”
But Cooney said he didn’t understand the position of the project’s persistent critics.
“They are all over the place as far as their reasons. But these folks, they just don’t want it done,” he said. “It’s a state highway, and it’s being named for a former state commissioner; this is for his state contributions.”
“It’s been frustrating.” Cooney added. “I don’t see how it matters who originated the idea.”
The OTC is scheduled to vote on the revised renaming plan Tuesday afternoon in Florence, Ore.
Reynolds said it would be an uphill battle if the OTC voted to move ahead with renaming plans, but that he’s hopeful because of the Facebook page’s popularity, which went from about 250 supporters to more than 8,000 in less than a month.
“Everybody in Lane County knows about it, but beyond that it hasn’t trickled much to the rest of the state, as far as we can tell,” he said. “It’s something we’re continuing to work on.”
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