Local Opinions on SouthPass Park

The Fayetteville Planning Commission has recommended the annexation of more than a square mile of land owned by the SouthPass LLC for developers Nock, Alexander, and Broyles and approved their Planned Zoning District, sending those items along to the City Council for approval. Already on next week's Council Agenda is the first of many no-bid contracts recommended by Mayor Coody to provide infrastructure improvements to SouthPass.

Dan Coody and Steve Clark have already said they want the promised regional park, regardless of what it might cost the city. Before the citizens get burdened with millions in debt for the infrastructure required for Connie's Sports Park, the SouthPass developers, and that leaking landfill, we thought we'd offer our readers a chance to vote and express their opinions about the park in the second of our Iconoclast Online Polls.

Two hundred and twenty-one votes were cast during a three day period that ended this afternoon. The reported distribution was 51% strongly oppose the park (114 of 221 votes), and three didn't really care either way. Forty-six (20%) said the park would be okay if the developers paid all the costs and expenses.

One surprising thing is that there were 58 votes (26%) that said they would support raising taxes to pay the estimated $25 million for Phase One infrastructure costs at SouthPass. Support for raising taxes surged beginning about 2:00 yesterday afternoon and continued strong until just after noon today. Our analytics revealed that 54 of these 58 votes to raise taxes and let the citizens subsidize infrastructure costs came from computers with IP addresses (12.186.243.208-223) registered to The Fulbright Building LLC at 217 E. Dickson Street, Fayetteville.

We are still trying to decide whether those 54 votes expressing a willingness to pony up $25 million for infrastructure should be added to the other 46 who said the park would be alright if the developers paid the piper for the infrastructure. If so, that would make 100 votes (45%) for letting Nock, Alexander, and Broyles pay the real costs of their own damn development.