COMMENTARY
MARK SCHUMANN
Sometimes, what is practical is not popular and what is popular is not practical. For politicians preoccupied with their approval rating, though, decisions about what to support and what to oppose are often made with little regard for what can actually be accomplished.
Take, for example, increasing opposition to All Aboard Florida. As the likely impact of 36 high speed trains a day darting through Indian River County at up to 110 miles an hour becomes increasingly clear, local politicians are lining up to voice their opposition to the bullet trains.
All they can reasonably hope to accomplish, though, is to turn back efforts to provide public financial support for All Aboard Florida, without at the same time turning away possible state or federal funding to help pay for railroad crossing improvements that will allow for quiet zones.
Vero Beach City Councilwoman Pilar Turner made a motion on Jan. 21 to approve a resolution which began, “WHEREAS, the City of Vero Beach supports the efforts of All Aboard Florida to construct and operate a high-speed passenger rail system between Miami and Orlando along Florid East Coast Railway (FEC) tracks…”
A little more than two months later, though, she was harshly critical of a letter from the City to State Sen. Joe Negron that opened with the same sentence. Turner’s shifting position is indicative of the growing opposition, at least locally, to All Aboard Florida.
After eleven “Whereas” clauses, the resolution approved by the Council on Jan. 21 concluded with a request for state funding for quiet zones, “in order to lessen the impact and burden of the All Aboard Florida Project on the citizens and businesses of the City of Vero Beach while providing for increased public safety.”
That was Turner’s position on Jan. 21. By April Fool’s Day, she was singing a different tune. “I think the time has come to derail All Aboard (Florida),” she said during the April 1 Council meeting.
Turner explained that she was “very concerned” about the wording of the letter from Mayor Richard Winger and High Speed Rail Commission Chairman Ken Daige to Sen. Negron. Echoing the resolution approved by the Council on Jan. 21, the letter began, “The City of Vero Beach supports the efforts of All Aboard Florida to construct and operate a high-speed rail passenger service between Miami and Orlando utilizing the Florida East Coast Railroad (FEC) tracks along the east coast of Florida. However…”
Though the first sentence of the letter signed by Winger and Daige was word-for-word what the Council approved in its Jan. 21 resolution, Turner was not pleased. “We know how the press will read it. They will read just the first sentence that the City of Vero Beach supports the effort, and I do not believe that is the case,” Turner said.
What followed was a debate about whether to oppose All Aboard Florida, or specifically to object to government funding and government backed low-interest loans for the project.
Because the major population centers of Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Orlando stand to benefit from All Aboard Florida, “derailing” the project, as Turner proposes, seems a near impossibility. The best leaders in Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie and Martin Counties can hope to do is to mitigate the negative impact of the speeding trains, while seeking state and federal funding to do so.
Indian River Guardian 
So now we must write public documents to please the press? Isn’t it enough that the public documents, including letters to State and Federal officials, be written in a way that we the people can understand? I would love to see a model created by some genius with computers and apps to show us how that many trains–coming and going–might affect our lives along the Treasure Coast. I’d like it to include the time for the RR gates to go down/up; a reasonable number of assorted vehicles at the RR crossings stopping/starting/clearing…..and various scenarios involving Fire, Police and/or ambulances. And, if I were Mrs. Turner, I’d probably say “Gosh, do you suppose we could change the wording–it really sounds like one of those Proclamations we hand out at our meetings. The impact on our City and County could be much more than mere noise, and how deep are the pockets of our Federal government that we can once more beg for a hand out to help resolve our problems?” But we have to do what we can – and if asking for assistance to make ours a noise-free-reduced area, so be it.