ALEXANDRIANS AGAINST A HIGHWAY CONNECTOR

P.O. Box 1417-224

Alexandria, VA 22313

(phone) 703/838-0376 (fax) 703/838-1698

(website) www.NoHighwayConnector.org

Dear Connector Task Force (Mayor Kerry Donley, Councilwoman Del Pepper, Joe Bennett, Jim Cisco,

George Foote, Bill Harvey, Sharon Hodges, Ron Holder, Judy Miller, Ginny Hines Parry, Tom Raycroft, Joanne Thomasello, Lois Walker, and Connie West),

On behalf of Alexandrians Against A Highway Connector, I want to thank you for your careful thought and consideration of the voluminous materials on the issue of a connector between Eisenhower and Duke.

You did the neighborhoods of Alexandria a great service in voting so significantly in favor of "no-build" options. You wisely discarded the voting procedure that was unnecessarily complicated and forcing you to blindly vote for two "build" options and one "no build" option. In your September 18th votes, you voted no less than 2-to-1 in favor of NOT building a connector. As you know, most of the votes were 9-to-5 in favor of "no build." Please take a minute to read our article on the meeting, as well as that of the Washington Post. Both can be found on our website (www.NoHighwayConnector.org). I assume you received a breakdown of the individual votes from Rich Baier's office; if not, please request one from us via reply email and we will forward a copy of their official results.

Moreover, it was comforting to see that the Task Force Members, who carefully studied the pros and cons of the connector, voted not to build any connector. Each connector would have adversely and permanently changed the surrounding neighborhoods. As we all know, once a connector is built, it will there forever.

As the votes were tallied, 10 of 14 Task Force Members voted a majority of the time in favor of "no build" over "build" options. Of these 10 Members, 7 of you voted 100% of the time for "no build;" and 3 of you voted two-
thirds of the time in favor of "no build."

Of the 6 "build" options, it was also reassuring to see only one of the two City Council Members voting for a single "build" option. Councilwoman Del Pepper voted against all "build" options, while Mayor Donley voted for only 1 of the 6 "build" options -- which was the "D" option at Roth/Cambridge. Out of a possible 12 votes from these two Council Members on "build" versus "no build" options, they voted 11 of 12 times for "no build."

I very strongly urge you to highlight and explain your votes in your final report to the rest of the City Council, especially considering the unfair and misleading characterization to City Council last night of the September 18th votes as "muddled at best," that you were "unable to come up with recommendations," and implying that you failed in your work "leaving the heavy lifting to City Council."

Please be proud of your hard work and stand up for what you believe. Your collective votes send a clear message to our Mayor and City Council -- DO NOT BUILD A CONNECTOR ANYWHERE! Thank you again.

Sincerely yours,

Lou Cordia

Alexandrians Against A Highway Connector

P.S. "Alexandrians Against A Highway Connector" was formed at the beginning of September to get at least 4,500 Alexandria residents and voters to (1) request the City Council to vote against a connector anywhere that would channel 495/95 traffic onto Duke, and (2) if the City Council decided to approve "one or several" connectors as the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce is requesting, then we would vote as a block in March and May of 2003 to elect City Council Members who would need to reverse this decision.