Originally Posted by
grump
Leftie, you asked how Kulpa messed up the Village. He applied the mantra of suburban liberal white Democrats who want to keep minorities out of their neighborhood but need to couch their policies in language that sounds liberal and politically correct. Therefore, they use words and phrases like “traffic calming”, “bicycle and pedestrian friendly” and their favorite old saw “environmentally friendly.” In essence they developed traffic and parking policies that made it difficult for visitors to shop at convenience stores and they virtually eliminated convenient parking unless you own your own driveway. So you won’t see a lot of east side residents walking the “ walkable” community to visit their cute little shops...unless they want to take three busses to get there. This is in keeping with the elitist mentality he shares with so many Amherst residents. While they frame their opposition to hotels and such like in terms of building heights and other such nonsense their real concern is with the “types of people” who work in hotels, especially the cleaning staff and so on. Opponents of the Paladino project now known as the Mosey and Iskalo’s Hyatt hotel project were quite clear about this issue in public hearings about both projects. As a matter of fact, opposition to the Hyatt was so clearly based on this type of rank white suburban liberal elitist prejudice that Paul Iskalo actually felt compelled to defend his staff against what were clearly race and status based attacks. And Alberta Drive does go straight through now thanks to modifications made to Northtown as part of Whole Paycheck project. As for the NFB study project, I just urge everyone to remember the old adage, truer now than ever, that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.