{"id":332,"date":"2008-12-03T10:35:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-03T14:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2008\/12\/03\/those-who-show-up\/"},"modified":"2008-12-03T10:35:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-03T14:35:00","slug":"those-who-show-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2008\/12\/03\/those-who-show-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Those Who Show Up&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.northcountrypublicradio.org\/news\/archive.php?id=12552\">I covered last night&#8217;s meeting<\/a> in Canton about the next steps in pursuing the elusive &#8220;rooftop highway&#8221; linking Watertown and Plattsburgh across the North Country.  A lot of people asked the DOT how they know residents actually want a new highway in the first place.  DOT folks pointed to a newspaper survey, input from lawmakers, but mostly to comments from previous meetings.  In other words, show up to make sure you&#8217;re heard.<\/p>\n<p>75 people showed up in Canton &#8211; a big number for a wonky public hearing on a Tuesday night.  But according to the Watertown Daily Times, just 20 came to the Watertown hearing.  Lowville&#8217;s was &#8220;sparsely attended&#8221;, with no one commenting on the plan.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;rooftop highway&#8221; is waaayyyy more important to people in St. Lawrence County.  Jefferson County already has I-81.  Lowville is a quick drive south to Utica or west to Watertown.  On the eastern side of the region, Clinton County has its Adirondack Northway.<\/p>\n<p>Malone and Franklin County is in much of the same boat as St. Lawrence &#8211; far from an Interstate.  Attendance at meetings in Malone tonight and Plattsburgh Thursday will likely bear this out.<\/p>\n<p>The reality is even if all the 162,000 people in St. Lawrence and Franklin counties were in favor of the &#8220;rooftop highway&#8221;, it&#8217;s hard to imagine them persuading Albany and Washington to fund a $2 billion Interstate, without the active support of the &#8220;bookend&#8221; counties of the North Country.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pressrepublican.com\/0100_news\/local_story_338224516.html\">60 people came to the Malone meeting.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I covered last night&#8217;s meeting in Canton about the next steps in pursuing the elusive [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}