Bill Burd
Titusville
I am writing concerning the meeting held on Feb. 6 regarding the Jacobs Creek bridge at the high school.
I thought the plan proposed by the county could use some improvement, but was a step in the right direction.
Has anyone else noticed that there was little or no interest in the history of this area until it became apparent that the county was getting serious about replacing the bridge?
At the meeting, we were regaled with unsubstantiated claims of the mayhem that would be created by oversize, out-of- control trucks driven by inattentive drivers jackknifing and careening off of the road; and by individuals able to completely master detailed federal and state engineering design codes in just several weeks. Had these individuals completely comprehended these codes, they would have known that there are minimum federal and state criteria for roads and bridges that must be followed in order to obtain state and federal funding for a project.
Regarding the historic elements of the bridge: If the existing bridge were to be made wider and taller as many of the “historic” supporters would like, the few remaining elements of the bridge would be destroyed and the historic structure would become a mere Frankenstein facsimile of the historic structure it was intended to replace.
As to the meeting, after the stated three-minute public comment rule was repeatedly allowed to be violated, and just before I left the meeting in disgust, I was tempted to stand up and state concisely what many others were saying in thousands of words (and well in excess of their three minutes): I don’t want any traffic in front of my house!
However, I realize that I live in the 21st century, not the 1800s.

