Every time Fritz tried to ask what had happened to the toll road--Where had it gone?--he was shouted down from the podium by Holcomb, who told him he was not allowed to speak or ask questions.
A few days later, Holcomb accused Fritz and other environmentalists of trying to sabotage the TRCCC's meetings by asking questions during the opening general session of the meetings, when questions are not allowed.
"That is not polite," Holcomb said. "They are psychologically engineering the meetings to be disruptive and to be unproductive and to run everyone off."
Down at the level of nitty-gritty discussion--what people actually get to talk about once they've gone to their discussion groups--the meetings held by the Dallas Plan Inc. were especially Orwellian. These were discussion groups in which people were discouraged from discussing so that everyone would have a chance to discuss.
At the January 21 meeting at the Zaragoza Rec Center, you are informed after going to your table that you have only 45 minutes to discuss all the stuff on your agenda. A laundry list of things to do in addition to discussing is provided--put green dots on maps, fill out personal questionnaires asking nosy questions about how close you live to the river and why you've come to this meeting, etc. Then you're supposed to answer some blue-sky questions about things like three ways to improve economic development downtown.
By the time you finish all of that, the monitor with the clipboard and the stopwatch reappears to inform you that you have only five minutes left to discuss the Trinity River.
What?
So you start to discuss it as fast as possible, at which point the lady in black throws her head back, holds up a hand for you to stop, and says in a very spooky voice, "Close your eyes."
What?
"Look out at the corridor," she says. "What do you see?"
You suddenly are getting very, very sleepy. Which corridor? Not the hall, right? No. The Trinity River corridor. You knew that. But wait! You only have two minutes left.
The Trinity River questions cover two entire pages and include items such as "The following are most important along the Trinity River Corridor (rank in order of importance from 1 to 5 with 5 being the most important): clearly marked entry locations, significant nighttime lighting, strong police and security presence, parking close to the features that I would visit, places to eat with restrooms, improved appearance of the river and the corridor."
You have 45 seconds left. This is not a joke. The monitor is reaching for your forms. You are scanning madly for choices like "No levees!" or "Don't do it!" or "How come you won't let Ned Fritz talk?"
They're taking your forms away. You ask the spooky black-clad, close-your-eyes lady who she is.
That little voice is still talking to you, saying, "Ringer, ringer, ringer."
And what a surprise. She's a planner for Halff Associates, the engineers who have been gobbling down feedbags of money on this deal since it began a decade ago.
