My name is Gregory Travis and I have been involved in Bloomington's high
technology sector for over twenty years. During the past decade I have
been employed as a Vice President and the Director of Technology for two
of Bloomington's foremost technology companies -- companies with combined
payrolls of over four million dollars a year. I am presently part of an
initiative aimed at retaining technology firms and workers in Indiana.
Throughout my career, I have recruited people and capital to our lovely
city from all over the nation and the world and I have a very good idea
of what they want and seek.

Contrary to our Mayor's duplicitous remarks yesterday, educated
professionals simply do not place truck highways on their list of
"must haves" when selecting areas in which to build business. The two
firms I mentioned earlier were both founded by individuals who chose to
locate in Bloomington not because it offered great truck access to the
ruined wastelands of Indianapolis and Evansville but because Bloomington
was exactly that kind of perfect balance between too big, too small,
too frantic and too provincial -- a balance that the economically
irresponsible actions of our state's Governor, as well as our Mayor and
the local monopoly media, have conspired to destroy for no other reason
than to feather their own pockets. You cannot have your cake and eat
it too -- you cannot expect Bloomington to economically leverage its
small-town charms and major university while also running a six-lane
international truck highway right through it.

Hewlett Packard Chairwoman Carly Fiorina said it succinctly when she
said that her great company goes not where the tax breaks and highways
are but where the highly- skilled people are. With that in mind I will
paraphrase our Senator Richard Lugar's own comments regarding I-69: it is
a tragic public policy and environmental error and the inevitable results
must be put in stark and unmistakable terms. The creative class, the
highly skilled and highly compensated individuals on whom Bloomington's
and Indiana's future depends, will not be attracted to Bloomington or
Indiana by the prospect of raising their children in a noisy, congested,
and declining petrochemical slum.

They will be repelled by it and those who remain will have no one to
blame but themselves.
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Association of Monroe County Taxpayers
PO Box 3066
Bloomington, IN 47402
http://www.assmotax.org
info@assmotax.org