COMMENTARY
(Lexington, Ky.) – 5:28 P.M., E.D.S.T., 3/19/21, Friday / Updated 3/22/21; 3/30/21
Copyright © 2021 F.E. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2021 F.E. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
$31 million Town Branch Park development managed by operatives with China ties.
When you visit TBP, consider the backstage issues exposed here; and, why are there so few of these fabulous planned facilities located anywhere else in the world?
We should all be grateful to live in a community where so many wealthy entities are willing to donate vast amounts of personal and corporate wealth to a proposed public facility.
Town Branch Park (TBP) project is currently in the final public-input planning stage; and, slated for completion in 2016. TBP, like Thoroughbred and Triangle Parks, is an NGO – non-government organization almost fully funded by private funds.
Sasaki, the Town Branch Park design team, hosted the last online public input meeting on 3/18/21 (Thursday) at which the most interesting revelations, were that:
1. Sewer drain water would be “merged with the spring” [McConnell Springs] to augment the volume of water in the natural riparian area.
2. And, that effort is totally separate from the water play area which will have a clean filtered water to play in (unlike the ‘natural’ spring riparian area in number one above).
At that Town Branch Park watershed moment, my mere citizen participation morphed into this commentary requiring significant investigation.
Town Branch Park is bounded by West Main Street, West High Street, Oliver Lewis Way, and the expanded western footprint of Rupp Arena. Lexington Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG) provided the land according to Mayor Gorton’s Communications Director, Susan Straub. Nine acres of prime commercial real estate is a taxpayer donation worth many millions of dollars.
Editor attended the final TBP public-input meeting as an interested citizen. Alarmed at the information, I suggested that the team check with the law department to ensure merging raw storm sewer drain water directly into the McConnell Springs watershed is legal.
Storm sewer runoff captured by street drains contains petroleum distillates and other contaminants (gas, diesel, oil, by-products, various vehicular fluids, etc.) that should not be “merged” with McConnell Springs, in my humble opinion.
I was informed on 3/22/21 by Brandi L. Peacher, Director of Project Management, Mayor’s office, that “In partnership with the Lexington Center Corporation, the Town Branch Park has received a Class B Infrastructure Stormwater [sic] Quality Projects Incentive Grant for $234,400 to be used to conduct a feasibility study to evaluate best practices in green infrastructure and stream restoration within the park’s footprint.”
The information about storm water feasibility study came from due diligence, not the principals conducting the public input show. If principals in the feasibility study are aware of the issues in this article, perhaps they will traverse the big environmental concerns.
Susaki, a Chinese operation touting itself as ‘world class,’ pitched a plan to merge storm sewer runoff directly into the McConnell Springs, ‘untreated’ Doing so may violate a federal consent decree and EPA regulations.
McConnell Springs is a natural watershed which receives rainwater that is filtered through layers of soil and limestone, not making it pure enough for drinking; but, removing many contaminants. This is the same principle rain gardens and billabongs work on.
McConnell Springs runs underneath Main Street, Rupp Arena, etc., with geysers (karsts) appearing in the McConnell Springs Park miles away.
The spring was an important source of water for settlers coming to the Bluegrass region from Cumberland Gap, a natural passage avoiding the arduous trip up and down the Appalachian mountains.
Dumping unclean water into McConnell Springs may violate the federal consent decree which requires Lexington to repair that very issue of city street storm sewer water runoff.
The city has been scurrying for over a year to meet the downtown storm-sewer drain renovations required under the agreement with the EPA. For over a decade, Lexington has stumbled through foiled attempts to fix problems inherited from eras of ignorance gone by.
Does such a dumping of storm sewer runoff into the natural McConnell Springs require an environmental impact statement? Perhaps the feasibility study will provide the answers.
China Influence? Defacto Decrees in Opaque Process
The real wonder is how Sasaki, a ‘world class’ operation with a base in Jing’an District, Shanghai, China, overlooked this critical environmental question, letting the public input phase progress to the last meeting before a participant, yours truly, raised the concern.
Sasaki’s mistake is not ‘fatal’ nor criminal because this is the initial PLAN stage; plans can be changed to accommodate legal requirements. That’s why we have public input: many minds working together are always better than one.
However, Sasaki and Town Branch Park principals had not responded to phone and email requests regarding the riparian feature details as of the time of this post (3/19/21); so, their version of the issue cannot be presented.
Especially when the promised podcast of the meeting has also been delayed after Editor’s inquiry Friday 3/19/21.
It just takes a few minutes to post a podcast that is automatically recorded in every Zoom session. But, what happens in Zoom does NOT stay in Zoom; as, sometimes there are alternative sources.
Solution is to Extend Public ‘Input’ Phase
The 3/18/21 public input meeting was NOT a real public meeting because participants:
- were NOT permitted to make their own statements
- could not see each other (in the browser version)
- could not determine how many were attending (browser version)
- could only hear the top-down decrees of the presenters
The entire two-hour meeting appeared to be a fully scripted ‘show.’
Participant input was screened. Only ideas pleasing to presenters were allowed air time.
As a result, only ideas supporting the plans were aired because there was no effort to allow each participant to post information for all to see simultaneously. Note: Link to podcast has not been provided by Susaki nor Town Branch Park at the time of this posting.
Zoom is no substitute for a bona fide public-input opportunity in a live meeting where participants are invited to air issues at a microphone.
The specious Covid scamdemic is not a valid excuse to substitute Zoom for a public meeting when a $31 million public space is on the table. Zoom is, however, always a great tool to extend the reach of public functions for those who cannot come in person.
As of 3/18/21 (the meeting date) about one-third of Kentuckians have been vaccinated and schools were back in session. The more important statistic is that about 65% of the vulnerable elderly have been vaccinated. Following the science does NOT support Zoom instead of in-person meetings. However, Kentucky courts will not resume most in person activity until April 1, 2021.
Part of the solution to such issues is to extend the public-input phase or publish a correction to the plan to dump untreated storm sewer water into McConnell Springs.
Difficult to Follow the Specious Money Trail
Town Branch Park is an extravagant private $31 million complement to the $33 million expansion of Rupp Arena.
Except for fund-raising for a major national disaster, I have NEVER seen such a rapid raise of substantial capital in such a short time in Kentucky.
By comparison, the Living Arts and Science Center labored to raise the minimum of $5 million for a modest expansion of facilities several years ago.
Why did so many private entities rapidly donate hundreds of thousands, and some donors, even over one million dollars (like Picnic with the Pops organization) to this project; and, many gave $500,000?
Some, perhaps most, were motivated by genuine benevolence. Okay, it is likely that Picnic with the Pops will be a regular performer on the amphitheater in TBP so that gift makes sense.
The solution to making funding transparent is to create a summary chart of donors, indicating identity, employer, amount donated, date donated, and connections to principals, if any.
The public should not be expected to traverse tedious newsletters and multiple releases of this information. The donor list should be as transparent as an official financial disclosure report of a political candidate.
Without such a transparent donor list, fund raising effort appear to be an opaque process without an easy way to view a summary chart showing critical information about gifts.
Lack of access to the promised Zoom podcast is frustrating at best; and, suspicious at most. I was in the online meeting, I have my records to rely on; but, it would be nice to see true transparency here.
Politics and China
Unfortunately, we must consider influence peddling between China, corrupt politicians like Sen. Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao. Corrupt President Biden, his son Hunter, and other family members. A private project is difficult to investigate.
We do not know anything about TBP fundraising except there are many generous entities with solid benevolent motives; and, fundraising has been so wildly successful as to deserve a top prize. But when politics are in the middle, there’s a cynic in my head who whispers ‘what’s really going on here?’
Clearly, opaque processes that leave the public ignorant of how you arrived where you are invariably leave all the gray area for our imagination to fill in.
Summary of Solutions:
- The $234,400 Class B Infrastructure Stormwater Quality Projects Incentive Grant willl hopefully correct the TBP project plan intention to dump untreated storm water into McConnell Springs.
- A summary fundraising chart will help make the capitalization effort transparent as long as it is a bona fide financial disclosure report, supra.
- Release the podcast of the 3/18/21 public input meeting without redaction.
Putting backstage politics out in the open by full disclosure will reduce the likelihood of a Peter Schweitzer exposing hidden facts (if any) that appear to be scandalous if only because they were secret or covered up.
It is okay to be ignorant of a grant addressing issues raised by your plans; it is not alright to withhold a podcast you promised to post.
Mistakes are always okay to admit; coverups may create scandal where none is deserved.
___ Endnotes / Cross-References / Disclaimers
Commentary, facts, and questions raised in this Opinion article do not intend to impugn the intentions nor actions of innocent benevolent donors and other entities recruited into the project, nor Sasaki itself, nor its American nationals (of all heritage) who happen to be employed by the American office of Sasaki, nor other employees and contractors of Sasaki (whether in China or America); nor any other entity involved in TBP. However, the China connection is buried at the bottom of Sasaki web landing page — it is not front and center. I’m just say’n.
Conservative author and Constitutional scholar, Mark Levin, has fully exposed similar but unrelated connections, along with author Peter Schweitzer, on his radio show / podcast with an audience of over 55 million, during the final year of President Trump’s administration.
A Martin Niemöller Moment?
America has stopped standing up for civil rights of Chinese nationals the minute President Trump left office.
In fact, tonight (3/19/21) Mark Levin reminded the audience that Red Communist China murders tens of thousands of Chinese citizens who have no trial; yet, are summarily subjected to a firing squad, hauled off to a landfill of human remains; and, then their family receives a bill for the wasted bullet.
I do not expect most fellow Lexingtonians to rally against Chinese influence over TBP because in the more important bygone issue of South Africa’s apartheid, Lexington remained silent.
There were no protests as loud as BLM against the Lexington Public Library purchasing apartheid-controlled South African marble to build the world class Main Street facility, despite global boycotts.
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu‘s daughter attended the UK Patterson School of Diplomacy and their plight should have resonated in the local controversy. Tutu was the ‘Martin Luther King, Jr.,’ of South Africa.
Our library acted contrary to all other public condemnation and boycott of South African apartheid through economic sanctions when deciding to purchase marble from South Africa during the apartheid era.
Lexington’s Main Street library opened on 4/22/1989 with a beautiful marble facade and the insidious stain of apartheid apathy in every vein.
Lexington’s library project had rejected the boycott of apartheid in South Africa, so why would we expect a boycott or protest of a much less significant and obfuscated thing as Chinese influence over Town Branch Park plans? Or, Chinese ownership of Sen. Mitch McConnell? Or President Biden? Consider the words of Martin Niemöller.
COMMENTARY: Other commentary involving China connections to Kentucky, USA:
Mark Levin Calls for Criminal Investigation of Sen. Mitch McConnell & Wife Elaine Chao
Watchdog IG Call for Criminal Investigation of Elaine Chao, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Wife …
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