SULTAN SHINDIG, 2003
WELCOME CADMAN GRAVEL! (HUH????)
OTHER SHINDIG PHOTOS OF INTEREST:
Question: Is all fair in love, war and gravel?
Only in Sultan would you see something like this. A city that is normally in constant and sometimes-acrimonious political turmoil came together in total solidarity to fight the DNR Powerhouse Project, a 600-acre gravel-extraction site a mile north of the current Sultan city limits. The controversial gravel proposal was seen by Sultan as the death knell to its quality of life and would turn Highway 2 into a parking lot. The small handful of folks in town who supported this proposal were aligned behind Sultan Mayor C. H. Rowe, owner of a national trucking concern (complete with gravel trucks), who was charged during the attempted recall against him to have hidden the legal notification issued by the DNR. The notice was sent to solicit comments from government agencies -- Sultan among them -- on the proposal's MDNS (Mitigated Determination of Non-significance), but was not "found" (in Craig Bruner's office) until after the comment period had expired.
Now we see that, for the Judas bargain price of $1,500, Sultan sold out to this gravel company, whose 350-plus gravel trucks a day (from its proposed expansion of its Gold Bar facility), will soon be lumbering along, further hindering passage along Route 2 and contributing even more gridlock to Monroe's already hairy traffic situation. Do we hold our principles so cheaply that they can be purchased at any price?
To us, this banner is the equivalent of the Wild Sky wilderness proponents
selling the same type of prominantly-placed advertising space to its opponents
at a major rally supporting that wilderness. Or, if you're perhaps still
unfamiliar with the Wild Sky issue, here's another analogy: The NAACP
selling banner space at its national convention to the KKK, or another
equally disgusting racist organization.