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Featured Listener Comments Section: Contents List |
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Listener: Dick H.
Category: Lubbock City Politics
Date: 12 Oct 2007
Time: 13:09:56 -0700
Remote Name: 70.244.154.232
The other day I called in to the KFYO morning show and suggested that they ought to name alleys in Lubbock for the various people that certain groups want to be honored with a street name. We have a large supply of alleys that do not have any names and this would not upset the current street naming system that we now have. Ms. Christy Garcia called in later and was highly insulted that I would suggest such a thing.
This morning Ms. Garcia called in to the morning show and stated that in the future we should have a committee to name streets and that the process should be "open and fair" to all groups and that no group should get special consideration or no group should be arbitrarily banned from getting a street named for their special hero except for Cesar Chavez who should be exempted from the committee process suggested by Councilman Kline.
Ms. Garcia suggested that I was racist because I suggested naming alleys for people. My real feeling is that we should not name streets or parks for any of these group's particular heroes. I am especially against naming anything for a politician.
A can of worms has been opened by naming anything in the city for anybody as far as I am concerned. If we follow Ms. Garcia's idea about giving equal consideration to all groups we might have a street named after Osama Bin Laden since there is likely a group of Muslims that live in Lubbock that may want to honor Osama as their hero.
If we must give equal consideration to all the diverse groups we could have all sorts of names that would offend most of the population of Lubbock. I was against changing a street name to Buddy Holly Avenue and against naming the freeway the Marsha Sharp Freeway. This situation seems similar to the idea of separation of church and state. What right does any group have to force their hero upon other people who may not regard the person they want to honor as a hero. What would happen if the Baptists want to name a street Billy Graham Avenue? Where does this all end?
It mainly costs the taxpayers money to change street names and I feel this is an entirely wasteful way to spent tax dollars. And I hope our good Mayor is not counting on his vote on this matter to win him lots of new friends.
Dick Hudgens
Pratt responds:
Dick has made a very compelling point on this and it is why I was against the change of Quirt Ave. to MLK as well as the other changes. I do except that naming a freeway is OK and I-27 should have been the Buddy Holly Freeway.
The way to handle freeway names is simple because so few are built over long periods of time. It is this: Let potential names be suggested by petition with a minimum number of verified signatures, about 500 should be sufficient. Then, put it on the ballot when the city is already having an election. There should be a rule however, that these names must relate directly to Lubbock County history so that the names convey local identity to travelers.
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