Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I support main street chipsealing to help communities control things like their dust as well as to improve their lives. But I’m afraid, without knowing more about this.… It looks to me as if it takes away money from the communities — sort of New Deal money. And, ultimately, that choice will be taken away.

It was just mentioned about autonomy. I mean, I’ve never heard a community want to look the other direction by saying: I want MACA to run our stuff. I think communities feel they’ve learned and earned that respect and authority to plan their own projects and their own priorities. If it turns into a situation where they’ve been given money under the New Deal and it’s got to be taken away, because now it’s got to be worked in some relationship with

MACA…. I can’t speak for MACA or how they’re going to do their finance calculations, but I suspect they’re just going to take a formula piece out of everybody in these communities that normally would be focused in on, and I think, as a whole, they’ll suffer.

I’m a little uncomfortable with the way it’s sort of walked on our table this afternoon: you know, sort of like: This is how it’s got to be and whatnot. I would prefer more time to go through this and understand the impact of potentially taking away funding that rightly belongs to the ambition and the priority of every community.

Again, I recognize the problem. I support the issue in principle. The concept makes sense. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. But, Mr. Chairman, I can’t support the motion like this without knowing what the impacts are.

It’s easy to say: Here; this motion means there’s going to be chipsealing in every community. I’m okay with that. It’s the question of: what does it mean about who’s going to pay and where’s the money going to come from and how do we figure this out in the plan? It’s the negatives that cause me concern at this time.