Bill, your total lack of credibility as an environmental advocate is a HUGE issue. You're like the PETA spokesman who condemns killing animals while wearing a leather belt and leather shoes. You're spouting off on the Patch, on twincities.com, on StarTribune.com (willy53). Is this all your way of assuaging your liberal guilt for taking a paycheck from a mega-developer? If the readers of your comments knew what a hypocrite you are, your comments would be dismissed out of hand because your personal opinions are totally at odds with your personal behavior. You put yourself out there at the press conference. You became a public face of this issue. So your personal credibility and accountability is a HUGE issue. Anyway, it looks like your Half-Fast option is gradually being exposed for what it is: a total exaggeration. Just like, "I live a block from Pioneer Park."

Yeah, Bob that's a good idea. Let's ask people all over the metro and out state Minnesota if they want to pay the taxes to support a 700 million dollar crossing. Sorry you loose on that one. The support for this bridge is thin indeed. When compared to other projects, put in those terms of $/day, the mega bridge doesn't have a chance. End of discussion.

Bob K, will you stick to the issues. I'm not debating my job, the size of my boats, where I live, my motives, how I take care of my lawn, where I recreate, or any of the other things you'd like to distract this discussion with. I'm talking about the bridge, specifically about the 700 million dollar monstrosity that is about to create an enormous economic and environmental burden for you, me and all the rest ot the residents of Minnesota and Stillwater.

On another subject, you're a total hypocrite on environmentalism. You do more damage to the environment in one month of doing your job for a builder of strip malls, auto dealerships and big box stores than most people do in a lifetime. And your 80-mile daily commute is longer than someone who lives in Somerset and works in Minneapolis. Do you use 4-lane roads and 4-lane bridges on your way to work? Well, that's all the people in Somerset, New Richmond and suburban North Hudson want. And you don't have a leg to stand on when you say, "Do as I say, not as I do."

So let's get down to brass tacks, Bill. Let's stop talking in hard-to-grasp terms of multi-hundred-millions of dollars. How much, exactly, would a typical Stillwater homeowner have to pay on an annual basis for Minnesota's share of the freeway style bridge? Let me know what that number is and we'll put it out there on the Patch and ask people, "Would you be willing to spend $xx a year to relieve traffic congestion in downtown Stillwater?" How high would that number have to be before people would not pay?