Keep Waterloo Safe and Prosperous

We, the undersigned citizens of the United States, believe Our State and Federal government and our elected officials must support and encourage DOT to work with the City of Waterloo, Wisconsin to create a showpiece for High Speed Rail, rather than imposing the current WisDOT High Speed Rail plan on it. The current plan is unacceptable to the City of Waterloo. It proposes to cut our city in half, create hazards and safety issues for residents and businesses while ignoring the legitimate objections and concerns raised by many City leaders (since 2000). Exorbitant costs should not be dumped on one community that wont derive any economic benefit and in fact will be seriously harmed. State and Federal government and our elected officials
must protect and preserve the City of Waterloo while guaranteeing the High Speed Rail project adequately funds Waterloo HSR mitigation costs, and guarantees mitigation projects are on the same time line as the track
upgrades. We seek an amendment to the WisDOT plan to create and implement a plan that mitigates the damage of the High Speed Rail project to the City of Waterloo as a whole (government, businesses, and residents). Mitigation must include costs to pay for pedestrian overpasses, aesthetic enhancements, appropriate noise and vibration control barriers, at no cost to the City and our taxpaying residents and it must have no road closures. Mitigation must include extra points on relevant competitive cost-matching grant applications made by the City (commuter rail depot funding applications, etc).