FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
State Senator Chris Elliott - Jeff Poor Show - Friday 6-21-24
[Music] Welcome back to the Jet Force Shoulders, the talk for those 6'5". Thanks for staying with us on this Friday morning, we do appreciate it. 34 minutes after the hour, uh, joining us now, we do this every week, our returning champion, St. Senator Chris Elliott. Donald Bluetooth, I have doled, uh, good morning Senator, how are you? I am doing just fine, thanks for having me on. Yeah, so I'm not going to ask you the obligatory, oh, I've recovered from the session. Uh, it seems like every lawmaker I've on, that's kind of my go-to kick it off, boy, dear. Instead, uh, you brought this up at, um, a couple of weeks ago at the, uh, Republican web in, uh, Eastern Shore over here at Fair Hope, and, uh, we were talking about, uh, it doesn't seem like a big, big thing, but it's a pretty big deal, at least for our part of the state. Uh, getting the lead of the resources they need for that helicopter, and I mean, how many times over the past five, six years that we hear someone goes missing, there's an undertow or whatever, and now you've got to have a little more airtime for these helicopters to perform these searches. Yeah, we are, and not even really just a search ship, but a patrol, uh, and to keep that helicopter in the air as much as possible, because when it's up, and when it has the resources on board, the lifeguards from Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, they're able to deploy in a mere, near minutes, uh, and do so well, so just give your, your listeners a little bit of background. Aliyah is operating their, their, their helicopter, um, interestingly enough out of Fair Hope, but then it stations for the day down at Gulf Shores, and, uh, yesterday we had them down, along with the, um, the, the folks from Orange Beach and Gulf Shores and, and their beach, uh, rescue teams there, uh, kind of, uh, given an example of what they do and how they do it, and those, those lifeguards fly with Aliyah. So you've got municipal lifeguards in a state helicopter, uh, the state does a good job, you know, flying the helicopter, but they're not getting into the water and don't need to, and these lifeguards are excellent at getting in the water. Don't need to be flying an helicopter, and so we were able to get some additional state funding for, um, for the, for the helicopter, essentially gas money, uh, to, uh, to fly up and down the beach on a regular basis, and having that child for in the air, about 100 days a year, uh, we take bad weather days, riptide days, uh, based on surf forecasts, and then, of course, um, the, uh, the lifeguards are telling me they're scheduling this thing based on data from the convention and visitors bureau down here, the CDB, and when we're going to have the most folks on the beach along with bad weather so that we can have the chopper up in there and able to assist almost immediately when, when somebody gets a distress. I never realized, uh, just, just, I guess it's more expensive that we realize how it is, much it is to operate helicopter. Well, the, the gypsy was one thing, uh, but the, uh, maintenance on the, the helicopter, I mean, it's almost a per hour, you know, set aside that you need to do. And so, I mean, we're really only talking about just under, uh, half million dollars here, but that can provide a huge amount of protection for a fairly low cost. I mean, when you start talking about lifeguards, um, their UTVs, they ride up and down the beach on the lifeguard stands, boats, uh, jet skis, you know, all these different things we've employed, they cover a particular area, but the helicopters able to cover a huge area, including Fort Morgan, which has been historically, um, tough to cover from a guard standpoint, just because there's not any municipality there. It's all county. Um, this works really well and, and it's great that the sheriff's office and in conjunction with, uh, the Orange Beach and Gulf Coast lifeguard, the municipalities are willing to let their guards fly on this helicopter and help somebody to distress in Fort Morgan and it, and it will save lives, including lives of our, our first responders who go in after these folks. Uh, you know, just over three years ago, Deputy Bill Smith was killed in Fort Morgan, uh, that in Fort Morgan during a rescue, trying to rescue somebody that was in distress and I, I would like to think that this helicopter was available in the air that we would not have lost that deputy's lives. Senator speaking of Fort Morgan and this, a couple of, uh, text questions here, uh, not too painful, I hope, but this Fort Morgan saga and legislation coming back trying to, like, figure out is it going to be part of Gulf Shores or not? I mean, we're going to be dealing with this until it happens or if it ever does happen, it will still be dealing with it. It seems like, but where does that stand right now? I met with the executive committee of the Fort Morgan homeowners association about a week and a half ago and, and I told them and I did not see that there's any appetite to bring any annexation legislation back. There was such a, uh, this rural response to the annexation or potential annexation of only about eight different, uh, you know, property owners, property down there, that, um, that the legislature obligation just does not, I think have appetite to deal with that again. And what I do think you'll, you will continue to see is a push and pull between the residents of Fort Morgan, the full-time residents of Fort Morgan and their desire for services, um, from the city of Gulf Shores and whether that's now the new school and school system there or whether that's, you know, uh, public safety services as well. And so you may see other attempts at annexation that are outside of what the legislature can do. Um, and that will, you know, either be contiguous annexation or, uh, a referendum, uh, you know, by the people in Fort Morgan to annex into Gulf Shores. And that'll be a vote of the people it's about as pure as our, uh, our republic gets as far as democracy goes. I mean, you, you vote for it in the will of the, the folks in that particular area, uh, carry the day. And so you may see something like that in the coming years, but I, I do not believe certainly not for the rest of the squadron that you're going to see any legislative annexations, um, moving forward. You set yourself up here. You know what's going to happen. Why did you give the people a right to vote on the lottery? Uh, anyway, uh, another question here and maybe you understand the bureaucracy here of this with the state taking over the ball of beach express and the full beach express there. And it's going to be signed 161. When they did that to 181, it took it from county row 27 to 181. They had to give up state road. It didn't go into loads of the bayonet road there and change the number and make it a county road. It is something like that. Got to happen here with that. Um, you know, my understanding, and I'm not sure I'm fully understanding what you're saying there, but my understanding is it will all be a state road now from from all the way in all the way out. I guess the question is when you when you get a new state road, you have to give up a state road somewhere else. If that makes sense. You know, I'm not sure in since 161 is an existing state road is just a continuation of that. Maybe you're not giving one up somewhere else. I think I understand more, but it's just a continuation of an existing route. Yeah, so that's one that came across there. And but that will be that's going to be under state operation. They're going to do the maintenance now. And I, you know, I know they're working on it right now, probably as we speak. There's a there's a lot of things that got to be done to that road to get it up to standard, right? Well, there are it needs to be widened in areas. The shelters need to be paved in areas to get it up to standard. And the important thing, when the county built that road, and it's important for folks to know the city, if all we have the county constructed that road, purchased the right away, made it happen. But but but it will have to come up to standard to me, stay standards. And it doesn't require that much that much effort. But the good thing is that that means that the burden on the city and the county to maintain that road, which is the only four lane divided highway in the county's inventory or was will go away. And that means that the state will be responsible for that. So that's a huge burden off of Baldwin County taxpayers from the county conditions. They're going to not have to to maintain that that road anymore. I mean, Jeff, I remember when I was on the commission, we had a fleet of tractors and bush hogs that did nothing but mow the foliage express and the Baldwin Beach express, they started one end and started mowing. And as soon as I got to the other end, they turned around, went the other way. Just just as an example of how nice it will be to have the state maintaining that from a cost standpoint to the county. The back to this though, the traffic now that the toll's gone. Are we seeing any any improvement there? Is that living up to its milling? You know, I said that on, you know, the holiday weekend, they saw a 25% increase over last year's holiday weekend. And I think that's an interesting point in time, you know, shot there. But I think that once the now the toll plazas are gone, I went through it yesterday. They were still resurfacing a little bit where they, you know, where they scarred up the road where they tore up the toll plazas. But I think once that all gets even out painted and we get settled down, we'll be able to do some comparisons that are a little bit more accurate and have more fidelity to them. And we'll look at that counts, you know, before and after. It stands to reason that volume will increase now that the toll is gone. And that's a good thing. The question is, how much does breeze and does it really move traffic off of the homes bridge, the 59 bridge in the Gulf Shores, which was the state and goal? And then you can start doing, you know, you start asking questions about, okay, you know, did we move 10% of traffic, 30% of traffic? And what did that cost and would you do that analysis after the fact? You know, I never saw a traffic study going in to this whole thing that indicated that there was going to be a demonstrable difference in traffic on the 59 bridge. But you know, here we are. And the best way to test it is a real world. And we're going to have an opportunity to do that. We'll see if this was effective or not. Here's the question. Now, I think a lot of people go into the beach. Maybe they don't keep up with the news. Maybe they're not aware that the toll is gone. And some of the traffic is not being diverted over to the beach expresses. I mean, is that entirely possible? Because I mean, I don't know. It's not like your science posted, Hey, why don't you try this way? There's no toll here now, right? I actually saw a message board on a 10 almost down by Daphne that indicated that, Hey, there's no toll on the beach express anymore. So I think out loud is trying a message that there isn't a toll anymore. And I do think over time, you know, certainly that message will get out. You know, travelers are fairly savvy nowadays. And I think they'll figure it out pretty quickly. The real interesting thing is going to be, you know, once this new bridge is completed and all connected back to the beach express, what does that traffic pattern look like? How affected is that in moving traffic locally in that area? And then also diverting it off of the 69 bridge. They have done no studies or impact on this. I have a. Jeff, I have heard that they've done studies. They have talked about doing stuff I had never seen and I have asked for studies. I think this was more of a guess than, you know, using real empirical data. I just, I could be wrong. I just know I've asked for the studies and I certainly haven't seen them. So we'll, we'll, there's no point doing a study right now. We're going to have a real world, you know, example list. If you build it, will they come type of scenario? Because we're building. Well, I mean, is there any concern about that? I mean, in theory, I mean, you know, this county pretty well. That seems like it could work. I don't know. It does seem like a little out of the way, but then again, I mean, maybe it beats the traffic. Well, listen, you know, any, any new infrastructure is good from, from where I sit and having $200 million worth of additional infrastructure, state funded infrastructure in, you know, in my district is a good thing. And I'm happy that it's there. The details of that get a little stickier. And so we're going to have to see what happens with our local traffic and how does it impact local developments, you know, for years and years. We were hoping that someone would buy the old defunct Bama Bayou, you know, there on the left side of the toll bridge as you came into Orange Beach. And, and so the owner of the war far far is purchased that and is, you know, on the cusp of trying to develop that or redevelop that making that a shining star. The problem is, as Alba has it laid out right now, you will see it when you're leaving, Orange Beach, not when you're coming to Orange Beach because, you know, Alba's plan is to put all the southbound traffic on the new bridge back to the west of the toll bridge. And, and so I know there are all kinds of developments going on between the airport and the canal in Gulf Shores. There's probably a billion dollars worth of new development going on there that is going to be very dependent on the local traffic patterns to get in and out of those neighborhoods and commercial, you know, retail facilities there. And those need to be taken into account to it. It's not just moving people to the beach. There are actual human beings and taxpayers that live here too. And they need to get around as well. And this question gets from John, why did they just simply widen the toll bridge instead of building a new road to bridge? And it's really because they decided to start the new bridge. Yeah. And to your listener, that was very much on the table. The toll company has offered to do just that. They offered you to build that another span at their cost and make all the tolls go away for Baldwin County residents, all Baldwin County residents. And they could have used all of the existing infrastructure there. The caveat was they wanted a moratorium on the state building a new bridge nearby. And that was not acceptable to the state. So to your, your, your listeners question there, there was an option. And that's not the way that our governor and our our director decided to go. I mean, like, what if we knew then what we knew now, you know, like how different would this discussion have been? And I know you and I have talked about this ad nauseam senator, but I, you know, this is just kind of just making up as we go along approach. It could come back to haunt Baldwin County. Well, I think that the way that local traffic flows is going to be of concern for my constituents. I think that either way this goes, it's a good way to get visitors on and off the island quickly. I just have got to make sure that, that my constituents and the investors in these, you know, again, these huge developments and investments that are happening here, that our local communities are encouraging very much, but it goes towards an orange beach or encouraging these developments to take place. That getting in and out of those, those developments makes sense and is safe and workable. You should not have to leave one go north to then go west to then go south to then go east to get back to the other side of it. That's, uh, that's not an efficient flow traffic. And I think there's some, some relatively simple options to make that happen. It's just getting the folks in Montgomery sometimes to listen to that can be a challenge. I got you. Sir, we've got to leave it there. We're out of time, but always appreciate your time and the less talk you get soon. Thanks for having me on. Y'all enjoy this beautiful weather. We're having this with you. State Senator, Chris Elliott, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be right back. This is up in talk 106 five. [Music]