'Personal and emotional'
The Arizona Republic
Nov. 23, 2005 12:00 AM

Concern over the proposed South Mountain Freeway drew more than 2,000 (mostly angry) Ahwatukee Foothills residents to Grace Inn last Thursday for an eight-hour open house hosted by the Arizona Department of Transportation. As the conference room filled, so did the public comment board, where residents could write their feelings on index cards and paste them to a sticky sheet. Although they started out mild - "I don't want a freeway in my back yard," "Please do not kill the nice neighborhood we live in" - they soon got a little edgier. "Forget it!" wrote one attendee. "ADOT is AZ's terrorists!" declared another. One pro-freeway note bore what appeared to be graffiti, as the words were crossed out in several different pens. Some cards with foul language stayed on the sheet for a while but later disappeared.

"The freeway building process is personal and emotional for a lot of folks," ADOT engineer Mike Bruder said at one point.

Indeed.