Its great to see Judy Arnold and Tom McDonald as part of this forum. Now what maybe we can get some inside views on the conflict interest on the NCRA Board and their insights of freight volume through Novato. I will admit I have a lot of opinions on this controversy and most folks know where I stand. I am first and foremost a rail advocate and an environmentalist. Some people on this forum are extremely upset about public monies being spent on the NCRA/NWP, the only problem, this is nothing new, and its a drop in the bucket comapared to what the State and the CTC is going to spend over the next several years on the railroad infrastructure in general and the Port of Oakland in particular to make it faster and easier to do its job. So why all the hue and cry about spending money to so the same at Port of Humbolt Bay? Don't see a lot of bandwidth here complaining about the billions the State is ready to spend from Prop. 21 monies. Conflict of interest on the NCRA Board....this came about when someone in Marin said hey, looking what they are going to do with the NWP! We better exercise our our representation rights to stop it. Where have those folks been for the last 18 years? Asleep? The City of Novato is suing the NCRA over train frequency through the EIR process. The City of Novato was roped into this by the Arnolds and a few others for G-d knows what reason. They were not supporters of SMART to begin with and have done a good job derailing them in the upcoming Sales Tax vote in November. The worse part about this is that the Arnolds, Mr. Meyers and Mr. Mcdonald are absolutely clueless about railroads and how they operate. They show no compassion for the agricultural community in their own County and the struggles they are going through because of the high cost of Trucking. They do show a complete disregard for the environment and air quality in the County and would rather see trucks clog 101. Furthermore, they are more then willing to see SMART lose, only if they make a concession on freight on the NWP. That defies logic and is not a defensible position. In the long run, NWP-NCRA will prevail and Novato will lose because a vast majority of folks will see to it. If they don't look foolish know they will soon. I ask you, on the other hand, how could a supporter of rail look foolish? Everywhere you look in the State, folks are supporting passenger and freight rail in a huge way. So what is the problem in Novato? If I thought I knew, I would give you my opinion, but frankly I don't. Perhaps someone from Novato who has the gusts enough to use their real name on this forum can enlighten us.