Joe Hultquist will be the featured guest speaker at the 2010 Annual Meeting of CAPPE (Citizens Against the Pellissippi Parkway Extension, Inc.). The meeting is scheduled for Monday, February 22, from 6:30-8:30pm in the Sharon Lawson Room at the Blount County Library.

"For several years we have designed our Annual Meeting as a community education event, featuring speakers who are knowledgeable about transportation issues relevant to our region," said Nina Gregg of CAPPE's Board of Directors. "We saw a need for education and civil discussion about transportation issues and decided to devote a portion of each year's Annual Meeting to fulfilling this need."

"This year we are pleased to welcome Joe Hultquist, Interim Executive Director of East Tennessee Quality Growth (ETQG) as our featured speaker," Gregg said.

Mr. Hultquist, who was born and raised in Blount County, will be speaking about the future of transit in the greater Knoxville area, including the upcoming Regional Corridor and Opportunity Area Study; options for transit between the airport and Knoxville; the role of independent advocacy groups; and ETQG's perspective on transit as a component of quality growth in the region.

Mr. Hultquist is currently serving as Interim Executive Director of East Tennessee Quality Growth, a new organization with representation from 16 counties of middle East Tennessee. ETQG's mission is to "create a vision for quality growth through dialogue, research, and education," and to "promote and facilitate implementation of this vision through regional cooperation and local action."

Previous speakers at CAPPE Annual Meetings have included Rees Shearer from RailSolution, Cindy McGinnis from Knox Area Transit (KAT), Jeff Welch from the Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) and Bill Dunlap from the Blount County Highway Department.

The public is invited to come hear Mr. Hultquist's presentation, which will begin at 7pm. Refreshments will be served at 6:30pm. CAPPE's annual business meeting will follow the speaker.

For more information, call Nina Gregg, CAPPE Communication Committee Chair at 977 7399.