Federal transportation bucks for a boat

Doug Wilder's plans for a museum in Fredericksburg includes building a $4 million replica of a 19th-century slave ship, and the museum's organizers are pushing for federal transportation grant money to help pay for it. The Free Lance-Star covers the topic in a story today. The slave museum already won a $189,000 'transportation enhancement' grant last year from the feds; now it's applying for a $778,400 grant and running into some opposition from the Fredericksburg Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, FAMPO.

'The issue is not whether FAMPO supports building the museum in Fredericksburg--it does, administrator Stephen Manster said yesterday.
The issue is whether some of the limited funding available to the state and region should go to a facility that has access to other resources and that, in a traditional sense, is not about transportation, he said in explaining some members' concerns.'

You gotta love that tentative wording - 'in a traditional sense, is not about transportation' - ya think?