And the city council needs to begin its takedown as soon as possible.

The people have spoken, and while none of the recent election losers, departing council members who approved the project or the two remaining on council who still desire to move onto pilot project 2.0 think the recent election wasn’t first and foremost about Fourth and Fifth Streets, allow us to help them with their continued, failed public outreach.

The last election was entirely about Fourth and Fifth Streets. Along with how the city council has been run the past several years while ignoring much of the citizenry.

And if the election didn’t convince our esteemed council members and former council members on the pilot-project side, perhaps the recent poll in their favorite “daily” publication showing 75 percent of respondents against the pilot project will get the message through. Then again, maybe not.

After all, Councilwoman Anna Stout wrote an editorial stating her concern for the loss of public trust, along with “democracy” as the left likes to parrot, in not having enough outreach with the public when it comes to taking votes on serious agenda items as the new city council just did in voting to end the pilot project.

But one must wonder when the daily’s recent poll shows such a high percentage of opposition along with The Business Times’ stories of interviews and surveys of downtown businesses that had similar percentages opposed to the project (while citing the same percentages from their clientele) just how Stout can continue to declare the project a success and something the people wanted?

All it takes to know how people feel is just ask the people some questions. That’s how we got our stories. And for a project “decades in the making,” we sure found a lot of folks the city never seemed to have talked to in opposition to the project before, during and after it came into being.

Ironically, the council sure seemed to come up with a lot of folks in support of the project while finding few, if any, detractors. Makes one wonder what research and expert input the past city council used or ignored to justify its implementing this experiment.

But that’s what happens when the success “goalposts” go from modality improvements to pedestrian safety to lowering the speed limits to making neighborhoods safer as the definition of success in fixing a problem that really didn’t exist.

After all, there must be dozens of ways to slow cars down and make neighborhoods and pedestrian traffic safer that don’t require bollards galore and eliminating the use of internal-combustion-engine vehicles. Unless the real goal is to eliminate the use of internal-combustion-engine vehicles.

But the real nail in the coffin of the pilot project came in The Business Times breaking the story in an op-ed about Councilman Jason Ngyuen calling for retaliation toward anyone speaking out against it.

Maybe that’s why those members of the city council couldn’t find anyone against it? Kind of paves the way for the old majority on city council to get its way, doesn’t it? After all, no one spoke out – well, a few did, but not on the record – because of this exact, real fear.

The fact is: This is exactly how the previous city council “conducted the public’s business” in making decisions that reflect not the entire city, but rather only one side – to counter-paraphrase Councilwoman Stout from her op-ed.

That, Councilwoman Stout, is how public trust is eroded.

We’d be remiss to not mention Mayor Abe Herman’s parting comments about his tenure on city council in claiming he’s most proud of finally getting voter approval for the recreation center and not in the success of the increase in public safety with the pilot project.

It appears even Abe is honest in admitting the voter-approved-over-budget-rec center, which is in desperate need of sponsorships to make up the deficit, is smarter to tout as his greatest achievement than shutting down access to downtown merchants and businesses – creating a labyrinth for even the best drivers to maneuver through as it eliminates sight lines and makes pedestrians less safe – and forcing into place a project no one knew about or saw until the pipe hit the fan.

After all, it wasn’t a pipe dream. It was a nightmare.