Contrary to what Sal Costello’s band of merry anti-tollers alleges, healing pills SH45 and SH130, viagra order as tollways, purchase were always supposed to get money from the 2000-2001 city and county bond packages. I remember; I was arguing against it at the time (not on this crackplog; it didn’t exist yet; but still).
Shame on KXAN for just reporting this as fact. Mayor Watson didn’t “re-allocate” any money towards these toll roads; before the election, the city was advertising that these two tollways (and a third, Loop 1 North) were in fact the primary expected recipients of the right-of-way purchase money. While Austin didn’t promise exactly which road projects would receive funding, it was crystal clear at the time that a good chunk of right-of-way purchases were going to go to these tollways.
Costello appears to be hanging his hat on the weak argument that the city bond language didn’t SPECIFICALLY say that any money would go to “tollways” or “toll roads”. But neither did the city bond language say “freeways” or “free roads”; it said that a large chunk of the transportation bond would go to right-of-way contibutions for state highways, which it did. And the city didn’t mislead anybody into thinking these would be for non-toll-roads; again, backup materials before the election clearly indicated that they intended to spend these funds on SH130, etc.
The city, unlike the county, chose to group all transportation bonds together as a tactical move to try to get them passed, rather than risk environmentalists voting against the highways chunk and motorists voting against the bikeways/pedestrian chunk. That’s the only reason they didn’t have separate SH45 and SH130 items.
- Chronicle coverage of city package – references SH130 and Loop 1 North
- Austin Chronicle coverage of Travis County’s proposed bond contributions to same