IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Terri Hall / PHONE: (210) 275-0640
Founder/Executive Director
Texans Uniting for Reform & Freedom (TURF) & San Antonio Toll Party
Contact: Tommy Calvert, Jr. / PHONE: (210) 481-0198
President & CEO
Calvert International Consulting
VIDEO SHOWS MCNEIL LIES ABOUT CITY DATA PRIOR TO TOLL TAX VOTE
Distortion At Public Forum Shows Toll Advocates Resorting to Class warfare & Lies Prior To Tax Increase Vote
San Antonio, TX, Friday, November 30, 2007 – During a meeting of the United Homeowners Improvement Association (UHIA) on Wednesday, Councilwoman Sheila McNeil (Dist 2) and Chair of the Metropolitan Planning Organization (SAMPO), was so taken aback by constituent opposition to tolls that she multiplied city statistics by ten times in an effort to silence discontent over toll road proposals.
“Those people can afford the toll roads. The average income up there is $300,000 a year," McNeil told her constituents. The City of San Antonio's website contradicts McNeil’s statement as it notes the per capita income in District 9 is only $31,000. McNeil admits she’s fine with voting to toll the northside, just not in her backyard, leaving out the fact that many of her constituents travel, go to school and shop in the job-rich northside.
See video of McNeil’s hacking of facts on YouTube:
(You Tube account terminated...)
Noting the obvious commute that many District 2 residents take to the northside everyday, Dr. Joyce McCullen, district 2 neighborhood leader and former VP of the PTA exclaimed, “It’s already hard enough to make ends meet with gas over $3.00, now they’ll take money we use for groceries and prescription drugs to make construction companies rich.”
McNeil also told her constituents to take the access roads if they couldn’t afford the toll roads, essentially telling them to contend with traffic congestion while the wealthy get an expressway.
McNeil attended a cozy, closed door meeting at Valero October 19, that the Chamber of Commerce crowd called to rally the business community to gain approval of the toll roads at the SAMPO meeting on December 3. Her loyalties appear to be with big business and not her constituents whose average household income by contrast is $14,512 a year.
“I don’t think San Antonians like their politicians making our city the Neo-Fascist capitol of America. Mussolini is looking up from hell and thanking pro-tollers for carrying on his legacy of authoritarianism and a corporate-run state. Then our elected officials pretend there is the option of allowing us to use alternate streets when they are giving control of those alternate routes to the toll operators. When they give away the maintenance of the feeder streets to the toll owners as part of the non-compete clause their financeers require, how would any right-minded person be expected to believe its in the best interests of those toll owners to maintain those roads? This reminds me of plantation segregationists engraving the words ‘colored’ over a black school and calling it ‘separate but equal’. Real American leaders take us toward a more perfect union, despots divide and conquer. It’s a sad day when a Black elected official in essence slaps the ‘colored’ sign on our freeways and stereotypes people based on income because of the side of town they live in,” notes Tommy Calvert, Jr. president and CEO of Calvert International Consulting.
"We're creating a segregated highway system: One for the wealthy and one for the rest of us. It's horrible to pit one part of the community against the other. We need to be doing what's in the best interest of the entire community. These are federal and state highways that don't stop at the district or county line," said Terri Hall, Founder and Director of the San Antonio Toll Party and Texans uniting for Reform and Freedom (TURF).
Over 80,000 automated telephone calls have been made urging people to turn out to Monday’s SAMPO meeting at 1:30 p.m. at the VIA building on San Pedro & Evergreen to tell the Board to vote no on tolls, no matter where they are planned.
The SAMPO is likely being asked to vote FOR a non-compete agreement that would prevent the expansion of free roads surrounding the 281 tollway like Bulverde Rd., Red Land Rd., Stone Oak Pkwy, and Blanco Rd because the bond investors require them to guarantee a return on their investment. But we don’t know because TxDOT is keeping it SECRET ahead of Monday’s vote!
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