I wouldn’t mislead you
So Councilwoman Sheila McNeil told east side constituents that toll roads on the north side are okay because the people who live there can afford it. While I’m against toll roads since I think the roads should have been built with the taxes that we paid for them, McNeil does have a point.
Plenty of subdivisions were built north of 1604 with the expectation that someone else was responsible for dealing with the traffic. I suspect quite of few of the residents in these new areas were/are constituents of legislators that spent taxes on things other than roads so that they wouldn’t have to raise taxes. In other words, they didn’t build roads or put aside money because the voters wouldn’t have reelected them.
But that’s not why I’m blogging about this article. I’m annoyed with Terri Hall because of the following statement she made:
Councilwoman: Hwy. 281 Commuters Can Afford Toll Roads - Yahoo! News
Hall said that McNeil was skewing the annual income figures because according to hall, demographic information on the City of San Antonio’s Web site shows that the per capita income for a District 9 resident is $31,000.
How pathetic. So what is the “per capita” income for District 2? Or how about the city in general? Well, according to the 2000 census, it was $17,487, about half of the District 9 figure.
Hall is counting on people not understanding what “per capita” means. It’s not the same as household or family income. In simple terms it’s all the income divided by all the people regardless of age or work status. So if you want to get closer to the family income, you would need to multiply the per capita income by the number of persons in the family. Now we’re at over $120,000 for the district.
Yes, yes, I know I oversimplified the process but the point is that Hall is quite happy to manipulate numbers when it serves her purposes. Isn’t that how we got into this mess to begin with?
Of course “It’s horrible to pit one part of the community against the other” but where has the north side been when “doing what’s in the best interest of the entire community” mainly benefited the east side? Think about it this way, the east side hasn’t had run away growth that has generated the need for toll roads. Nor, I suspect, are they the ones who have been supporting legislators and other elected government officials (like our governor) in putting the gas tax to other uses. Even if Hall hasn’t supported Perry in the last two elections, her credibility has dropped significantly. Why should I believe her numbers now?
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Filed under: San Antonio, San Antonio Toll Party, Sheila McNeil, Terry Hall, Texans United for Reform and Freedom, Toll Roads
