12/25/04
Dear Austin Neighbors,

Over the past 6 months, many of us in Austin have joined together to work toward getting Mayor Will Wynn and others to release the roads we've already paid for from the toll road plan. The William Cannon/MOPAC bridge is one of the 4 roads in the plan that we've already funded with our gas tax dollars. After 6 long months, Mayor Wynn and others are having a hearing to see if we want that bridge to be TOLL FREE!

WE NEED YOU DEC 13th to get the WM. CANNON/MOPAC BRIDGE and the other 3 roads we've already funded out of the double tax toll plan!

This whole toll plan is only a revenue producer and does NOTHING for traffic congestion. Half the roads in the plan are 100% financed by our taxes. HOW CAN PLACING A TOLL BOOTH on roads we've already paid for HELP traffic congestion? It can't. Those bottlenecks all over Austin will make traffic worse.

Go to the December 13th CAMPO hearing, tell your family and friends all over Austin to do the same. Sign up for your 3 minutes at the hearing and tell your representatives, who've ignored the community, that you'll work to make sure they never get elected again. TELL THEM YOU WANT ALL YOUR ROADS PULLED FROM THE DOUBLE TAX PLAN! Wm Cannon will be the 1st toll in Austin's history, let's stop this 1st toll...and stop the rest as well.

Monday, December 13th CAMPO hearing:
6pm (If you can't make it until 7pm or 8pm, please still come) at Joe C. Thompson Conference Center
UT Campus (26th and Red River)
? ? ? ? 
Call or email YOUR HOA OR NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION and tell them TO POST THIS DEC 13th HEARING IN THE next DECEMBER NEWSLETTER ASAP!

We need your help to get this plan scrapped. Put Dec 13th on your calendar!

I'll see you on Dec 13th - be heard. I promise it'll be better than anything on TV.
Here's video from the Sept 13th hearing (the toll fight): http://keathmilligan.net/content/austin/campovideo.htm

Together we will,
Your Austin Neighbor,
Sal Costello
Founder of AustinTollParty.com

If you have not done it yet, go to www.AustinTollParty.com and do Step 1 to tell Rick Perry and over 200 Texas Representatives ''NO!'' to the double tax. This double tax toll plan will do nothing for traffic congestion but add bottlenecks all over Austin. This is a revenue generator for road building and tolling companies.

OUR REPRESENTATIVES - ''PAID OFF''

HOW YOUR ''REPRESENTATIVES'' HAVE BEEN PAID OFF TO SELL OUT THE PUBLIC!

Karen Sonleitner, Travis County Commissioner, was given an up to $2,500 a plate fundraiser by the Toll Road ''Special Interests Syndicate'' after her vote to double tax us. Real Estate Council of Austin (RECA), Road lobby lawyer Pete Winstead and the contractors for Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (CTRMA) gave her this fundraiser to ''Thank her for her Vote''. The members of RECA (Developers) will make enormous profits off the 2.2 Billion dollar toll road scheme that received an avalanche of public opposition. The CTRMA will ''run'' the Austin toll roads while the CTRMA contractors will be handsomely paid. The special interest fundraiser for Karen Sonleitner is an obvious ''PAY OFF'' for her YES vote in the face of ninety-three percent of the public feedback that opposed the plan.

Mike Krusee, State Representative, authored HB 3588, an Omnibus Transportation Bill that will force Toll booths on roads we've already paid for. The Krusee/Perry house bill took away our right to vote on the Toll Plan. The special interests thank him with mega contributions and future promises.

Senator Gonzalo Barrientos is the Chair of CAMPO. He also works for Centex Beverage. Lowell Lebermann is the Owner of beer distributor Centex Beverage AND the acting Vice-Chairman of the CTRMA. CTRMA and TxDOT produced and promoted the central Texas Toll Road plan. Lowell Lebermann contributed $5,500.00 to the Gonzalo Barrientos campaign 2 years ago. Barrientos forced the CAMPO vote to take place in July, months before it was necessary. Lowell Lebermann owns millions of dollars of property around Austin and is part owner of CargoPort warehouse franchise at ABIA. Lowell Lebermann needed Tollway 130 and other tollways for a direct route between his warehouse and Samsung, one of his largest customers and others. So he got Barrientos to push the toll plan and force the early vote. And we pay for it. It's a use of public funds to benefit themselves.

Dawna Dukes, State Representative, voted for the double tax toll plan. The morning after Dawna Dukes voted to place toll booths on roads we already paid for, her sister Stacy Dukes-Rhone got a contract signed with the CTRMA as a engineering subcontractor! Her sister has received more CTRMA contracts since that vote.

Bill Burnett, Hays County Commissioner, has been working as a paid ''consultant'' for Dannenbaum Engineering when he voted for the double tax. Dannenbaum Engineering also does road work for TxDOT. Gov. Perry received $75,000 from President of Dannenbaum Engineering, James D. Dannenbaum.

Rick Perry, Governor, is where this double tax was born. In his first month in office, highway contractors gave the governor more than $500,000. Rick Perry received $30,000 from California-based Fluor Corp. and Houston's S&B Infrastructure in June, less than a week before they signed a $1.5 billion state contract to build Texas I-30.

Ric Williamson, long time friend of Rick Perry and Perry appointed Chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, has interests in businesses that could benefit from the natural gas and petroleum portions of the Trans Texas corridor/toll plan. A plan that uses state of Texas tax dollars for financing. Records show Richard F. Williamson, born on 01/25/1952, has interests in ARLEDGE PETROLEUM CORPORATION, MKS CONSULTING CORPORATION, NATIONAL DRILLING CORPORATION, PROFIT DRILLING CORPORATION, R A W ENERGY CORPORATION, R. F. WILLIAMSON DRILLING CORPORATION, RFW MANAGEMENT GROUP, RICHARD F. WILLIAMSON, INC., and WILLIAMSON AND RICHARDS, INC.

''In your lifetime most existing roads will have tolls.''

- Ric Williamson, Houston Chronicle, 10/11/2004

VALUES OF OUR HOMES

A toll on the Wm Cannon bridge will REDUCE THE VALUES OF OUR HOMES here in Circle C and all of the South West. That bridge is a gateway to move north, and once complete, if it has a toll on it, we will no longer be able to use the 290 overpass free. That means that to move north on MOAPC without charge we will have to go through another 2 lights down near Walmart & Best Buy.

If we don't stop this plan now, within months we will be paying to use that bridge. With a family taking the toll bridge 7 round trips a week at .75 cents each way, that will cost Circle C Residents alone $1.6 million dollars a year - for a 1.5 mile bridge we've already funded! It will cost all of SouthWest Austin Millions a year, with rates only increasing as time passes. This whole toll plan is only a revenue producer and does NOTHING for traffic congestion. Half the roads in the plan are 100% financed by our taxes. HOW CAN PLACING A TOLL BOOTH on roads we've already paid for HELP traffic congestion? It can't. Those bottlenecks all over Austin will make traffic worse.

Go to the December 13th CAMPO hearing, tell your family and friends all over Austin to do the same. Sign up for your 3 minutes at the hearing and tell your representatives, who've ignored the community, that you'll work to make sure they never get elected again. TELL THEM YOU WANT ALL YOUR ROADS PULLED FROM THE DOUBLE TAX PLAN! If you will not speak, ''Sign in'' as FOR pulling Wm Cannon/Mopac bridge from the plan.

Monday, December 13th CAMPO hearing:
6pm (If you can't make it until 7pm or 8:00pm, please still come) at Joe C. Thompson Conference Center
UT Campus (26th and Red River)

www.AustinTollParty.com

William Cannon hearing TONIGHT

Tonight is the public hearing at CAMPO, which will be in the LBJ auditorium ( 500 seat room under the LBJ library ) on the UT campus.

Parking is free on campus or in the LBJ parking lots along Red River.

The meeting begins at 6pm, but the hearing isn't expected to start until 6:30 pm.

While this hearing is specifically to reconsider parts of the the Mobility plan that the CTRMA is now putting into place, the motion will be to vote next month (at the January meeting - second monday of the month).

It is widely anticipated that they will formally request that the CTRMA remove the Toll on the William Cannon over pass.


That's great news for us and a baby step towards correcting a major mistake made by CAMPO on July 12th 2004 to allow the CTRMA to extend their Toll plan (already approved for Hwy 45 and Hwy 130) to included ALL of the AUSTIN existing highways (MOPAC, 71, 290, 183, and 360).

CAMPO members are just now discovering that they were mislead by TxDOT and Bob Daigh, the TxDOT engineer for our area. He basically told CAMPO that if they didn't put tolls on existing roads, we'd lose our highway funds. This was a widely misunderstood message, but Austin's CAMPO went overboard with the Toll concept.

So, this is the right time to come out and add your commetents to the offical record at CAMPO. There are 23 members on this board - there are so many of them across this stage that you may want to bring binoculars to see them.

You can sign up and comment (FOR or AGAINST taking any roads out of the Toll plan), or our can ask to speak your mind for up to 3 minutes. After you hear a few people speak, it will be hard not to want to add your own comments. PLEASE DO !!!


You do not have to restrict your comments to the William Cannon Toll. Feel free to comment on the entire Toll Plan. It's in two major parts:

1) Toll on new roads that are under construction today (Hwy 45 and 130).

2) Tolls on existing highways (which is a way of raising money to pay off the bonds that the CTRMA will issue, starting next month, to pay for new road building).



What isn't being talking about at CAMPO is the Gas Tax, where we usually get our highway funding. This tax is only 20 cents out of the $2 a gallon you are paying today. If this tax was raised another 10 cents a gallon, nobody would even be talking about Toll roads today.


See TxPET.com, www.AustinTollParty.com; and www.campotexas.org for more details.