01.15.08
More Tolls Coming To Williamson County?
That’s what Ben Wear is reporting in today’s AAS, Williamson County, agency eye tollway proposal. It appears that former Precinct 1 Commissioner and current CTRMA Executive Director Mike Heiligenstein and current Precinct 1 Commissioner Lisa Birkman are cooking up a local toll plan for the precinct.
Williamson County would get yet another toll road — a 1.3-mile connector between RM 620 and the existing Texas 45 North tollway — under a proposal getting serious consideration by county and mobility authority officials.
[...]
Mobility authority officials plan to meet Wednesday with Williamson County Commissioner Lisa Birkman, who represents the area where the road would be built.
Mike Heiligenstein, executive director of the mobility authority and a former Williamson County commissioner, said that residents in that section of the county for years have wanted some sort of road cutting across the ranch.
“They either have to go back (on RM 620) to the interstate, which is a total wreck, or they have to swing to the west until you finally hit 45,” Heiligenstein said. “This would give everyone a straight shot out of those neighborhoods.”
Birkman said the county until recently had been counting on money from the Texas Department of Transportation for the interchange. But the agency’s emerging money crunch dashed that, she said.
“One day it hit me like a ton of bricks,” Birkman said. “It’s just a road to a toll road. But what if we toll the road to the toll road?”
[...]
“The preliminary numbers look very positive that between the two entities (the county and the mobility authority) that we can get this done very quickly,” Heiligenstein said.
That defeat in November will hit her like a ton of bricks too. It’s hard to believe Birkman woulddn’t know this is bad for her reelection bid. Toll roads are anathema in Williamson County and Texas at this time. All she’s doing is providing her opponents, especially Democrat Mike Grimes, ammunition to defeat her. Maybe she’s looking at how successful former commissioner Heiligenstein has been in the private sector since leaving the court, and figures if she curries a little favor with tollers, maybe she too can be successful in the private sector. Which would make her more than willing to lose in November.
salcostello said,
January 15, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Just another example of the CTRMA using millions of our tax dollars and right of way to tax us again.
Don’t forget, toll roads cost a lot more to build and maintain than free roads.
So why would they want to do the toll roads? They make a lot of people richer, while our families pay and pay and pay.
Could someone buy that toll tax parasite Heiligenstein a one way ticket to New Jersey please?
Sal “The Muckraker” Costello
http://salcostello.blogspot.com/
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