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City insists bond money won't go to streetcars
Officials spend day rebutting TV, radio stories.
By Vianna Davila
San Antonio Express-News
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
This week, citizen committees will finalize the list of proposed bond projects they plan to send to the City Council for approval, paving the way for voters to consider a $596 million bond program next May.
But the city spent most of Tuesday discrediting reports about a project that's not on the list of bond initiatives at all: Streetcar.
City officials said a series of television and radio reports on Monday wrongly suggested that 2012 bond dollars could be spent on VIA Metropolitan Transit's planned downtown streetcar.
“It's flat out wrong,” said Carri Baker Wells, a tri-chair for the city's community bond committees.
“Streetcar rail has never been a part of the bond committee,” she said.
Mayor Julián Castro also repeatedly has said that neither 2012 bond dollars, nor any of the city's general fund dollars, will be spent on a streetcar, though the City Council recently voted to support construction of the project and to help pay for several other VIA transit projects.
Various local grass-roots activists, including toll road opponent Terri Hall, spoke to the media about the issue on Monday, raising the possibility that the city was trying to slip the streetcar into the list of street bond projects, even though the money might not go to rail itself.
“I think the whole project ties together,” Hall said. “Whether it's a streetcar, laying down the rail tracks, or reconstructing the streets to make way for the streetcar, it's all part of the same project.”
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