I pledge allegiance to the map
The real news from the town hall meeting John Culberson held last month was the vocal show of public support for light rail on Richmond. Early last year, meetings on the University Line were dominated by vocal rail opponents. By the end of last year, the rail supporters and the rail opponents seemed to be more or less at equal strength. Last week was the first time that Richmond rail supporters outnumbered opponents. Of course, turnout at these meetings is as much a measure of ability to organize as a measure of public support. But the Richmondrail.org press conference before the town hall offered a better measure: civic clubs along Richmond and 59 in Neartown standing up to assert their support for rail on Richmond and their opposition to Culberson’s Richmond/Montrose/59/Kirby/Westpark option. Make no mistake; this is a controversial project, with vocal, dedicated and genuine opponents. But, as the election suggested, the neighborhoods along the remaining Richmond options favor rail. The people applauding in the picture above aren’t applauding Culberson; they’re applauding against him.
But John Culberson wasn’t there to hear about public opinion. It didn’t matter, he said, that the neighborhoods were in favor of rail on Richmond. Because he had the map. And we have to follow the map.
Culberson put his map on an easel on stage. He made the following claims about it:
- This map was approved by the METRO board in 2003.
- METRO hid this map from the voters. In fact, they printed a different map that did not show specific alignments to show to the voters.
- This map is what the voters voted for.
I’m puzzled.
First of all, the second and third claims seem to contradict each other. How can the voters have thought they were approving a map they never saw, rather than the map they did see?
The first point, too, seems odd. The order of the lines listed on the map doesn’t match the order of the lines printed on the ballot. This map resembles the plan that the METRO board considered in late July 2003, which was then replaced with a different plan in August 12 and finally the final plan in August 18, with the ballot language approved on August 28. The board resolution that sent the plan to the voters never referenced this map. What this map seems to be, then, is an internal working document for a preliminary plan.
But leave all that aside. If this map was, as Culberson claimed, the map that the METRO board approved in 2003, why did it say this at the bottom?
Copyright 2007? So in other words, this is a replica of a working document for a preliminary plan. But John Culberson says it counts more than public opinion.
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