Freeway F**k-Up
Anytime the government tells you how much it’ll cost to build a road don’t believe them! It’ll always end up costing you a lot more. That’s just one of the problems with the plan to spend BILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF YOUR TAX DOLLARS (!!!) to remake the North Freeway – even though less people use it now than they did ten years ago! What’s that about? Watch to find out!
The Texas Department of Transportation hosts a ceremonial groundbreaking in Downtown Houston for the North Freeway expansion project.
Amid protesters shouting, “We want trains, not more lanes”.
“It’s going to displace over a thousand people. It’s going to shutter over 300 businesses that employ over 12,000 people. It’s going to close five houses of worship. And it’s not a good plan to solve congestion, we need multimodal transportation,” says protester Erin Erickson.
The I-45 expansion project will eventually… 20 years down the road… supposedly widen and modernize the North Freeway between downtown and Beltway 8.
TxDOT billed its big whoop-de-doo as the “game changer”…
Even had their media people running around in referee outfits…
The biggest change in the game is the new official price tag… It’s not 9, 10… or even 11 billion dollars anymore.
Department of Transportation chairman Bruce Bugg explains.
“We’re going to start today what we’re going to finish in days, months and years to come that will end up being a 13 billion dollar project.”
“It was 9 billion originally,” Bugg adds.
Bugg blames the federal government for the added $4 billion because it stopped the project in 2021 to negotiate changes.
Who will be blamed when the price tag goes over 13 billion? Because we know it will.
You need to remember that doesn’t include the cost of buying up the right of way properties which have climbed to more than a billion dollars.
Documents we analyzed and reported on in August showed that TxDOT was paying displaced property owners on average… more than 3 times the price of the assessed value of their homes and businesses.
“We are providing compensation for that in a way that allows them to reestablish based upon their family composition in the area that they actually lived”, stated Raquelle Lewis, director at the TxDOT.
The owner of the lot at 4103 La Branch, paying taxes on $261 thousand got 401 thousand dollars.. 53 % over her assessed value.
But the owner of the parking lot at 1901 Texas Avenue… had an appraised value of 4.5 million. TxDOT paid them $121 million, 2600% more.
But the owner wasn’t even paying taxes… it was the Houston Sports Authority… The government… getting a huge windfall on a land deal from another government agency.…. Are we getting that windfall back?
“Well, and those are those are cases in negotiation,” said Lewis.
This week TxDOT announced it will likely expand the property it’s gulping up… for a large stormwater retention pond along Halls Bayou.
More homes and businesses add to the human cost and taxpayer cost.
Harris County just passed a 10% property tax increase for every single resident… claiming it’s due to a reduction of its tax base… at the same time TxDOT is eating up more private property. For their North Freeway boondoggle.
The state doesn’t pay tax bills… and you have to make up for it.
So, 13 billion? Don’t believe it.
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