September 19, 2004, 04:20 PM
Correcting the Chronicle Correction
On Friday, I noted that Chronicle writer Kristen Mack took a swipe at Rep. Talmadge Heflin using incorrect information. The Chronicle ran a correction today.
State House District 149 represented by Talmadge Heflin, R-Houston, includes a non-residential portion of the Spring Branch Independent School District. A story on page B2 in Friday's Chronicle said incorrectly that none of the district is in SBISD.I highlighted the term “non-residential” because that will be a surprise to the people who, well, reside in that portion of SBISD.
The addition of the term “non-residential” is interesting. I can't read minds, but I can only infer that they're trying to minimize the error they made by saying, “Well, ok, it's in Rep. Heflin's district, but nobody lives there so it doesn't really count.”
This apparent attempt to draw attention away from the error is wrong on two counts:
1. No matter what, they were still in error, even if this piece of the district was a sinkhole or a pond. They said:
Apparently he doesn't know it as well as he thinks. Turns out no part of the Spring Branch School District is in State House District 149, according to Heflin's Web site.That's just plain not correct, and they should have just said that it wasn't correct.
2. The correction is factually incorrect, or I guess it depends on what the definition of the term “non-residential” is. I would feel safe assuming that if people live in that portion of SBISD, it's not “non-residential.”
If you go to the Harris County Tax Assessor/Collector's web site and go to the street guide, you can find out what voting districts a particular address is in. Enter the address 15200 Memorial DR in precinct 0095 and you'll find that that address is in precinct 0095, sub 3. A “sub” is a subdivision of a precinct that tells you if a particular address is in a political district that doesn't respect the boundary lines of a precinct. SBISD includes one part of the precinct and 15200 Memorial is the only residential address I can find in that sub.
So what's at 15200 Memorial Drive? A luxury townhome community, Village on Memorial. It's a new complex, part is still under construction. I called over there to check on what school district they're in, their web site says Katy ISD and the records show SBISD.
I got a very nice lady on the phone who confirmed that their web site is in error and they are located in SBISD. She also told me that there are about 300 units in the complex and they are about 15% occupied.
I took a drive by and snapped some pictures. If you want to see a larger version of the photo, just click on it.
For their “non-residential” claim, I guess the Chronicle was relying on the report on Rep. Heflin's web site that states there is zero SBISD population in district 149. What they failed to note is that it says right at the top of it that the data is from the 2000 Census. That's four years ago.
So, let's sum this up.
- Rep. Heflin said his district includes SBISD.
- The Chronicle's Kristen Mack took a swipe at Rep. Heflin, saying that “no part of the Spring Branch School District is in State House District 149, according to Heflin's Web site.”
- I pointed out that that was incorrect, that part of SBISD is in district 149.
- The Chronicle ran a “correction” that tried to minimize the error they made, in the course of which they made another error.
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