Last week the Save the Tax campaign sent out mailers to residents of University City. They arrived in local mailboxes by Wednesday. The cards featured a full-color shot of a light rail car with “Your Train Is Coming” printed across the image, a reference to the $750 million light rail line to UNCC.

Sometime Thursday, CATS CEO Ron Tober told The Charlotte Observer that the Federal Transit Administration office in Atlanta had made an unspecified promise of an unspecified amount of money to assist CATS in funding unspecified work on the preliminary engineering plans — the total cost of which is unspecified — for the $750 million light rail line to UNCC.

On Friday, the Observer ran the following headline, above the fold, page 1A: Tober: UNCC rail to get aid with the subhead Transit chief says feds pledged to help pay; critic doubts timing.

The body of the story was noteworthy for what it did not say:

Tober said the decision means it’s likely the FTA will ultimately pay for half of the estimated $750 million construction. That prospect could be a boost for transit supporters, who are fighting to keep the half-cent sales tax for public transportation.

The announcement, five days before the election, comes without federal confirmation. One transit critic suggested the timing was meant to sway voters.

Tober said the FTA told him Tuesday they would help pay for engineering costs. The agreement is contingent upon the Charlotte Area Transit System having a dedicated funding source, and a formal letter will come if the transit sales tax isn’t repealed Tuesday, Tober said.

“They will approve us for preliminary engineering,” Tober said. “They said it meets their criteria.”

Tober said he spoke Tuesday with FTA regional administrator Yvette Taylor in Atlanta, who couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday by the Observer. Tober said in September he expected a decision at the end of October.

An FTA spokesman in Washington said Charlotte’s request is still under consideration.

In other words, no decision has been made. Besides, even if a decision had been made, moving into preliminary engineering does not mean that the FTA will help fund the project, let alone half of the total construction cost as Tober boldly suggests.

That fact can be seen by what happened to the Triangle Transit Authority. In 1998 the TTA received actual approval — not a vague promise — to enter into preliminary engineering on a 28-mile rail line. In 2000 TTA received $8 million from the FTA to help complete the work. By February 2003 the TTA rail project was approved for Final Design and in August 2005 that design was complete.

All the while the TTA received millions in federal aid to do the work.

Yet by August 2006, the TTA — unable to meet FTA benchmarks — removed the $800 million project from consideration for federal funding of the line. No federal funding agreement was signed. Or has been signed.

Their train is not coming to folks in the Triangle.

What we are left with then is a frankly masterful bit of media manipulation by the Save the Tax campaign and Ron Tober.

Just as concerns about the lack of federal funding for the $470 million North line and uncertainty about the federal stance on the $750 million Northeast line were starting to gel in voters’ minds, up pops a front-page headline telling voters that the federal government is on board for the tremendously costly Northeast project.

Golf clap all around, gentlemen.

Now if you could only sleep at night.

Bonus propaganda: The Uptown paper of record again fails to identify an interested party in the transit tax debate. As we noted, Darrel J. Williams is a South line contractor, former Democratic county commissioner, and $1800 contributor to the Save the Tax campaign.

Observer readers know Williams only as representing “the board of the Charlotte chapter, American Institute of Architects.”