My phone lines and e-mail have been burning all morning with messages from North Dallas types not quite able to believe what they found in their mail yesterday. It's a slick, color fold-out piece from District 13 city councilmember Mitchell Rasansky outlining all kinds of smelly money in the 2006 city bond proposal and urging people NOT to vote straight YES down the ballot for the whole package.
Don't vote YES for the whole bond package? Isn't that a form of sacrilege, here in the city that can't say no?
"I thought about that," Rasansky told me this morning.
Thought about it and pulled the trigger.
It's a very interesting piece, based on research by Rasansky himself in concert with former council member Donna Blumer and developer Rob Richmond. The mailer warns voters that many innocuous-sounding bond propositions in the overall program include hidden give-aways and stealth appropriations. For example...
Who would guess that something as worthy-sounding as "street and transportation improvements" would include a $14 million grant to two ritzy shopping center developers? Or that "flood protection and storm drainage" would include $162 million more for the Trinity River Project?
I've been watching bond elections in this burg for a long time. It's pretty stunning for a council member from one of the city's heaviest voting districts to send out a negative piece like this on the eve of the election. This is no small deal. --Jim Schutze
