Subject: North Central Texas Council of Governments

• Concrete: In the Bad-Air Mix

  July 27, 2006

• The "Vengeance" of the Trinity Pavers

  October 4, 2007

• Michael Morris, King of the Roads

  November 21, 2007

• Warning You Now: A Lot of Math Ahead

  January 21, 2008

• Really, About the Trinity Parkway, Don't Hold Your Breath. Not Yet, Anyway.

  July 21, 2008

• Dallas's Council Reps Send Very, Very Mixed Signals Over Int'l Inland Port

  I'm working on a new theory of life. I used to think the City of Dallas was obviously the big cheese in the region -- the wheel -- and that all of the little surrounding municipalities were sort of cheese wedges. Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe Dallas has cheese for brains, and all of the communities around us are trying not to laugh out loud at us.Yesterday morning I drove out to Arlington for a special meeting of the Regional Transportation Council, a very boring and little-known regional ent

  December 16, 2008

• Foster's Brook, or: The Dallas County Judge is Smarter Than He Lets On

  This should be said: One of the heroes in the otherwise ugly stupid saga of the inland port development in Southern Dallas has been Dallas County Judge Jim Foster.First of all: He figured it out. A very good source close to the county commissioners told me, "He's like a little detective. He's quiet, and he doesn't say much, but he sleuths things out."Foster figured out sooner than most people that a so-called "master plan" for the inland port dreamed up by Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley P

  December 19, 2008

• BeloWatch

  September 21, 1995

• All wet

  August 6, 1998

• From the Unfair Park Educational Film Dept.

  Comes this 11-minute film courtesy the North Central Texas Council of Governments and the North Texas Grease Abatement Council (band name alert!) concerning the proper disposal of fats, oils and grease. Highly recommended. Poor, poor Chad.

  February 17, 2009

• Big, honking white lies

  April 29, 1999

• Go Home, GOP|Money For Nothing|Corrections

  December 18, 2008

• Congresswoman Calls Out John Wiley Price for Shaking Down Development Deal

  Local pols back off a master plan that would have put the squeeze on a major southern Dallas development

  December 18, 2008

• What's Commish John Wiley Price's Real Beef With the Inland Port?

  December 11, 2008

• Sexy Town

  Imagine a city with flowing creeks, walkable neighborhoods and greenery. No, not Seattle, dummy.

  June 19, 2008

• A Killer F5 Tornado Rips Through Dallas County -- How Ready Are We for this Nightmare Scenario?

  April 16, 2009

• Sweet/Sour Grapes on Trinity Referendum Results

  I'm either happy, sad or still churning out column inches on the Trinity, depending on how things turned out

  November 8, 2007

• Eye Candy

  It's overpriced, it's gaudy and we have to put it on a credit card. Yep, that Calatrava bridge says Dallas all over.

  August 31, 2006

• Richard Allen brings jobs to the black community.That makes him racist?

  April 23, 2009

• Fresh Eyes

  Basically, it's Coats versus the Manchurian Candidate

  May 3, 2007

• Puppet Samba

  By pulling strings, road hustlers can make the city council dance

  November 27, 2003

• Rouging the Corpse

  Miller wants to pretty-up a stinker on the Trinity River deal

  July 17, 2003

• Idiot's Highway

  That toll road they want for the Trinity is a loser

  July 10, 2003

• Cash for Trash

  The city's new recycling center is up and running, sort of

  November 21, 2002

• From Ithaca, New York, An Apology to the Citizens of Dallas. And, An Explanation.

  David YearsleyDuring the weekend, I exchanged a few e-mails with David Yearsley, the Cornell University associate music professor who, as you'll no doubt recall, attacked the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts with all the subtlety of a Longhorn bull mounting a comely heifer. Turns out, more than a few Friends of Unfair Park also reached out to the prof via e-mail and gave him the ol' proud-Texan what-for. So happens a couple even agreed with some of his points, but took great offense at the

  June 8, 2009

• "Very Exciting Stuff" as Dallas and Fort Worth Apply for Federal Money for Streetcars

  Courtesy Justin CozartIn 1945, Dallas city and transit officials, among them Mayor J. Woodall Rodgers, introduced "the first of twenty-five new, silent, streamlined street cars."Almost two months ago, the Dallas City Council's Transportation and Environmental Committee got a peek at the proposed alignments for the downtown streetcars; but, again, the question of who'll pay for 'em went unanswered. Then came Friday's Star-Telegram story in which it was revealed that Dallas and Fort Worth, under t

  July 20, 2009

• So, That Dallas Streetcar Grant Application? It's Really the Oak Cliff Transit Authority, Sorry.

  Courtesy the Oak Cliff Transit AuthorityOne of the original streetcars that ran through Oak Cliff long, long agoJason Roberts -- a Happy Bullet, co-founder of the Art Conspiracy, Texas Theater-rehabber and, for the purposes of this item, Oak Cliff Transit Authority board member -- sends word that this morning's Dallas-Fort Worth streetcar item has (pretty much) nothing to do with downtown Dallas trolleys. Which is why Angela Hunt didn't know about the North Central Texas Council of Governments'

  July 20, 2009

• Keep on Truckin'. Just Not in the Left Lane.

  ​For the last four years, the Texas Department of Transportation and the North Central Texas Council of Governments have been restricting big rigs from driving in the left lane along small sections of I-20 and I-30. And they're delighted with the results of the pilot program: Dan Kessler, NTCOG assistant director, will tell the Dallas City Council's Transportation and Environment Committee this afternoon that the restrictions have reduced the number of crashes, increased travel speed and cut d

  August 25, 2009

• City Receives Some Clean Cities Stimulus Money, But None For Economic Development

  ​On Friday, Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm informed Mayor Tom Leppert and the Dallas City Council, via memo, that the city's getting around $3 million in Clean Cities stimulus money to, among other things, "enhance fueling infrastructure, retrofit city vehicles and assist in the provision of training for alternative fueling." The applications were submitted by both the city and the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which landed the $13-million grant and will dispense $2.8 mil to Dalla

  August 31, 2009

• Before Belo Garden, Soil Remediation

  Maybe you just forgot -- it's been a few years -- but there's supposed to be a Belo Garden downtown.​Said the city's own time line back in '07, the Belo Garden downtown should have been completed by ... let's see ... last month, matter of fact. And revised guesstimates last summer set the start date for construction at this summer. But there have been myriad reasons for the delay on the park that'll be paid for by Belo Corp., the Belo Foundation, Robert and Maureen Decherd and City Hall, chief

  September 17, 2009

• Can You Help Synthesize Strategies and ID Action Items for Downtown? Oh, Good.

  Click to expand this time line of Dallas's master plans dating back to 1960, courtesy the North Central Texas Council of Governments​Back in April, the Dallas City Council gave Berkeley-based Moore Iacofano Goltsman, Inc. $515,000 out of the Downtown Connection TIF District Project Budget to come up with a downtown Dallas "area plan." Because, look, Dallas has a mountainous stack of studies and plans -- the Downtown Parks Master Plan, the Farmer's Market Redevelopment Plan, Strategic Engagemen

  October 2, 2009

• Before Dallas Gets New Bike Plan, Bids Will Be Taken and Committees Will Be Formed

  On a related note, Bike Friendly Oak Cliff yesterday announced the route for this weekend's Tweed Ride.​Good news for anybody who has ever avoided bicycling in Dallas for fear of the automobile: The city's new bicycle coordinator, who moved here from Virginia, is on your side. Says Max Kalhammer of biking in Dallas: "My own experience has been mixed in terms of enjoyment and my own feeling of safety with riding. ... Some streets I feel very comfortable on. But others I don't. I've just learned

  November 18, 2009

• When It Comes to the Trinity River Project, History Keeps Repeating Itself, Repeating Itself

  John W. Carpenter Papers, Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington Library,Ben Carpenter, son of John, is the one seen here pointing to a Trinity River canal master plan​Your Trinity River correspondent and advice-to-the-lovelorn columnist, which would be me, had two interesting experiences yesterday. First up was a screening of Living with the Trinity, KERA Television's hour-long documentary by award-winning producer-director Rob Tranchin, which airs Monday at 9 p.m. The seco

  November 18, 2009