For the last year, the Park Cities YMCA, which lies at the social heart of ultra-competitive, affluent, sports- and youth-minded Highland Park and University Park, has been engaged in a bitter battle for its soul. That’s a lot of battling over what may turn out to have been a small…
Here’s a difficult public relations puzzle: Let’s say you are the downtown Dallas business establishment, and you are very unhappy about the new ethics code under consideration by the city council. Why are you unhappy? Because you already control the city council through juice. Cash. The money. At least eight…
The so-called “fraud audit” of the Dallas Public Schools is headed straight to hell. It will never produce significant results or catch any big fish. So far the feds have caught minimum-wage janitors fudging on their overtime, roofing supervisors taking kickbacks, and a former superintendent stealing money to buy bad…
In the three months Waldemar Rojas has been superintendent of schools in Dallas, two things have become plain: The only goal he cares about is delivering a fat contract to Edison Schools, Inc., and he’ll resort to any level of political thuggery to make the Edison deal happen no matter…
Ben Click, our recently departed police chief, had it down: If you want to make it as chief in Dallas, just go to all of the neighborhood meetings, nod with astonishment and concern every time somebody tells you the amazing news about his garage being burglarized, and stay far away…
Here is the quiz: A city employee sees something crooked going on. He reports it. His claims are investigated and found to be completely true. What does it mean — what do you suppose is going on — if the reaction of the Dallas City Council is to defend vigorously…
Community activist Sharon Boyd, who led an unsuccessful campaign against giving tax dollars to the city’s new sports arena, has filed suit to have the arena group’s special tax exemptions declared illegal. Her suit argues the arena project does not match up with state law on who should get tax…
In a few days or weeks, a very hot potato will land with a thunk on the desk of the Dallas city manager, and everyone in the city’s architectural community will be watching carefully to see what he does with it. The city auditor, who works directly for the city…
The FBI case our new school superintendent is leaving behind him in San Francisco seems much juicier than anything so far in our own lackluster FBI school probe. While Bill Rojas, Dallas’ new school superintendent, and Bill Coleman, the chief financial officer Rojas is bringing with him from San Francisco,…
The best clue to the shell game going on at Dallas City Hall — an indicator of the desperation city officials might be feeling over the financial mess they’ve put themselves in — is the tax cut they say they’re going to give Dallas property owners. XIt’s a major political…
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno has accused WFAA-Channel 8 television and its owner, the Belo Corp., of criminal complicity in the 1994-1995 wiretapping of former Dallas school board member Dan Peavy. In a pleading filed under seal July 6 with the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans,…
Everyone in the Kevin Young story has a story. Everybody’s covered. But if everybody’s covered, and if everybody has a story, then how could this have happened? Can a man — any man, woman, human being — literally rot in jail, almost until his limbs fall off, while he waits…
citizens group trying to keep Tenison Park in Old East Dallas from becoming a semi-private high-end golf club suffered a defeat recently when an appeals court tossed out their suit. Justice Michael J. O’Neill of the 5th District Texas Court of Appeals said in an opinion July 8 that individuals,…
Imagine the surprise the people opposed to the Trinity River plan felt recently when they opened their June 27 copies of The Dallas Morning News and saw a story boldly confirming a fact the News had refused to report for more than a year: Dallas’ massive $1 billion-plus flood-control scheme…
In the recent election for mayor and city council, all of the rhetoric was about streets, potholes, and basic repairs for neighborhoods. But hold on to your wallets. Our shop-till-you-drop city council has just seen something shiny it wants to buy. The Dallas City Council is about to commit the…
The campaign to rename Jefferson Davis Elementary School in Oak Cliff seemed to reach a decisive conclusion when the school board voted 7-1 recently in favor of changing the name. But partisans in the Confederate camp hint the Jeff Davis fight was but a skirmish in what could become a…
Waiting for the city to fix your street? Waiting for them to help your elderly neighbors with basic home repairs? To do anything at all to improve your neighborhood? Don’t hold your breath. The money’s there–$22 million in federal funds. The problem is, the city council and the mayor have…
Stung by a recent rejection, thrilled by a rumor that someone attractive might like them, the Dallas school board leaped into the arms of San Francisco schools chief Bill Rojas without a wisp of investigation or information about his past. If recruiting a new school superintendent were anything like romance,…
The thing about the current Dallas City Council is that the truth tends to get them all upset, whereas they never seem to mind all that much being lied to. At the April 21 council briefing, North Dallas council member Sandy Greyson asked David Dybala, the city’s head of public…
It would be unfair, at this point in time, to paint a portrait of Dallas Independent School District Superintendent-designate Bill Rojas as a man wearing a several-sizes-too-small miniskirt, reclining on a cheap Chinese love seat with a come-hither look while he waits for history to come through the door and…
This little stretch of Parry Avenue, just northeast of Fair Park, isn’t the street of broken dreams. Not yet, anyway. The dream here is still tangible and exciting. But it has definitely taken some hits. Parry Avenue is a bitter window on what everybody in every neighborhood is going through…
Lying to taxpayers about their taxes is a basic political skill some politicians grasp sooner than others. Veteran members of the Dallas City Council are trying now to get new member Laura Miller to wise up and stop behaving as if they really meant it when they promised not to…
