The Trinity Trust Foundation, now calling itself the Trinity Park Conservancy, has posted a job notice (see below) for a construction manager, citing among the club’s previous accomplishments the construction of the Margaret McDermott Bridge that carries Interstate 30 across the Trinity River downtown. I thought they might want to…
We all have that certain little what-the bell that rings in our heads when things don’t add up. What-the bells must have been ringing all over town last week when people saw the news story saying that the new Dallas chief of police, U. Renee Hall, slapped her boyfriend eight…
It’s how I remind myself what a hick I am. Whenever something really embarrassing happens in Dallas, I immediately check to see if The New York Times has got it up online yet. Who cares? The self-conscious hick in my bathroom mirror, that’s who. So this week’s New York Times…
The worst accusation against West Dallas landlord Khraish Khraish is that he took advantage of poor people who don’t speak English and tricked them into one-sided financial deals. If that’s true, he should be brought to justice. But what if his accusers are the ones bamboozling poor non-English speakers? A…
Khraish Khraish — he whose first name is the same as his last — has become the great binary mystery of Dallas. This 41-year-old West Dallas businessman is either the city’s greatest hero, savior of the poor and architect of a better tomorrow for all, or he is a duplicitous…
There are things in the news these days to make us all cry inside. I’m thinking of the Roseanne story and what it really says about us. So I had to share this local story. This is the opposite kind of story. It actually gave me a lump in the…
First, before we get into a lot of who-shot-John and you-know-what about it, let’s just discuss what’s so great about this idea. A major landowner in West Dallas wants to launch a dedicated private-sector initiative to develop affordable housing for Dallas police and firefighters. His plan is to offer the…
Want money? I’ve got some for you. You can double your income — possibly even quintuple, octuple, septendecuple it — depending on how fast you can read, simply by reading my articles. No, really. You know I wouldn’t scam you. I just came across this. I was looking at an…
In the entire incident report chronicling the shooting death of a Dallas police officer and two other nonfatal shootings by a man at a Dallas Home Depot store April 24, the most terrible and heart-stopping line is this: “Body camera footage shows that as Officers [Crystal] Almeida and [Rogelio] Santander…
Under the old rules at City Hall, the term “economic development” meant “friends of City Council members looking for money.” Dallas pursued an economic development strategy based on heavily subsidizing grocery stores, funding race car museum startups and making large grants to chicken joints, even though similar concepts had not…
Maybe you think this falls under the heading of “lots of luck,” but I wish the first thing the Dallas City Council would do, after we achieve regime change, is a forensic audit of the money spent on the Trinity River project, including the missing sailboat lakes and that stupid…
It’s unfair for me to spend time here tearing into the city’s old rich white elite and never say anything about other people’s elites. Everybody’s got one. It’s hard to generalize about the city’s Hispanic leadership because they’re very diverse politically, and frankly, I really don’t see them doing much…
The Byron Nelson golf game — golf match? no, golf tournament, that’s it! — starts tomorrow at Trinity Forest Golf Club, and, as you can tell, I’m not up to speed. But I might at least get interested. This will be the most rich white people in southern Dallas ever…
Last week, we learned that the Margaret McDermott suspension bridge over the Trinity River in downtown Dallas, designed by Santiago Calatrava and supposedly completed two long years ago, still can’t be opened to foot and bicycle traffic because engineers won’t certify its safety. We really need to pause and think…
What an irony. On Thursday, the morning when a long-awaited investigative report on a city of Dallas federally financed affordable housing program crossed my desk, who should be sitting across from me but the very guy the city spent two years trying to tar and feather as an unscrupulous landlord…
Interesting item in my email titled “Do you want to run the Dallas Convention Center?” My first thought: “No.” Second thought: “Thanks for asking.” Third thought: “Wait. How much do I get?” A thoughtful reader forwarded the document to me from the city of Dallas procurement page. It’s a 25-page…
Boys. Really. C’mon. Be real. I am addressing myself here to the boys — the mayor, the private Dallas Citizens Council, the board of directors of the State Fair of Texas. I know. Some of you are girls. But, face it. You’re the boys, too. So, boys. Listen to me…
Here’s a thing that’s getting closer and closer to being totally unfathomable. The Dallas city manager is drip-drip-dripping information to the City Council about a yearlong federal investigation of housing programs, giving the council information barely a drop at a time. The piecemeal approach is less than fathomable, because none…
Barely beneath the surface in the city’s grief over last week’s shootings of two Dallas police officers and a store security guard was bleak bitterness left behind by last year’s ugly battle over the police and fire pension system. Sure, we would all be better off if our feelings about…
A lot of side-of-the-mouth talking took place during this week’s Dallas City Council debate on removal of the shabby Confederate war memorial next to City Hall, but let’s not lose sight of the big thing: The vote to keep that ugly monstrosity in place was led by three of four…
Every once in while, we should take a little trip to the Outermost Thought Ozonosphere, if for no better reason than we need a vacation. And on a recent visit out there, guess what I found! Dallas! At the global cutting edge. No, I mean really. C’mon, I’ll take you…
Dear Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall: You and I have an issue in common, but I get the sense that you may not have gone through the difficult and deeply personal process of dealing with yours yet. We’re both from Detroit, but that’s not exactly what I’m talking about…
