On opposite sides of the legal teeter-totter over gas-drilling, citizen protection and drilling flexibility weigh heavily, with a city’s gas drilling ordinance at the center — trying, at least in theory, to find balance between the two. It’s happened in Forth Worth and other small cities. And next week, Dallas’s…
Water, water, everywhere — more than ample supply to frack, according to Jody Puckett, the director of Dallas Water Utilities, who spoke at yesterday’s gas drilling task force meeting. She clarified that, sure, there’s a drought, and conservation is always important, but she also insisted that water for fracking isn’t…
It’s not often you see an undergarment fashioned out of recycled twisted metal into a beautiful sculpture that’s sturdy enough for children to climb on like monkey bars. But if you happened to be in the West Village Saturday afternoon in the plaza between Mi Cocina and Magnolia Theatre, you…
For Jubilee Park residents, it was a party atmosphere in the Flag Room outside council chambers Thursday afternoon, when the City Plan Commission denied Dallas Independent School District’s application to replat two tracts of land near the site of the former O.M. Roberts Elementary School near Fair Park. But this…
The Kiestwood neighborhood in southeast Dallas turns 60 this month, and in Texas years, that’s old. Raymond Crawford, who lives in the home where he grew up, hosted a well-attended birthday party for the close-knit neighborhood at the Southwood United Methodist Church last night, and both Mayor Mike Rawlings and…
Since July, the city’s gas drilling task force, established to recommend parameters for Dallas’s fracking ordinance rewrite, has voraciously consumed drilling data, testimony from experts and presentation after presentation on various aspects of the practice. But up to this point, visiting experts have done almost all of the talking. At…
America is imploding, the world is ending, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Our limited mortal power, however, can slow the process by spreading Christianity — at least according to First Baptist Pastor Robert Jeffress, who last night launched his 11-part series based on his forthcoming tome…
Yesterday afternoon, the city’s gas drilling task force heard presentations (slideshows here) from three experts who explained the impact of drilling on noise levels, geology and real estate values. Which was exciting as it sounds: The meeting was moved from City Hall’s sixth floor to a lower-level auditorium, where the…
For the first time since news broke that 1401 Elm was off the market, the city council got to hear all about the project — one its new owner says could be a “tipping point” for downtown. Turkish investor Mukemmel “Mike” Sarimsakci, who purchased and plans to redevelop the 1.5-million…
The day before the Labor Department broke the dismal news that the unemployment rate’s unchanged and consumer confidence has “dropped sharply,” students, professors and local business leaders filed into the auditorium at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business to hear from two panels of business and governmental leaders as…
Today brought another round in the ongoing fight over whether Lower Greenville is a daylight retail district or an evening entertainment strip. This afternoon, the City Plan Commission denied specific-use permits to two longstanding venues: Service Bar and Yucatan. City council will have the final say when both appeal the…
Adverse possession, the law Ken Robinson cited to move into an abandoned Flower Mound home with the intention to claim the property as his own, was initially meant to settle and prevent property disputes in rural areas, according to Brian Rider, a University of Texas law professor who has been…
In late July, the untended, bean-shaped swimming pool at Ken Robinson’s Flower Mound home — that is, the house in which he lives — was a stew pot of viscous green slime. On a stifling midsummer evening, when he walked out the back door to vacuum one of many layers…
Environmentalists got their turn at the mic at this week’s gas-drilling-panel meeting, where the industry’s opponents took turns airing its dirty bits. While last week, industry representatives lauded the practice for its production of affordable energy and its boosting of the economy, this week drilling sounded a bit rougher around…
Environmentalists will line up at the horseshoe at this afternoon’s meeting of the city’s gas drilling task force, scheduled, as always, for a 2 p.m. start time. This afternoon’s agenda includes seven presenters who will discuss the effects of drilling from perspectives ranging from hydroecological to financial, all with an…
As often as I can, I take a stroll or bike ride through Fair Park — I’m lucky enough to live across the street from one of my favorite places in Dallas. And while the landscape is usually the same beautiful, quiet ghost town, recently things have been changing. The…
After a gas drilling field trip to Arlington and debriefing session, a public hearing at City Hall and a few weeks to let all the information marinate, the city’s gas drilling task force got back to the horseshoe Tuesday afternoon with four items on its agenda — presentations by gas-drilling…
Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price did not attend yesterday’s rally on his behalf at the Pan-African Connection Bookstore across the street from Fair Park. And those who’d packed the pews at the St. Luke “Community” United Methodist Church one month ago did not fill the parking lot, or the…
Residents of Jubilee Park, the neighborhood of modest single-family homes just north of Fair Park, have become conditioned to distrust, if not fear, the Dallas Independent School District. For as long as we can recall, DISD has grappled with plans for a new O.M. Elementary school in the area, and…
A little more than a month ago, the Dallas gas drilling task force embarked on its mission to tackle the subject of hydraulic fracturing and recommend regulations to be included in the city’s drilling ordinance. At their first meeting on July 12, Rick Trice, the assistant director of planning and…
A disheartening report by the Dallas Police Department shows that crimes against senior citizens have increased in the past year, with rates for July 2011 15 percent higher than during the same time last year. Lieutenant Herbert Ashford presented the numbers at this morning’s Senior Affairs Commission Victimization Committee meeting,…
Chains on the Brain by David Goff largely consists of images of chains wrapped around people’s skulls — as in,”Get these motherfucking chains off my motherfucking brain.” The work is as straightforward as the movie Snakes on a Plane, and maintains the same vague hokeyness amidst some truly decent photography…
