The Environmental Protection Agency has promised to test soil in neighborhoods bordering a southern Dallas Superfund site in an effort to address community concerns about the presence of heavy metals. The announcement came at a community meeting Thursday, when the EPA presented the results of an initial report showing heightened…
The Dallas County Community College District will seek approval from its accreditor later this year to merge its seven schools into one in an effort to help more students graduate. Joe May, the district chancellor, said he was motivated to pursue the change after realizing that thousands of students were being…
Six Dallas social services organizations are teaming up with the county hospital and jail to help some of their most frequent users: the homeless. Newly hired caseworkers will find them housing, which will get them off the street and out of taxpayer-subsidized emergency rooms and jails, according to the initiative’s…
A North Texas concrete manufacturing firm will pay a $3 million fine for continuing to employ undocumented workers despite warnings, the Department of Justice announced on Monday. Immigration and Customs Enforcement determined in 2015 that more than 40 employees of Speed Fab-Crete’s Kennedale plant were not authorized to work in the…
A typical DFW family spends more of its income on housing and transportation than those in most other major cities — including San Francisco and New York — according to a new report released by the NYC-based Citizen’s Budget Commission. Using data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, researchers at…
Dallas Area Rapid Transit promised Tuesday to alter plans for its new rail line after two North Dallas council members objected to an updated design that would elevate portions of the track. Planners had proposed raising the entire track 5 feet, saving at least $10 million and limiting construction impacts…
Customers of Dallas vape shops looking for Mango Juul cartridges are finding empty shelves and heavy markups. Instead, they’re turning to Puff Bars, a nearly identical product that skirts the new rules by fusing the liquid-filled cartridge to the pen-sized stem. Users consume the liquid — which can last from…
Dallas’ housing authority will begin accepting new applications for its housing voucher program at 9 a.m. Tuesday. It’s the first time DHA has accepted new applicants to the program in years. The program provides a voucher that caps rent at 30% of a family’s income. It’s available to families with low…
Dallas plans to offer Zume, a Silicon Valley tech startup, more than $5 million in tax incentives to open a manufacturing hub. The company, once valued at more than $2 billion, has come on hard times after failing to deliver on its early promise of robotic pizza delivery. The city…
Lawyers for the city of Dallas and Yvette Gbalazeh have agreed to settle the activist’s 2018 lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the city’s panhandling ordinances. Gbalazeh said she will receive $20,000 and a meeting with the city’s police chief. She said the settlement sends a message: “There’s going to be consequences…
In early 2018, the city released a plan to build thousands of new units of affordable housing. When the plan was introduced, then-Mayor Mike Rawlings said, “This is a very important day to show that government works in America, and we can take complex issues and get 15 of us…
In 2018, one of the North Texas stops on the PGA Tour was moved to southern Dallas from Las Colinas in Irving. It was the fulfillment of a promise by Trinity Forest Golf Club’s backers that the new course — and the city’s $12 million investment — would attract a premier…
When Donna Pryor walked into her new three-bedroom home on a tree-lined street in Plano, she was mesmerized. There was a clean yard, a huge kitchen and a swimming pool out back. Finally, her children would be safe. Pryor left home when she was 13 to escape her drug-addicted mother. Pregnant…
Dallas County confirmed on Thursday that the teenager who died late last year as a result of vaping was 15. That makes the teenager the epidemic’s youngest victim, underscoring North Texas’ outsize role in the nationwide outbreak of vaping-related illnesses. The state has reported the most hospitalizations in the nation,…
The Dallas Police Department is promising reform in the wake of a new city audit, which uncovered widespread faults in the department’s processes for investigating and addressing misconduct complaints. Last year, auditors found hundreds of inexplicably missing records in an internal database that tracks misconduct complaints. Internal Affairs Division officials…
A Dallas teenager’s death from a lung injury associated with vaping comes at a time when hospitalizations for the mysterious disease are on the decline nationwide. The teenager is the first person in Dallas County to die of injuries related to e-cigarette use, according to Dallas County Health and Human…
The Dallas Police Department promised to implement a “data-driven approach to reduce violent crime” and laid out crime-reduction goals for the upcoming year in a report released Thursday. Mayor Eric Johnson demanded the report be released by the end of 2019, a particularly violent year in Dallas. In a statement released…
Everyone, it seems, has something good to say about plans for the city’s new jail diversion center. District Attorney John Creuzot called it a “solution” to the city’s continued criminalization of homelessness and mental illness. “Ditto,” said Lynn Richardson, chief of the Dallas County Public Defender’s Office, which represents many…
Don’t get a ticket. Buses, light rail and the Trinity Railway Express are all free Tuesday night beginning at 6 p.m., thanks to MillerCoors. But you’ll need to keep your eyes on the clock after that midnight kiss. Buses and trains are operating on a normal weekday schedule. That means most…
It was quite a year for the Dallas police. The city recorded 200 murders, the most in over a decade. The governor sent state troopers to South Dallas amid complaints that the city’s police department is understaffed, drawing accusations of overpolicing from local community leaders. Not to mention the conviction…
Aaron Dean, the former Fort Worth police officer who shot and killed a black woman in her home, was indicted by a grand jury for murder on Friday morning. Atatiana Jefferson, 28, was playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew in October when a neighbor called a non-emergency police hotline…
Several hundred people rallied outside of Rep. Colin Allred’s offices in Richardson on Tuesday evening in support of the congressman’s planned vote for impeachment. For more than an hour, they chanted anti-Trump slogans and waved signs at passing cars. Some drivers sped off, others laid on their horns in solidarity…
