I was looking for something extremely unrelated on the city’s bids website when I came across what’s referred to as an “informal solicitation,” which is what landed Schutze in the county lockup in the early 1970s. And seeing as how we take and take and take from City Hall but…
Ran into Chris Penn of Good Records yesterday, at which point he told me about the sign planted in the middle of Greenville Avenue yesterday by the city’s Public Works department — the one that says southbound Greenville between Bell and Alta will be closed from September 26 till November…
In the end, it would be quicker to name the council members who didn’t submit amendments to the Redistricting Commission by Monday’s 3 p.m. deadline: Sheffie Kadane, Angela Hunt, Jerry Allen and Sandy Greyson. Everyone else had something to say, including Mayor Mike, who actually turned in two amendments –…
In April 2010, Mike Modano told us he wasn’t sure if he was ready to retire. He sure felt like it, he said: “At this point, on this day, I can make the decision: I’m done.” But, of course, he wasn’t: After a tear-stained farewell to the American Airlines Center…
Tonight at the Texas Theatre, the Dallas Video Festival kicks off its five-day run at the Texas and Angelika with screenings of Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme (“filled with sensuous pleasures,” insists our J. Hoberman) and Slacker 2011, wherein 24 Austin-based filmmakers pay homage to Richard Linklater’s 1991 day-in-the-life debut. An…
Yesterday we got ’round to covering the first half of the council’s Arts, Culture & Libraries Committee meeting — the part about how other cities spend more on their arts organizations than Dallas, and how we might be able to fix that. (Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette tax.) This morning,…
Back in August, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said he was taking a long, hard look at Mortgage Electronic Registration System, which, as we noted at the time, was created in 1995 by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other financial institutions to speed up the recording and transfer of…
I’m dialed into the inaugural meeting of the council’s Arts, Culture & Libraries Committee, tasked by Mayor Mike, as you’ll recall, with finding “alternative funding sources” to help make Dallas “a smart, cultured and creative city.” And God bless her, Maria Munoz-Blanco, director of the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs,…
Speaking of Dallas ISD public hearings …A few weeks back, in advance of a series of town halls, we sneak-peaked the district’s vague suggestions offered to improve its 33 academically unacceptable campuses. But on the board’s meetings-and-agenda website, you’ll find the so-called School Improvement Plan for each individual campus prepared…
Next week’s council agenda makes it official: The long-talked-about expansion of César Chávez Boulevard and Pearl Expressway downtown, from Commerce Street to Live Oak Street, is on track to begin in December. The council is set to sign off on paying $12,473,920 to Tiseo Paving Company to do the job,…
This afternoon at 1, the city council’s Budget, Finance, and Audit Committee will get together with a jam-packed agenda that will include an appearance by City Auditor Craig Kinton, who will outline his FY2012 to-do list. (Which includes a look-see at the city’s ethics, as in: “Assess and evaluate the…
That’s the full title of the latest JWP protest being staged by the National Black United Front, not to be confused with the Judean People’s Front or the Popular Front of Judea, who will return to the Pan-African Connection Bookstore across the street from Fair Park, scene of last month’s…
Anna’s going to swing by Midway Hills Christian Church tonight at 7, where Dallas Independent School District trustee Edwin Flores will host a town hall. The point of this meeting, per a DISD heads-up: “Dr. Flores requests input from the public on selecting a new Superintendent of Schools.” Oh, I…
Maybe you read the piece in the paper over the weekend about how all those Dallas County deputy constables who blew all those whistles on Dallas County Precinct 1 Constable Derick Evans and former Precinct 5 Constable Jaime Cortes are scared of losing their jobs. They have good reason: The…
Back in February we noted that former municipal judge Staci Williams — a Hockaday graduate with a Georgetown law degree — had filed a federal suit against the city of Dallas over her dismissal in June 2010, when the city council’s Ad-Hoc Legislative Committee refused to reappoint her to that…
Now that it’s wrapped budget amendment talk, the council’s in executive session, where one of the agenda items reads: “Legal issues regarding proposed resource flow control ordinance.” And not a moment too soon. Not only is council set to return to read over those flow control Q&A’s we posted Saturday,…
The council’s wrapped up straw-voting on those budget amendments, one of which involved those changes to Dallas-Fire Rescue’s dispatch scheduling. Sheffie Kadane had proposed leaving the schedule as it is now: with DFR employees working one 24-hour shift, followed by 72 hours off. Because, he said, going City Manager Mary…
A little after 9 this morning, the city council just took up those budget amendments we mentioned Saturday morning. First up was the slam dunk: the en masse suggestion, led by Mayor Mike Rawlings, to eliminate one more city-worker furlough day, fill those five pools and up funding for the…
On Wednesday, two Dallas Fire-Rescue workers told Mayor Mike and the rest of the council that two proposals in the city manager’s budget were “a disaster in the making.” They take issue with Mary Suhm’s proposal to alter and reduce shifts for dispatchers, which Suhm says will save around $1…
It wasn’t so long ago that Dallas Police Department would show witnesses for the prosecution six photos of would-be suspects and ask: Which one? Which is how, in part, Dallas became what Innocence Project of Texas founder Jeff Blackburn called “ground zero for criminal justice change” in our 2007 cover…
What you’ll find after the jump was posted to Vimeo only a few hours ago: a cleaned-up version version of Ken Harrison’s 1981 doc on Western Swing fiddle-playing legend Johnny Gimble titled, simply, Gimble’s Swing. The film, made for the Tennessee Folklore Society, was exec produced by Blaine Dunlap, another…
Bud Buschardt has spent the last several years writing a book I’ve always wanted to read: a history of the Sump’n Else show, the Ron Chapman-hosted rock-and-roll dance party shot at NorthPark Center that aired on WFAA from September 1965 till January 1968 and featured performances from the likes of…
