When council member Angela Hunt said “we’re cutting muscle, we’re cutting bone” when referring to the FY2009-’10 budget, from which City Manager Mary Suhm’s looking to lose $190 million, this is what she meant: Tomorrow, Suhm will present to the council the most detailed look at proposed budget cuts yet,…
As mentioned yesterday, the Dallas Municipal Court efficiency study’s on the agenda for tomorrow’s council briefing; it actually makes its bow this afternoon at 2 during the Legislative Ad Hoc Committee meeting. And, yes, right at the top of the briefing doc, First Assistant City Manager Ryan Evans is upfront…
A Friend of Unfair Park directs our attention to Uncle Barky’s nice YouTube discovery: WFAA-Channel 8’s analog adios on Friday, a brief retrospective of the ABC affiliate that offers a far fancier farewell than KXAS-Channel 5’s anti-climactic fade-to-static. It’s worth a look-see, especially for longtime locals for whom Pete Delkus’s…
So says the fourth annual In the Driver’s Seat Road Rage Survey, commissioned by AutoVantage and released this morning. After having not even made the ’08 list, Dallas-Fort Worth zooms into the No. 2 spot on the list of Least Courteous Cities, behind only New York City and ahead of…
Monday’s public hearing on changes to Dallas’s tree ordinance — Article X of the Dallas City Code, to be specific — was quiet, cordial, and borderline erudite. Every commenter seemed as well-informed as he or she was passionate, and the breadth of experience — from two former city council members…
Earlier this afternoon, Ken Carter at Focus Communications sent along an invite to a Sunday-night prayer vigil in front of the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse — where, so happens, one week from today former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill and his missus, Sheila Farrington, finally go to…
The city council’s Economic Development Committee this morning predictably approved placing an item on the agenda of Friday’s special called council meeting authorizing a maximum bond issuance of nearly $514 million with a maximum interest yield of 5.5 percent for the convention center hotel project. The committee also weighed in…
The Texas flag’s waving in the Oklahoma breeze at this very moment: Noted The Oklahoman yesterday, director Michael Winterbottom’s about 200 miles north of here shooting the second big-screen adaptation of Jim Thompson’s 1952 novel The Killer Inside Me, about a deeply disturbed West Texas lawman who kills ’cause he…
Speaking of Wednesday’s budget briefing …Here’s a heretofore unmentioned addition to the list of proposed revenue sources to help cover a fraction of a fraction of the city’s $190-million shortfall: WRR-FM (101.1)’s spare change, of which there appears to be plenty. As it says on Page 11:Transfer from WRR for…
Back in March, the Office of the City Auditor noted that the Dallas Municipal Court system is all kinds of messed up. Which is why the Dallas City Council’s set to get briefed Wednesday on an efficiency study aimed at cleaning up the mess — though how much time the…
With the cash-strapped city of Dallas ready to shell out more than $750,000 to build a new dog park and spruce up an old one, there’s also news concerning changes at the city’s privately owned indoor dog park. At Unleashed Indoor Dog Park, size no longer matters: Instead of dividing…
Speaking of cyclist-friendly, Friend of the show Danny Hurley was slow-roasting in downtown Dallas this weekend for the CityArts Festival, where he captured this so-called Ratcycle tucked away amongst your more … um … traditional (?) art car entries. As ever, Danny returned with this slide show…
Two weeks ago I said that on June 15 – hello! – we’d know if the 2009 Texas Rangers were authentic or artificial. A pinch here. A jiggle there. Couple of healthy squeezes. And, of course, the taste test of a 5-7 stretch against some of of baseball’s best teams and the…
Via StreetsBlog New York City, we find this morning on Bike Friendly Oak Cliff an interview with Don Koski, the man charged with making Fort Worth cyclist-friendly — got that? Good. What BFOC really wants to know, of course, is what Dallas can learn from Fort Worth’s plans. To which…
Back in March, CNN and The Wall Street Journal profiled David Holmes, at right, otherwise known as the rapping Southwest Airlines flight attendant — and one of the stars of Saturday night’s SWA employee banquet at the downtown Sheraton, where, from all appearances, the airline spent far more than peanuts…
Watching the Lakers party in Orlando last night – I was wrong about L.A. in 4, but just barely -was a reminder how cruel sports can be. While former Mavericks D.J. Mbenga and Josh Powell hugged and kissed the NBA’s Larry O’Brien championship trophy, current Maverick Dirk Nowitzki is left with remorse about…
I’ll leave it to Sam to interpret the convention center hotel documents that went online Sunday in advance of the city council’s Economic Development Committee’s jam-packed meeting this morning. (Takeaway: Open by January 1, 2012; costs $346 million; contains 1,016 rooms.) In addition to the 113-page briefing titled Convention Center…
The missus’s mother is in town and, last night, offered to take the 5-year-old who lives in our house back to her hotel, awful nice of her. Which left us ill-prepared and sans plans for a Saturday night. “David Byrne at the Majestic” was the first choice — but, no,…
We’re under a tornado watch till 11 p.m., and Oncor’s still working to get power to some 80,000 homes still in the hot, sticky dark. So, fittingly, we’ll end this long, wet week with an image provided by Web Mayfield, taken yesterday on Bryan Parkway just east of Beacon Street…
About a year ago, Rich Williams became president of the Thomas Jefferson High School Alumni Association, at which time he tried to corral his counterparts ’round town for a little brainstorming session. The reason being, Williams says, the TJ group had started strong some five years back but began to…
On Tuesday, some of Temple Emanu-El’s best and brightest — plus a few outliers, among them a city employee, a builder, a developer and the Rev. B.L. Smith of the Jericho Road Community Development Corporation — gathered to brainstorm what their group has in mind for affordable housing in the…
Couple of days back, I asked the invaluable Patrick Michels if maybe he’d be interested in heading over to The Loft for Thursday night’s Air Guitar Regional Championship, if only because Air Guitar Nation happens to be one of my favorite rockumentaries of all time and, well, this looked promising…
