The Trinity River lakes were never going to be humongous. Seventy-five or 80 acres each, according to the Balanced Vision Plan developed for the Trinity River Corridor Project in 2003. But now the plans have been reduced to something so small — a couple of 20-acre ponds reaching a depth…
Dallas has three options to address its $900 million in street repair needs, all of them terrible. Here’s how Councilwoman Sandy Greyson laid them out during the transporation committee’s come-to-Jesus meeting on Monday: “We can put these things in our bond program and keep increasing our debt service. We can…
Last year, the city of Dallas abruptly shut down Project Reconnect, its $1.6 million effort to help ex-prisoners get housing and job training, amidst an investigation into nepotism and misallocation of funds. The Dallas Morning News reported that the inquiry centered on $91,000-per-year director Suanne Spires Durham and the possibility…
The main danger posed by Dallas’ tepid growth is, as Councilman Scott Griggs pointed out this week, that the city will find itself without enough tax revenue to maintain its sprawling infrastructure. Raise taxes and make repairs or let things decay, either response will drive people away, crunching the budget…
If Tink Nathan doesn’t belong in the Texas Legislature, we’re not sure if anyone does. The 72-year-old Republican from Kerr County, just northwest of San Antonio, has the whole package: scraggly frontiersman beard; monogrammed Texas flag shirt; an eponymous line of hunting products derived from deer urine. He’s the guy…
Every Wednesday, before and after every Dallas City Council meeting, there is an open mic session. Most of the stuff that comes up is rambling, off-topic, and beyond the scope of a municipal government’s authority (e.g. 9/11 conspiracy theories), and council members may or may not pretend to listen. Nevertheless,…
State Representative Jonathan Stickland is brash, young and cocky, just as he was when Tarrant County voters sent the 30-year-old Tea Party favorite to the Legislature two years ago. In one instance — his trailblazing email privacy bill — Stockland’s irreverence served him well, earning plaudits from civil libertarians and…
In 2016, on a yet-to-be-determined date in June, Republicans from across the country will gather somewhere to pick their next presidential nominee. Maybe it’ll be Chris Christie. Or Rand Paul. Perhaps a Jeb Bush-Ted Cruz ticket? Yes, that last one is stupid, but so is speculating on a race that’s…
This afternoon, for the first time since a marriage equality resolution went down in flames almost a year ago, the Dallas City Council made its first official nod to LGBT equality in the form of a “comprehensive statement of support” passed by the Budget, Finance & Audit Committee. The measure…
Mike Howard is not a fan of Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne. A quick glance at the one-time Irving City Councilman’s blog (written under the nom de plum Mark Holbrook) is proof of that. But it’s one thing to lob critiques of local government from the safe confines of the…
Dallas has, for the most part, missed out on the North Texas population explosion that has taken place over the past dozen years or so. While the region as a whole grew by 22 percent between 2000 and 2012, and exurbs like Frisco and McKinney more than doubled in size,…
Later this morning, gubernatorial hopeful Greg Abbott will stumping at a Tex-Mex joint in Denton. At his side: rocker/conservative troll Ted Nugent. For a candidate aiming to be taken seriously, Nugent, who has called President Obama a “subhuman mongrel” and “piece of shit” who should “suck on my machine gun,”…
Amongst the stack of campaign literature that showed up in my mailbox on Saturday, two fliers caught my eye. One featured photograph of a smiling, competent-looking Tammy Kemp, a top administrator in District Attorney Craig Watkins’ office currently running for judge in the 204th Criminal District Court. The other showed…
You probably haven’t heard of Chris Mapp, a South Texas boat salesman and one of the six also-rans challenging John Cornyn in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, and here’s hoping you never have occasion to hear of him again after March 4. If you do, chances are disconcertingly high…
Few people on the Dallas City Council seemed to be aware that the city owns over 21,000 square feet of land in Kaufman County until Wednesday, the day the land was up for sale. “I do not even know why we own that property, frankly,” councilman Philip Kingston tells Unfair…
The easy response to news that the city of Dallas is giving a $275,000 “forgiveable loan” to the owners of South Dallas’ Two Podners Bar-B-Que and Seafood is to dismiss it as crony capitalism. One of them must have a friend on the City Council who decided they needed a…
It’s been six months since the Dallas City Council rejected applications from Trinity East Energy to drill for natural gas on city-owned land it had paid $19 million to lease five years earlier. But no one really expected that to be the end of the fight. The company had spent…
Sometimes, the Dallas City Council does something important, say passing a budget or regulating natural gas drilling. More often, they spend ungodly amounts of time doing things like arguing about whether a single billboard should be allowed to advertise for condoms or strip clubs. That happened today for a full…
Back in the ’80s, Prestonwood Country Club opened a course in Plano known as The Hills. To irrigate the greens and fairways, they pumped water out of Indian Creek. What the folks at Prestonwood didn’t know at the time, or else chose to ignore, was that the water they were…
For a glimpse at how a Republican can turn a relatively moderate stance on immigration into a winning (or, at the very least, not suicidal) political issue, look at State Representative Jason Villalba. Read the meditation he penned for The Dallas Morning News in which the 42-year-old wonders how to…
Dallas County Constable Beth Villareal is in the middle of a tough reelection bid. She knows this. You can tell she knows because she sued challenger Susan Lopez-Craig because her name was too Hispanic. It would seem prudent, then, at least until the March 4 primary, for Villareal to avoid…
Remember that time last summer, back when her epic filibuster against sweeping abortion restrictions gripped the nation and roused Texas’ long-slumbering Democratic Party, when it seemed like Wendy Davis had a shot of becoming governor? Well, here’s a flying roundhouse kick of reality, courtesy of Chuck Norris:…
