Just last month, we learned that Dallas Animal Services had around 30 vacancies in shelter and field operations that urgently needed to be filled — this, despite a RIF process in October that saw 53 people laid off and replaced with temporary workers. At Thursday afternoon’s Animal Shelter Commission meeting,…
For years, the city has wanted to do something, anything about the 60-year-old public housing project on Bexar Street known as Turner Courts, once described in a council briefing as “severely distressed,” a victim of “elevated rates of vandalism and criminal activity” and in desperate need of demolition. Things were…
One year ago, or close enough, Stephen Page gave us a tour of his Texas Museum of Automotive History in Grand Place at Fair Park — its temporary home, we were told, but an appropriate one, given the space’s estimable past as the site where the Ford Motor Co. had…
Like I said yesterday, Rick Santorum’s in town today raising money for his campaign. This morning it was coffee at a country club — Royal Oaks, to be specific, on Greenville Ave., where cups were filled for $1,000 a pop, $2,500 if you were among the “hosts.” Then it’s off…
It’s not often we get invitations to flood the mayor’s office with phone calls — we tend to do that all on our own — but LGBT rights group GetEQUAL TX is planning a different sort of mass phone-in to Mayor Mike Rawlings’s office tomorrow. According to this here Facebook…
Speaking of “complete streets” …For many months now City Hall’s been trying to wrap its head around the Complete Streets concept in the hopes of finishing up a street-design manual and implementation how-to’s by year’s end. Which is why, beginning last fall, Sustainable Development began workshopping Complete Streets all over…
Says here Rick Santorum’s coming back to town tomorrow for a fundraiser on behalf of his Red, White and Blue Fund super PAC, which declined to nail down the Dallas date; it also doesn’t appear on his official campaign schedule, and his campaign folks haven’t responded to our queries either…
For the last two days my inbox has been flooded — flooded — with emails from residents and property owners around the downtown farmers market, each one of which more or less says the same thing: Those two supportive housing projects being proposed downtown — Larry Hamilton and John Greenan’s…
Final Rick Perry-for-President footnote? Next to last? Please, no more? Look, there’s one more point to drive home here. Then I think I can promise not to mention it again. I think I can. Now that he’s not running for president any more, Perry apparently has returned to his more…
President and CEO of Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance Mike Faenza said as much yesterday: He knows he’s “at risk of looking like Don Quixote” here, but he really, really believes Dallas can end its chronic homelessness problem by 2015. Which is why earlier today he did his best to convince…
Yesterday we took a sneak peek at City Auditor Craig Kinton’s audit that reveals the city’s code of ethics comes up awful short. As in, for starters: It doesn’t explicitly offer whistle-blowers protection. It doesn’t task one City Hall monitor with keeping the city on the up-and-up. Its ethics commission…
This afternoon, Dallas Residents at Risk, a coalition of of anti-fracking activists, will unveiling their map featuring what they say are more than 100 drilling leases on city-owned land totaling some 1,400 acres. The colorful visual shows that the extent of gas drilling leases in Dallas goes well beyond the…
In the end, the council’s Economic Development Committee didn’t want to talk about economic impact studies or debate the risk of sinking $12 million into a project where its partner fell millions short when it came to raising matching funds. In the end, most of its members wanted to make…
Earlier this month the city council’s Housing Committee was told during this briefing the Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs doesn’t have much coin to spare this year when it comes to doling out its Low Income Housing Tax Credits — just $7.6 million total for a region spanning…
Let’s begin with what City Manager Mary Suhm said to wrap up the February 1 council back-and-forth over the recently revived Texas Horse Park: “If y’all don’t want to do this, just tell me.” But, look — it’s not that everyone don’t want a nice equestrian facility along the Trinity…
Shortly before the holidays, Leslie sat in on an Ethics Advisory Commission get-together during which its members stewed in an existential funk, asking themselves such questions as: “”Are we accomplishing what we were created to accomplish?” And: “What does the culture of ethics look like?” And: “How do we define…
Behind the paywall this morning is The News’s exclusive concerning “stealth billionaire” (Band Name Alert™) Kelcy Warren’s purchase of the naming rights for the Woodall Rodgers Deck Park, which henceforth shall be known as Klyde Warren Park — so named for the Energy Transfer Equity CEO and chair’s 9-year-old son…
Contained in the stack of memos sent to the city council late last night was the rare note from Mayor Mike Rawlings. In it, he asks the Fab 14 to make every attempt to attend one of the three committee briefings in coming days during which council members will be…
“When do we get to go home?” Alice Gossett inquired, a little irritably. She wore brown pajamas and soft purple booties. Tiny in her wheelchair, her feet didn’t quite reach the ground. “As soon as we get our treat!” the nurse answered, beaming at her. Gossett was not impressed. “Never…
Last month, you’ll no doubt recall, City Manager Mary Suhm told the city council that 2012 bond program, which we’ll vote on in the fall, will be a fraction of a shadow of a hint of its mammoth ’06 predecessor, which appears to be the gift that keeps on giving…
If you need a new benchmark to measure just how broke you are, try “asset poverty.” Asset-poor households would be unable to survive for three months at the federal poverty level if some crisis caused them to lose their source of income. As Robert mentioned earlier, asset poverty is the…
Council member Delia Jasso is officially disturbed by ERCOT’s charts, particularly the bar graph showing a big gray empty space between the reserve margin we need to make sure the lights stay on during hot summer afternoons and the colored part that indicates how much generation capacity we’ll actually have…
