Patrick Michels, our go-to guy on all things having to do with XTO’s efforts to drill for oil and gas at Hensley Field, is presently occupied, and so, once more, it falls to me to point out what some Friends of Unfair Park have mentioned in the comments below: On…
At this very moment, Mayor Tom Leppert — for now — is taking part in the annual Elite News MLK Parade, after which he will fly to Austin for Governor Rick Perry’s inauguration. When he returns Wednesday, there will be a budget workshop at which time City Manager Mary Suhm…
Perhaps you’ve heard by now. It’s official: Mayor Tom Leppert has decided not to run for a second term. On his website, he explains:Since 2007, I’ve had one of the best jobs in the world: Mayor of Dallas. In that time, I have worked with committed Council colleagues, talented city…
I’m guessing the male “potential candidates” for mayor listed in a Wednesday Dallas Morning News article have personal lives. They’re probably in relationships or unmarried singles. Some of ’em might have kids. Others could have ailing or aging parents they’re responsible for. Maybe one or two once had or is…
Back in August we got a look at that city council briefing titled “Effective Business Strategies to Support Sustainable Growth,” in which there were numerous new fees and rate hikes proposed by the ever-shrinking, oft-backed-up Sustainable Development and Construction department in order to “recover the true costs of delivering services…
As advertised, Brent Brown, Larry Beasley and the rest of the Dallas CityDesign Studio crew welcomed 100 or so friends, neighbors and urban planning devotees to chat about their latest “Urban Structure” plan, meant to put a walkable, complete-street face on the development explosion everyone seems to expect once traffic…
Of course, no word yet from the likely local contender to run for KBH’s still-warm seat: Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert. But while poking around his website this morning (where you’ll find his positions on health care, education and public safety), I did find one interesting and heretofore overlooked note on…
There’s no shortage of names being tossed out there as would-be replacements for Kay Bailey Hutchison, who yesterday announced she won’t run for re-election to the U.S. Senate. Top o’ the list, of course, is Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, who made his intentions clear Thursday afternoon on his blog: “I…
No, no, it has nothing to do with whether or not Tom Leppert’s going to run for her Senate seat following today’s bit o’ breaking news. Sorry. That announcement’s still a few weeks off — after the Super Bowl, that’s my guess. Chris Heinbaugh, the mayor’s chief of staff, sends…
Here’s the full statement just sent out by Courtney Sanders in the senator’s D.C. office, which speaks — at length — for itself: Announcement by U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison To my fellow Texans: For the past 17 years, it has been my greatest honor to serve the people of…
Now that the city’s worst-kept secret is out in the open as Far North Dallas council member Ron Natinsky expressed his desire to replace Mayor Tom Leppert, we probed millionaire businessman Harlan Crow to get a read on whom he sees as the favorite contender among wealthy, politically connected folks…
The Dallas City Council kicked off the afternoon with a few minutes in executive session, and it didn’t take long for Mayor Leppert to bring up the SUP application for XTO Energy to drill at Hensley Field — the one we expected Dave Neumann to push for deferring for a…
At the very bottom of today’s city council agenda you’ll find a topic first introduced back in August, when the city was looking for every possible penny during the latest budget squeeze — a proposal to increase fees for zoning, development and building permit applications. Last summer, preservationists in particular…
Robert already alerted us to that item on tomorrow’s council agenda regarding XTO Energy’s proposal to drill at two of the sites it leased from the city back in 2007 — along with the newsworthy note that city staff in Sustainable Development and Construction recommended approving the applications, cutting against…
After a Friend of Unfair Park directed my attention to the Dallas Fort Worth Urban Forum chitchat about Nike’s Victory set-up, I spent a little more time cruising around the forum — always good for a revelation or 12. There, I discovered a rendering of the Woodall Rodgers Deck Park…
It’s been a rough, off-road kind of journey through the courts for helmet-free bicyclists’ rights activist Paul Woodfield, who, you surely recall, has spent years fighting the constitutionality of the city’s law requiring bike helmets. When we last checked in with him back in August, he’d just seen his federal…
A good Friend of Unfair Park sends along a video presently making the rounds in which Red Oak’s own Cindy Jacobs, self-proclaimed “respected prophet,” says there’s a very good explanation for why those 5,000 birds died in Arkansas on New Year’s Eve. And, no, it had nothing to do with…
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission is slowly but surely doling out those permits to retailers who want to sell beer and wine in the previously dry parts of Dallas (though none have been issued in the last few days). The lawsuit filed by the parties opposed to the citywide off-premise…
On the other side is a memo City Manager Mary Suhm sent to the city council and Mayor Tom late last week in which she extends an invite to Thursday’s “public discussion” of the Dallas CityDesign Studio’s West Dallas extreme makeover. Brent Brown and Larry Beasley, funded by the Trinity…
The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm watch for most o’ North Texas from late tonight till Sunday evening, but cautions: Sure, it may snow. Could be anywhere from three to five inches, matter of fact. Or not: “This is a very fluid situation and many factors may…
I certainly hope this doesn’t become a daily occurrence; no doubt you feel the same way. But there has been a development today in the city’s case against Robert Groden, the JFK conspiracy theorist who’s been selling his materials in Dealey Plaza for almost two decades and now finds himself…
Speaking of the great state o’ Texas’s $25-billion budget shortfall …Clearly, there are many Get Him to the Greek fans amongst the Friends of Unfair Park who’ve spent the better part of the morning filling the in-box with a copy of actor and Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman’s piece in today’s…
