Chris Heinbaugh, Mayor Tom Leppert’s chief of staff, sent hizzoner’s weekly sked this morning, and it says that Wednesday night and Thursday morning (and, like, early Thursday morning) he’s got a date with the FIFA World Cup Soccer Site Selection Committee. Remember: Dallas is among the 18 cities that made…
Eddie Bernice Johnson, who keeps changing her story about those scholarships that went to family members, appeared last night on Anderson Cooper 360 (via telephone). The segment was called “Keeping Them Honest.” And Anderson did not disappoint…
Sooner or later, sure, we’ll all be biking to work or play. Or taking DART. Or riding hovercrafts. Or jet packs. Or solar-powered water taxis. But till that day happens, well, we gotta park our cars somewhere. And, like I need to tell you, that ain’t easy sometimes. Which is…
A few weeks back, you no doubt recall, Virgin America announced that in December, it would begin flying out of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. The announcement was made in Houston, at the National Business Travel Association confab, and, turns out, Time’s Stacy Perman was on-hand for the announcement. So too…
Two months ago Intern Elliot broke the news that City Manager Mary Suhm was considering putting Dallas Farmers Market (and Fair Park) in the hands of a private operator, a la the city’s deal with the Dallas Zoological Society last year. At the time, there was no time line for…
From the in-box, this from one good Friend of Unfair Park: “What the h is going on with the landscaping on Central? Is TxDOT letting everything die? It looks like crap.”Good question(s). And I have the answer.First, let’s flashback to a meeting of the city council’s Transportation and Environment Committee…
Led by Councilwoman Delia Jasso, a group of sexual assault resource centers and the Dallas Police Department held a press conference today at City Hall announcing the sexual assault awareness campaign that’s been launched in response to a 25% increase in sexual assault offenses this year. Officially, we didn’t hear…
On Monday I noted that city officials were anxiously awaiting a verdict in the 4-year-old case of City of Dallas v. TCI West End Inc., which concerned the demolition of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Freight Station in the West End in ’06. The trial started two weeks ago, and on Friday, city…
Thanks to Roger Ebert’s early-Tuesday-morning tweet (“Beck’s next rally is planned for Nov. 22 in Dallas, at Dealey Plaza”), I’ve received more than a few e-mails from people wondering, in short: Really? No, not really. (I don’t think.) But he will be in Alaska on September 11. (And the other…
Rep. Donald Payne, a Democrat from New Jersey, is the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation — which, as you’re well aware by now, is where Eddie Bernice Johnson found the $25,000 she gave in scholarships to relatives and her top aide’s kids. And Payne’s so livid over the…
This morning the council takes its most detailed look yet at Mary Suhm’s proposal to gut the libraries’ budget for the coming fiscal year. The briefing goes back a few years too — back to when branches were open 47 hours (some on Sundays) and were fully staffed, when the…
When I called earlier this afternoon, no one in the City Attorney’s Office had yet seen the freshly minted copy of Judge Elizabeth Lang-Miers’s opinion in which the 5th District Court of Appeals tossed out attorney Andy Siegel’s writ of mandamus filed on July 2. So, at the moment, no…
Many thanks to the several Friends of Unfair Park who’ve forwarded along Austin American-Statesman PolitiFact Texas’s editor W. Gardner Selby’s list of Texas Influencers — which consists of the 50 most-powerful Democrats and Republicans in the state.Not all are presently working in Texas — like, oh, former Dallas Mayor Ron…
Alas, Rudy beat me to it in pointing out that someone at Dallas City Hall posted to the city’s official Facebook page this morning two pics taken from the very tippy-top of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. But Rudy opted for the view of the city (I can see my…
Even though Mayor Tom Leppert won an important battle when Angela Hunt voted on August 18 against a plan to extend the concession contracts at Love Field Airport for three well-connected Democrats — U.S. Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, state Rep. Helen Giddings and former Dallas Citizens Council director Gilbert Aranza…
“Do a tax rate increase.” That’s how City Manager Mary Suhm sums up the feedback from Thursday night’s budget meeting at Edna Rowe Elementary. “That’s pretty universal when we’re at town hall meetings,” she says. Despite the overwhelming number of residents pleading for a tax increase to restore Suhm’s budget…
This morning, Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert talks to something called The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel about why Dallas “is on a roll.” It reads, in part, like a Mayor Tom best-of — part personal history (“I was raised by a single mother in Arizona”), part success story (“Later, I left to…
On the other side is this week’s packet of memos sent to the city council and Mayor Tom Leppert last night, a little later than usual. It’s a hefty stack, in large part because some council members had questions about Elgin B. Robertson Park, which Suhm has proposed selling to…
Willis Winters, assistant director of the city’s Park and Recreation Department, says, with a laugh, that it took him all of 30 days to write his forthcoming Fair Park history. He signed the contract with Arcadia Publishing in March, under the assumption that it wanted the book in time for…
Because an intern’s always up for a free meal, we sent ours to that PETA lunchtime giveaway in front of Dallas City Hall — where, from the looks of things, meatless weenies were quite the draw. Another two looks on the other side, with, no kiddin’, a slide show to…
Theresa O’Donnell, director of Sustainable Development and Construction for the city of Dallas, called a little while ago to discuss developers’ concerns over a City Hall proposal to hike building permit fees. She says she was “surprised and disappointed” by the letter several high-ranking members of the North Texas Commercial…
Jay Jay the Jet Plane sat empty, and the gift shop was all locked up, but it was standing room only inside the Frontiers of Flight Museum’s auditorium last night for the latest in the city’s series of town hall meetings over next year’s budget.This one was hosted by Angela…
