By now you’ve no doubt read all 624 pages of City Manager Mary Suhm’s proposed FY2010-11 budget. Or at least heard: Library branches are losing staffers, which means those who stay will have to do more with less; the downtown outpost’s specialty floors will stay dark all but 26 hours…
Well, maybe you weren’t. But the city council’s Quality of Life Committee is right about now, because, as it turns out, the city’s graffiti ordinance is, in some spots, in conflict with recently enacted state law dealing with graffiti removal. As in: State law demands owners adios-mofo that tag within…
Why? Because, as evidenced by the photo just sent by the very Friend of Unfair Park who got this thing rolling ’bout two weeks back — one John M. — that sumbitch has been chopped down. And, see, I found out about this yesterday. And I initially just updated the…
Let’s go to the lengthy transcript, which the White House just posted from last night’s big-ticket fund-raiser at the Highland Park home of the attorney and his wife, a former president of Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity. Before the politics, a shout-out to his traveling mate (“I want to also…
At its August 25 meeting, the city council will be asked to sign off on taking close to $14 million from the North Central Texas Council of Governments, which, in June, agreed to dole out exactly $13,474,712 that’ll go toward nine Dallas infrastructure projects and a few hundred thou more…
Patrick took one Friend of Unfair Park’s morning advice and went to find him a nice place to snap some photos of Air Force One as it pulled into Love Field today. Only problem was, the president arrived a little ahead of schedule, and Patrick ran into the motorcade as…
While President Obama drops by the Highland Park home of lawyer Russell Budd this evening to raise dough and break bread with local Dems, Republicans are rallying at Franklin Stadium next to Hillcrest High School to … well, to do what? “It’s not just complaining about the Democrats,” says Dallas…
While it’s well-known that Dallas County leads the country with a whopping 22 exonerations since 2001 — 20 of which resulted from the preservation of DNA evidence — there’s been some squabbling among Republicans and Democrats about who deserves the bulk of the credit: former District Attorney Bill Hill or…
That didn’t take long: Less than two hours after posting that item about Ralph Isenberg and his intention to speak with President Obama this evening about the case of Saad Nabeel, Isenberg called Unfair Park to say it’s off. According to Isenberg, one day after his Saturday chat with the…
City Hall’s attempts to regulate community gardening in Dallas is the story that won’t go away: As I mentioned at the bottom of the budget item on Friday, the council’s Transportation and Environment Committee will yet again take up the issue tomorrow — this’ll be the sixth proposal to go…
Speaking of the president’s visit …One week ago today we mentioned that Former Dallas City Plan Commissioner-turned-immigration activist Ralph Isenberg has taken up the cause of Saad Nabeel, who came to the U.S. with his parents when he was 3, graduated from Frisco’s Liberty High School, got a scholarship to…
No doubt you’ve heard: The president’s coming to town today. But one look at his schedule reveals he’s probably not staying for dessert after the early-bird buffet at the Highland Park home of attorney Russell Budd: 4:20 p.m. The President arrives in Dallas, Texas Dallas Love Field Open Press 5:25…
On July 29, Mayor Tom Leppert, Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway and Dallas Police Chief David Brown issued the joint press release calling for the ban on synthetic marijuana and salvia divinorum. The mayor got the so-called K2 ban on the fast track: The council’s scheduled to make selling it…
Moments ago, the city posted to its website the proposed budget City Manager Mary Suhm will discuss with the council at 9 a.m. Monday. It’s not a detailed breakdown by any stretch, but a terse, bullet-pointed 53-page summation of what we’ve known for months was coming — from the 450…
This is what it sounds like when a diesel-powered big rig hits the brakes — or, more to the point, the compressed engine brakes that release compressed air stored in the exhaust valves to slow down the vehicle. Got that? No? Try this, then. Or: The Straight Dope! Or maybe…
We don’t need lawyer Steven Riznyk to tell us that the immigration laws in the United States are complex and convoluted, but in stating the obvious, he’s also offering a road map for those those in need with 50 bucks and five free hours. Riznyk, who splits time between his…
After “thousands of hours of discussion and debate,” according to architect Rick Garza, head of the Bishop/Davis Land Use and Zoning Study steering committee, the Dallas City Council will finally vote on the plan Wednesday. Bob Stimson, the former city council member who’s now president of the Oak Cliff Chamber…
[Update Monday, August 9: The billboard was removed today.]One week ago today we introduced you to the latest downtown Dallas attraction — that Clear Channel billboard that damn near touches the Woodall Rodgers exit that dumps into northbound Stemmons. And while the city said on Monday, well, it appears to…
For a guy coping with the dismissal of his long-running challenge to the city’s bike helmet law, Paul Woodfield sounded in awfully good spirits this morning when I reached him by phone.Could’ve had something to do with the 160-mile bike ride through Washington State from which he and his wife…
No doubt you recall the brouhaha in June over Park and Recreation’s proposal to ask voters if it’d be OK to maybe, some day, sell Samuell Farm and Samuell New Hope Park, neither of which the city has dough enough to tend to. Long story short: The Texas Attorney General’s…
Back in June, Patrick told you about Paul Woodfield, the Southwest Airlines dispatcher who’s been engaged in a lengthy legal battle with the city over its bike-helmet ordinance — which Woodfield insists isn’t enforceable, since it doesn’t jibe with any existing state law. Woodfield, who’s been ticketed more than once…
Chris Kaplan, proprietor of Mawker Coffee, has been in Shed No. 2 at Dallas Farmers Market for 11 years — in other words, long before that $3-million redo. He was there when it was unbearably cold and insufferably hot — when it was known as “The Freeze and Fry Building,”…
