I spoke yesterday with a high-ranking City Hall monitor who says that based upon the feedback council members are getting at their budget town halls, a tax hike “actually might happen,” since a 1-cent increase would go a long way toward sparing proposed cuts to rec centers and, just maybe,…
About 10 percent of next winter’s college bowl games will be played right here in our backyard, two under noses in Dallas. In addition to the Cotton Bowl at Cowboys Stadium, this year will mark the debut of the Dallas Football Classic at the Cotton Bowl. And yesterday brought news…
The very top of the very morning to you, Friends. Here I am at City Hall once again (still haven’t regained my Foursquare mayorship, very upset about it) to bring you live updates from the Trinity River Corridor Project Committee meeting. Maybe you have heard about this thing, where the…
Initially, MIG’s Downtown Dallas 360 plan was due to the city council right about now; but that was before the price tag jumped to more than $700,000 to cover the cost of parking, and now it’s scheduled to be put under City Hall’s Christmas tree, can’t wait. But late yesterday…
As we mentioned last Tuesday the city council’s Quality of Life Committee got ’round to discussing some tweaks the city needs to make to its graffiti ordinance, which isn’t quite in compliance with state law. At which point Friend of Unfair Park Bill Holston, local attorney and KERA-FM commentary contributor,…
According to Dallas City Code, all but three city parks are closed from midnight till 5 a.m. (The exceptions — Barnes Bridge Park, Bachman Creek Greenbelt and William B. Dean Park — close at 10 p.m.) But according to a proposal the Park and Rec Board will consider Thursday, that’s…
It’s been a long while since we’ve gotten an update on the Elm Fork Athletic Complex — you remember, that 20-field soccer complex the city’s been pitching since the ’98 bond election. Last I recall, construction on the $38.6-million, 140-acre project, located off Walnut Hill Lane just west of Stemmons,…
Two years ago, the council’s Economic Development Committee took a long, hard look at parking rates at Love Field and agreed with the recommendation that it gradually hike prices “over several years” for several reasons — among them, Love Field’s just too cheap, and it’ll help offset some of the…
With the clock ticking on the Cliff Manor Task Force’s 6 p.m. deadline yesterday, Patrick “Buzz” Williams and I had a chance to sit down with Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance director Mike Faenza, who wanted to offers his perspective on the fight over Cliff Manor that seems to be getting…
As Mayor Tom Leppert told DMN’er Rudy Bush last night, there will be at least four options for the city council to evaluate at Wednesday’s briefing about the Dallas Love Field Airport concession contracts, two of which contain the mayor’s input. We asked Leppert’s chief of staff, Chris Heinbaugh, for…
Meant to be sung to the tune of this Squeeze single …Remember Hiram Walker Royall? Sure you do — he’s the Highland Park developer who sued anyone who wrote, reviewed or pretty much read Carla Main’s 2007 book Bulldozed: “Kelo,” Eminent Domain and the American Lust for Land, which deals…
Anderson Cooper can’t get enough of Texas Republicans’ claims that women are coming to the United States illegally to give birth to future terrorists — ya know, “terror babies,” as state Rep. Debbie Riddle called ’em during her debate with a clearly bemused Rafael Anchía Tuesday night. Wednesday, the namesake…
I saw on the City Hall blog that Meadows Foundation is calling a morning press conference to announce a grant that will allow the budget-strapped Park and Rec Department to “bring in a director of development this fall to pursue grants and donations for the City of Dallas Park and…
Wednesday night, the nine members of Dave Neumann’s hand-picked Cliff Manor Task Force abruptly ended a meeting with Dallas Housing Authority officials at DHA HQ: They walked in, listened to a few remarks from the council member, dropped off a four-pronged letter of demands, and scooted out the door. The…
The City’s slow move against community gardening continues, as evidenced by the latest set of do’s-and-don’ts — the sixth try at this — given the green-thumbs-up by the council’s Transportation and Environment Committee on Monday. The so-called Option 6 will now take root at the Zoning Ordinance Committee. To summarize…
In the end, it didn’t matter whether the meeting was open or closed to the public — because, in the end, there was no meeting at all. Yesterday we noted that council member Dave Neumann’s hand-picked Cliff Manor task force was scheduled to meet with Dallas Housing Authority higher-ups at…
This is how the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit summarizes the events that led to Dallas Police Officer Stormy Magiera filing a discrimination lawsuit against the city in early 2006, six years after she was hired:On May 21, 2005, Magiera responded to the sound of a gunshot…
The natural gas industry’s slow creep toward Dallas over the Barnett Shale has launched a small army of activists in Fort Worth’s exurbs, from small-town mayors to goat fromagers — a well-organized crew that’s gotten used to running into one another at wild parties like the EPA’s six-hour public comment…
As Andrea noted earlier, when it came time for the city council to discuss banning K2 and other synthetic cannabinoids, there was no mention of bongs, pipes and other paraphernalia — the other half of the ordinance drafted by City Attorney Tom Perkins. I finally spoke with Perkins today and…
A Friend of Unfair Park directs our attention to this Texas-sized showdown last night on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 concerning “anchor babies” — or, as Houston’s Rep. Debbie Riddle calls ’em, “little terrorists.” Offered on the other side without comment except to say it takes a good four minutes into…
Last week, the Dallas Housing Authority presented 17 people, once homeless, with a new place to stay in Cliff Manor despite earlier assurances that it would hold off till a task force figured out how to ease their transition into the neighborhood. The mayor has said he hopes to use…
Welcome back to Wednesdays at City Hall, Friends. It’s the full council’s first voting session at the horseshoe after their summer vacation, and no doubt all of them labored for hours last night trying to figure out what they were going to wear this morning to show their friends how…
