After Mayor Tom Leppert quashed public comments and instructed city staff to bring more options to the city council in August regarding the Dallas Love Field Airport concession contracts, Schutze declared victory for Angela Hunt, who had told us that she had enough support to defer the item until the…
I remember Dad taking me a high-school football game to old P.C. Cobb Stadium, and I saw the Dallas/Fort Worth Spurs play minor-league baseball at Turnpike Stadium. What I don’t remember is something called the Dallas Submarines. Apparently they evolved into the Dallas Steers? P.C. Cobb is now the Infomart…
City Hall just posted the latest fiscal forecast for what remains of FY2009-’10, and, unexpectedly, it’s cloudy with a chance of shitstorms. Right now, it looks like the sales tax falloff through April, at least, is $6.3 million less than originally budgeted — if, that is, revenue rates stay the…
City Manager Mary Suhm and I spoke a few days about about how she’s trying to find $131.1 million to excise out of the FY2010-’11 budget, which she’ll present to council upon its return from summer vacay in August. And so, while the council takes its summer break and Suhm…
A couple of weeks ago, we broke the news that Park and Rec would like to ask voters for the permission to some day maybe pretty please sell Samuell Farm and Samuell New Hope Park, two properties given to the city by physician and philanthropist William Worthington Samuell with the…
Hard to say when Andy Siegel’s going to file his lawsuit against the city of Dallas in which he will claim that the city council called an illegal local option election concerning the sale of beer and wine citywide. He told me last night it should be today; I’ve also…
[Update at 9:14 p.m.: So, for those still with us at this late hour (and, really, why?), the council’s back — and City Secretary Deborah Watkins has just announced that Progress Dallas did indeed gather “a sufficient number of signatures” to trigger a November 2 election regarding the sale of…
Mayor Tom Leppert just stopped down the city council’s meeting to announce that, yes indeed, Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway and Ron Natinsky and Friends of Fair Park’s Craig Holcomb have managed to resurrect the Fair Park Fourth … on July 5. And they’ve done so with the donations of…
About 75 people gathered outside Dallas City Hall today — accompanied by a 20-foot banner that said, “To Redeem the Soul of America” — and accused city leaders of waging ideological war on the poor. The Poor People’s March on City Hall Plaza didn’t march anywhere but did aim a…
With my trusty laptop in hand, I prepared to liveblog the heck outta today’s city council meeting — the last one before the council leaves for its July recess and then returns to tackle a $131 million budget shortfall. But I soon realized that the council chambers lack an electrical…
As Andrea noted in her liveblog Monday, Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway stopped down the council’s Public Safety Committee meeting to rant against a different kind of crime: the end of fireworks at Fair Park on July 4. Said Caraway, “We’re inviting people to go out to Plano and see…
The Dallas City Council’s seven minority council members launched a counterattack this afternoon against Mayor Tom Leppert’s campaign opposing the Love Field concession contract extensions, with Vonciel Hill and others reminding Leppert that City Manager Mary Suhm is in charge. “Twice the citizens of this great city have defeated a…
I see here that Andy Siegel, an attorney at Shackelford, Melton & McKinley, is claiming that Progress Dallas has come up 5,555 signatures short of getting the dry parts of Dallas soaking wet in beer and wine. To which Progress Dallas, headed by Kroger’s Gary Huddleston says, “What the what?”…
A “poor people’s march” at Dallas City Halll at noon tomorrow will kick off a campaign of protests aimed primarily at Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert. Veteran community activists blame Leppert’s political ambitions for what they insist is a one-sided assault on city programs for the poor. “When you make a…
Ken Carter, a consultant working for Dallas Love Field Airport food and beverage concessionaire Gilbert Aranza, sent us word yesterday afternoon that the city council’s seven minority members are expected to appear at noon today inside City Hall’s lobby along with other community leaders for a press conference supporting contract…
Angela Hunt, revealed in last week’s Observer as the swing vote on the controversial concession contract extensions at Dallas Love Field Airport, has continued to research the issue following her maternity leave, but she hasn’t made up her mind yet and now supports a deferral of the items until August,…
This, in case you have not heard, is the “Summer of Justice.” Which, as far as summers-of goes, ranks somewhere in between the Summer of Love, the “Summer of ’69,” The Summer of George and The Summer of My German Soldier, a sadly forgotten Kristy McNichol vehicle from 1978. The…
Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway opened today’s Public Safety Committee meeting with a gift to his fellow committee members — what appear to be candy-scented, hold the phone, rolling papers. As the city council members bumbled with tearing open what looked like metallic Airhead wrappers, Caraway name-dropped K2, the herbal…
When Jason Roberts first introduced the Better Block Block project in late March, he did so with the caveat that it was “a ‘living block’ art installation” intended to prove it’s possible to turn a screwed-up Oak Cliff intersection zoned “light industrial” into something livable and walkable. But three months…
For weeks we’ve wondered: When will Dallas get around to building an honest-to-God movie-television production facility? Because the city’s filling up with shows, but production companies have scant options: Fair Park, which The Good Guys will have to adios upon its August return (fingers crossed) to make way for State…
It’s unusual for Dallas City Hall to send word of a briefing involving the Dallas Police Department, but last night, a little after 10, Frank Librio notified the media of a briefing scheduled for 11:15 p.m. concerning “the incident in Lancaster.” By now, you no doubt know what he was…
The boy and I were downtown yesterday. We’d just been to Dallas Farmers Market and taken a long drive through the Cedars so he could take pictures. He asked, from the backseat, if we could go to Main Street Garden. I asked, “Why?” Told him he couldn’t play on the…
