We’re less than two weeks away from finding out How the City Manager Spent Her Summer Vacation: On August 9, Mary Suhm will give present to council her proposed budget for the coming fiscal year. We’ve sneak-peeked a few of the pending cuts needed to whittle away a $131-mil deficit,…
Late Friday afternoon, while we were still sifting through those comments for and against pit bulls (and their owners), Unfair Park HQ received a call from Jill Urban, who said she called 911 on those two “un-collared” pit bulls in the M Streets area some 20 minutes or more before…
At around noon today, Kelly Qualls, a crime analyst in the Dallas Police Department’s Central Patrol Division, sent to Unfair Park three documents, all of which compare and contrast crime statistics for The Bridge-Dallas Farmers Market area beginning in 2007. All three follow, as does a DPD map of the…
And by “Dallas,” we really mean three rather familiar figures: oil man Trevor Rees-Jones, waste-ing away Harold Simmons and hotelier Robert Rowling. Reports Justin Elliott this afternoon, they’re among the four major donors who’ve contributed almost all of the $4.7 million raised so far by Rove and former Republican National…
Whilst I await some call-backs, some loose ends, odds and sods and other desiderata with which to end the work day:The Dallas Police Department sends word: Car break-ins are up — way up — in Beat 142, which is the area bordered by Mockingbird, Abrams, Belmont and Greenville. Says DPD,…
Late last week, the newly formed Lowest Lower Greenville Avenue Business Association requested a meeting with council member Angela Hunt and Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Pauline Medrano to discuss their proposed plan to rezone Lower Greenville Avenue as a Planned Development District. The LLGABA and the Greenville Avenue Restaurant Association…
A couple of weeks back we mentioned that Texas Fifth District Court of Appeals Justice Elizabeth Lang-Miers ordered the city of Dallas to respond by no later than July 19 to attorney Andy Siegel’s writ of mandamus in which he claims, among other things, that the council’s call for a…
Sam’s already gone though Willis Johnson’s lobbyist registrations forms, which were due to the city at the end of last week. But there’s still plenty of ground to cover, as evidenced by the five pages’ worth of revelations stashed away on the City Secretary’s Office’s Web site. So, where to…
Back in May there was a story in The News about attempts to ID so-called “chronic offenders” downtown who are “having a hard time complying with the laws in Dallas and the rules of The Bridge,” in the words of Deputy Chief Vincent Golbeck, who was promoted to Assistant Chief…
On a whim this morning I visited the Woodall Rodgers Deck Park’s Web site, where I found the video above: a nearly 7-minute-long Quin Mathews-made tribute to Willis Winters, the assistant director of City of Dallas Park and Recreation Department. Winters is far more than just another City Hall bureaucrat…
Back in early June, Andrea liveblogged a council committee meeting during which there was a brief discussion of paying sanitation workers a “living wage” of $8.88 per hour, which would up residential fees by some 30 cents a billing cycle. From the liveblog: “‘I disagree that $8.88 is a living…
In the last few weeks, before and after the early July 4 pepper-balling incident on Lower Greenville, we’ve had many late-night, mostly curbside conversations with folks who manage, own and work at the establishments down under. These bars, clubs and restaurants will be affected by the proposed city ordinance to…
While his political future remains unclear, Mayor Tom Leppert raised a combined $243,000 in donations in the first half of this year, according to campaign finance reports filed yesterday. Meanwhile, his officeholder account and two specific-purpose committees — Friends of Tom Leppert and Re-Elect Tom Leppert — netted only $86,000,…
After the jump is the city’s 25-page motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Robert Groden on June 30, in which alleges, among myriad other things, that the city and the Dallas police are harassing him and violating his First Amendment rights because they won’t let him sell his conspiracy-theory-pushing…
Some of the winners of the 21 National Endowment for the Arts grants handed out Thursday know precisely how — and where — that money will be spent. In Los Angeles, the $100,000 awarded through the Mayors’ Institute on City Design 25th Anniversary Initiative will go toward the mixed-use Broadway…
Arizona’s new immigration law has been a polarizing political issue to say the least, with President Obama challenging its constitutionality through the Department of Justice by launching a July 6 lawsuit against Arizona and Governor Janice Brewer. So it was only a matter of time before Republican heavyweights Rick Perry…
Thanks to Mayor Tom Leppert’s push for a lobbyist registration ordinance, we’re now privy to the lobbying efforts of City Hall insiders like the mayor’s top South Dallas consultant, Willis Johnson. And with quarterly reports due by the end of today, we figured it was a good time to see…
Back in June we noticed there were plans afoot to build a 150,000-square foot teevee and movie production facility at 2901 S. Lamar Street — in a warehouse owned by a partnership that includes South Side on Lamar and convention center hotel developer Jack Matthews. The $400,000 build-out cost is…
Angela Hunt wants to make one thing clear: That proposed ordinance that would rezone Lower Greenville Avenue as a Planned Development District isn’t “Area 51, black helicopter, keep-it-quiet stuff. There’s nothing secret about this.” Which is why, late Tuesday, she released the revised ordinance to be presented at a July…
A few profs and economists, among them SMU’s own Bernard Weinstein, are among those in the new issue of Fortune trying to figure out how “Texas powered through the global fiscal crisis,” while California “remains locked in such a pronounced slump compared to its economically and demographically similar cousin to…
Apart from the Caesar salad, there wasn’t much to report from the Keep the Dollars in Dallas press conference at the NorthPark Maggiano’s that couldn’t be found in Ray Perryman’s 25-page report, which we’ve already posted. So instead of back-and-forthing it with the respective pro and con groups, who’ve already…
For the last several days I’ve been trying to find out the answer to one simple question: Is the water in Fish Trap Lake — site of the Dallas Watersports Complex since put on indefinite hold by the Dallas Housing Authority — safe for wakeboarding?Chad Lacerte, who had hoped to…
