A group of city officials and business leaders will join Mayor Tom Leppert today for a four-day trip to Toronto, Canada, where they’re set to tackle the issue of “sustainability.” Numbed by the vagueness of such a term, we contacted Leppert’s deputy chief of staff, Paula Blackmon, to give us…
A couple months before Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle took over for Terrell Bolton, the city council approved a $485,000 efficiency study of the department to be conducted by Berkshire Advisors, which, in September 2004, recommended the reallocation of officers and reorganization of management. Kunkle ultimately civilianized approximately 160 sworn…
Dallas County Republican Party chair Jonathan Neerman, whose Q&A with the editorial board at The News can be read in yesterday’s Points section, confirmed rumors that he’s considering a run against Democrat Allen Vaught for Texas House District 107. “I’ve heard the same rumors,” he tells Unfair Park. “I’m looking…
When Schutze told me the Dallas Chapter of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers asked him to speak this afternoon, I had to tag along, mostly because I was sure he’d made it up. But, sure enough, turned out Jim wasn’t just going to the Maggiano’s at NorthPark Center for…
A couple weeks before Dallas voters narrowly approved a publicly owned convention center hotel, we brought you exclusive photos of a private development from the offices of Jack Matthews, who’s also developing the city’s hotel. He showed us a model of what he called his “original vision” for the hotel…
After Mayor Tom Leppert announced the need to pony up $29 million to study Dallas’s levees resulting from “unacceptable” ratings by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a frustrated city official essentially blamed Hurricane Katrina for everything. “I think the corps is CYA’ing in the worst way,” I was told…
Mitchell Rasansky, who served with Don Hill on the Dallas City Council for six years and is listed as a potential witness in Hill’s ongoing federal corruption trial, says any direct ties between Hill and developer Brian Potashnik weren’t apparent to him because the majority of the city’s affordable housing…
The Texas Rangers’ offensive woes are almost laughable now as the team last night fell two and a half games back of the Angels, losing 5-2 to Los Angeles after taking a 2-0 lead in the third inning on solo homers by David Murphy and Marlon Byrd. That’s a total…
It was standing room only last night as approximately 200 folks battled the heat at White Rock Lake’s Winfrey Point for the final of four community budget forums, where several city staffers were on hand to get input on how best to address the city’s $190 million budget shortfall. City…
We’ll have more tomorrow from this evening’s final community budget forum held at White Rock Lake’s Winfrey Point, but when the dust cleared after residents were given sets of 10 green and red dots to assign one each to items in the budget they hoped to keep (green) and ditch…
We’re already breaking our promise, but because we’re strangely obsessed with the city’s struggle to get a car booting ordinance on the books, Unfair Park probed Angela Hunt regarding the city council’s decision to bring the issue back to the Transportation and Environment Committee in August. To catch everyone up,…
A conference broke out during this morning’s city council meeting shortly after Mayor Tom Leppert announced that Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Pauline Medrano and council member Angela Hunt pulled Addendum Item No. 15 regarding the booting ordinance for discussion. Leppert, Medrano and Hunt were joined Chris Heinbaugh and Paula Blackmon…
Updated at 3:07 p.m. As we mentioned yesterday, the freshly inaugurated city council is set to approve a booting ordinance after the Economic Development Committee voted unanimously June 16 to put a modified version of the staff recommendation on tomorrow’s addendum. This didn’t make the Save Deep Ellum coalition happy,…
After this morning’s city council inauguration, Angela Hunt celebrated her third term with a lunch at the Stoneleigh Hotel, where approximately 100 invited guests watched her open a copy of today’s Dallas Morning News. She read from Dave Levinthal’s article about the council members’ voting habits, and the crowd applauded…
Dave Cook, the city’s chief financial officer, revealed at Wednesday’s city council budget briefing that more than 700 layoffs included in City Manager Mary Suhm’s cost-cutting recommendations would begin sometime in August. Yet the affected employees’ jobs are intact until the council votes September 23 on a final budget. “We’re…
In December 2003, the city of Dallas issued a request for proposals to build a convention center hotel after former Mayor Laura Miller and her husband, former state Rep. Steve Wolens, months earlier helped pass legislation creating 10 years’ worth of tax rebates for hotels built within 1,000 feet of…
Council members at this morning’s special called meeting are expected to authorize a bond issuance of up to $514 million for the convention center hotel project. The agenda item restricts selling the bonds at a maximum interest yield of 5.5 percent, and a mixture of revenue bonds and Build America…
It’s still dead: When the mayor urges people to buy flood insurance, we get a little worried. It means the report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Dallas’ levees is really bad—so bad that the city council ponied up $29 million to find out what’s wrong. Mayor Tom…
Less than two years after Trey Parker and Matt Stone introduced us to the foul-mouthed Eric Cartman, Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski and Kenny McCormick on Comedy Central, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut debuted on the big screen. The boys’ crude vocabulary reaches new levels after they see Asses of…
City Manager Mary Suhm, Mayor Tom Leppert and CFO Dave Cook all stressed this morning that the city is facing the same budget challenges as other cities and states. As Cook briefed the city council for the last time before a more detailed budget is presented August 10, he said…
The city council’s Economic Development Committee this morning predictably approved placing an item on the agenda of Friday’s special called council meeting authorizing a maximum bond issuance of nearly $514 million with a maximum interest yield of 5.5 percent for the convention center hotel project. The committee also weighed in…
