When HUD Secretary Ben Carson came to town at the end of last week, all of the players in the Dallas affordable housing issue were on pins and needles. Nobody knows yet how real the Trump thing is in terms of changing housing programs. Carson’s agency, HUD, is the mother…
Now the May 6 City Council elections are barely a month away, and it’s time to start looking for the weird stuff. As usual, nothing is ever weirder than District 14 in East Dallas. For decades East Dallas has been the city’s most politically volatile region, sort of like an…
The 2016 mosquito season did not bode well for the human side of the fight. The number of trapped mosquitoes that tested positive for the West Nile virus broke records and the birth defect-causing Zika virus emerged in Dallas County. With this in mind, Dallas County Health and Human Services is…
The Rangers begin their 2017 regular season Monday night. That’s a good thing. After bowing out of the 2016 playoffs in the minimum three games to the Blue Jays, the 2016-17 offseason, thanks in no small part to the World Baseball Classic, has been interminable. Now, finally, after nearly six…
In the world of lawn care, one robot in Dallas rises to the level of celebrity. That’s the Spider ILD02. On Thursday it drew a small crowd of gawkers, mostly parks department employees, while cutting the grass near Reverchon Park. The North Texas Tollway Authority uses the remote controlled robot…
Mayor Mike Rawlings and his friends in the private business group called the Dallas Citizens Council obviously must have learned their lesson when they tried and failed to give away Fair Park, a 277-acre city-owned asset, without a proper public bidding process. Never going to pull a blooper like that…
This week was perhaps the most eventful of John Wiley Price’s federal corruption trial. It was also the shortest, featuring just one full day of testimony thanks to a scheduled break to allow jurors to take off for personal business. But before they got their break, jurors heard damaging testimony…
On Thursday, the city announced that it’s received $13.45 million to fund an aggressive spay and neuter initiative across the city. The money comes from three groups: the W.W. Caruth, Jr. Foundation; the Rees-Jones Foundation; and the Dallas Foundation. [content-1] “This initiative is a direct response to the calls from the community…
Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne is quitting her post to join Donald Trump’s administration as early as next week, the mayor told attendees of the AT&T Byron Nelson golf tournament’s kickoff luncheon Thursday. Van Duyne didn’t say what her role would be in Washington, but said an announcement is coming…
This week, Dallas police released video of the men who raided the rooms of a wedding party and made off with $100,000 worth of goods. Today, the department announced an arrest, prompted by an anonymous tip. In early March, on the night before her wedding, Jeanette Engler returned to her room…
“We need your help,” Collin County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Chief Mark Sanderson told the New Hope City Council on Tuesday night. “It’s an officer safety issue, but it’s starting to slow our response times. Like I said earlier, we’re in the double digits, and they’re going up.” Sanderson has been…
Former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Michael Irvin is under investigation for sexual assault in Florida, the Fort Lauderdale police department confirmed Wednesday. While the department is not releasing details from what it calls an ongoing investigation, a department spokesperson said in a statement that Irvin was named in an incident…
This year’s winner of the first Jim Schutze Not My Job Award (flourish, drum-roll, hushed gasp) goes to … JERRY CHRISTIAN, member of the board of directors of DART, the regional transit agency. Asked recently if DART should lend a helping hand to save the endangered Dallas Police and Fire…
Wednesday afternoon, the National Weather Service confirmed that two tornadoes struck North Texas in the midst of Tuesday night’s damaging winds and rain in North Texas. The first, labeled an EF0 tornado by the NWS, which means it featured winds of 65 to 85 mph, hit North Fort Worth, Keller…
Earlier this month a bride returned to her room at the Ritz-Carlton in Dallas to find the room raided by burglars. They targeted the jewelry, including her engagement and wedding rings, as well makeup, credit cards, Gucci wallets and anything else that looked like it was worth stealing. “It will…
This week Dallas police released information about the motives behind the city’s 2016 homicides at a pubic meeting. The stats are interesting, as are some of the back stories behind them. Not everything is as black and white as the stats portray. Here are the stats presented by DPD…
Amazing what one good speech can stir up. Amazing good, amazing bad, time will tell. But a speech to the City Council last week by District 6 candidate Omar Narvaez certainly stirred the pot. Days after Narvaez heaped shame and brimstone on the mayor and council for possible massive evictions…
A lethal fungus that has driven some bat species to near extinction across the eastern United States has been found for the first time in Texas, researchers say. Biologists from Bat Conservation International and Texas A&M University’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences and Institute of Renewable Natural Resources spent…
Rumors of young drug dealers pressuring classmates swirled in Oak Cliff schools after an 11-year-old student at Stockard Middle School killed himself last week. In response, DISD officials sent out a drug detection dog to middle schools. The dog’s first stop was March 20 at Stockard Middle School and there were no…
Hard to tell what the jurors get out of a particular witness, but I know what I got from watching former Dallas County Judge Jim Foster on the stand Monday in the federal bribery corruption trial of County Commissioner John Wiley Price. Affirmation. Affirmation is good, but in the weird…
Park Department employees spotted the man’s corpse in Lake Cliff Park on the morning of March 18, lying outside a drainage tunnel that police say he used for shelter. The initial police report says the 60-year-old was wearing a hospital wristband and showed no signs of trauma. The medical examiner…
For Our Community sure doesn’t like Dallas City Council member Philip Kingston. The pro-Trinity toll road political action committee, founded by Dallas political consultant Mari Woodlief in 2015, is coming after the outspoken District 14 incumbent with a bevy of campaign mailers and an ominous website. Woodlief, who is best…
