Twenty years ago on Tuesday, Dallas Area Rapid Transit officially got into the light-rail business, opening an 11-mile “starter system” that carried passengers between downtown’s Pearl Station on the north and Oak Cliff in the south (Westmoreland Station on the Red Line, Illinois Station on the Blue Line). Since then,…
The Dallas ISD board is going to take a long look at board Vice President Miguel Solis’ idea to get stop suspending kids in kindergarten, first and second grade. Solis hopes it’s not too long. Solis first brought up his plan at last month’s board briefing. Keeping kids out of…
It’s here, ladies and gentlemen, Dallas County’s first spraying of the upcoming, sure-to-be epic mosquito season. Thursday afternoon, Dallas County Health and Human Services announced that one of its mosquito traps in Balch Springs tested positive for West Nile virus. The county sprayed Balch Springs overnight Thursday and will continue…
Here are some observations that may help you put the city’s projected budget shortfall of $19 million for 2016-2017 into a proper context. In a total city budget that was something over $3 billion last year, a $19 million shortfall will amount to about 0.6 of one percent of the…
Very late Thursday afternoon, a Dallas County judge ruled that Dennis Topletz can’t intimidate, threaten or retaliate against his tenants for the duration of city of Dallas’ lawsuit against him. Topletz is, if you believe the city and The Dallas Morning News, a slumlord. He owns about 200 houses in…
Assessed home values in Dallas County were up by 12.2 percent across the board in 2016, thanks to the region’s robust housing market. While the state caps any increase in taxable value at 10 percent a year, the rise still means pain for homeowners, especially those in the middle of…
An effort by the Bureau of Land Management to lease mineral rights on 259 acres of BLM land near or under Lewisville Lake is off the table for now, thanks partly to protests from lakeside towns worried about what drilling for oil and gas might do to the reservoir’s dam…
Somebody slipped me a copy of a 2-inch-deep, loose-leaf binder being circulated to members of Dallas’ park board, who are stalled on what to do with Fair Park, the city’s 277-acre post-apocalyptic exposition park two miles south of downtown. No wonder they’re stalled. This week was supposed to be the…
A Tarrant County grand jury decided not to indict former Arlington police officer Brad Miller for killing an unarmed 19-year-old man last August at a car dealership on Interstate 20. Miller, his training officer Dale Wiggins and four other officers answered an alarm at the Classic Arlington early on August…
Of Dallas ISD’s 227 schools, eight are reasonably affluent, meaning half or less of their student populations are poor. Even then, to get to eight, one must count William B. Travis Academy (fourth and fifth grades) separately from William B. Travis Vanguard (sixth through eighth) even though they share a…
This year, DART is celebrating 20 years of the agency’s yellow and white light-rail trains moving people around North Texas in one form or another. DART’s system traverses more than 90 miles of track, making it the longest light rail system in the country, and claims more than $8 billion…
There’s nothing funny about the affluenza defense. I’m not trying to be funny. I’m serious. A light bulb came on over my head this morning when I read a letter to the editor. In all seriousness, is there not some sense in which the affluenza theory could be applied legitimately…
On a chill night four days after Christmas, Steve Baxter settled into the molded plastic bleachers in The Colony High School gymnasium and beamed as his younger son, Andrew, took the court for his fifth straight game as the Richardson Pearce Mustangs’ starting point guard. Baxter had ample reason to…
On the one hand, naming a linear park on an old bridge for a former mayor seems like something that would fall somewhere between a nice thing to do at best and at the very worst harmless. But it’s the misdirection that counts. When you look at what some city…
Wahib Sadek Hamed claimed to be a terrorist. Shirtless, with tan pants, long beads and shaggy dark hair, the 22-year-old Hamed parked his car in the middle of a roadway in Arlington on May 26, then jumped out of his car and lunged at people who passed in their cars…
Last November, the National Institutes of Health announced that it would stop providing funding to biomedical research using chimpanzees as test subjects. “NIH will no longer maintain a colony of 50 chimpanzees for future research. All NIH-owned chimpanzees that reside outside of the Federal Sanctuary System operated by Chimp Haven,…
Marijuana wasn’t always illegal in the United States. In colonial times, hemp was used as legal tender in colonial Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland. In the 1800s, cannabis was ubiquitous as an ingredient in tinctures and pharmaceuticals. Its highly concentrated extract, hashish, enjoyed a burst of popularity in mid-century, captured in…
How much has Dallas really changed since the 1950s? Deep down? At heart? Last Friday The Dallas Morning News ran a mish-mash editorial that finally wound up apologizing for and defending the city’s recent semi-official association with Robert Jeffress, pastor of Dallas First Baptist Church. Jeffress you know. He is…
Immigration and civil rights groups have stepped in the middle of the fight over immigration between Texas and the Obama administration, appealing a lower court decision they say threatens their clients’ privacy. The National Immigration Law Center, American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project and the ACLU of Texas aim to…
Somehow, Ken Starr keeps making Baylor’s expanding sexual assault catastrophe even worse. Friday morning, a Waco TV station released the full video of an interview it conducted with Starr on Wednesday shortly after he made the decision to resign as chancellor of the university. During the interview, KWTX’s Julie Hays asks…
When the Rangers and Arlington announced a plan for the team to play in new, climate-controlled digs as early as 2021, it seemed too soon. Globe Life Park — formerly The Ballpark in Arlington, Ameriquest Field and Rangers Ballpark in Arlington — had just turned 22 and wouldn’t be 30…
Uh-oh. Grab your wallet. The Dallas Morning News editorial page wants you to know about a very exciting City-Hall-run real estate development on Lancaster Road across from the Veterans Administration hospital, six miles south of downtown: “This is an important project,” the paper said this week. “It’s prime property on…
