Ross Avenue rename: So that's what a smoke-filled room looks like

Interesting take on the Cesar Chavez/Ross Avenue renaming process in the Observer's blog today, as Sam Merten walks through the backstage theatrics of how we arrived at a point where some city street — maybe any street except for Industrial — apparently has to be named to honor Chavez and to save face for the council's Hispanic politicians. Among the interesting points: Apparently the city's Trinity River Corridor Project committee got together before the street name vote, decided to link the two votes together (one to rename Industrial, the other to rename Ross) and then essentially traded votes among the group to ensure that everyone supported everyone else's agenda — as one Observer commenter point out, isn't there a requirement for open meetings to keep this stuff from happening? Mayor Tom Leppert continues to pull his invisible man routine on this issue, failing to provide some public leadership on a way out of this politically idiotic tradeoff. Maybe he's in Italy looking for another steel supplier for the bridge...

Comments

[Julie]

Whatever happened to the survey with 52% in favor of Cesar Chavez? Does the opinion of Dallas resident not count?

I say change Ross Ave. to Cesar Chavez; our city must show our acceptance and respect to minorities. For those saying that they are erasing the history of the Ross brothers, it has been proposed to put a historical marker which will more likely increase awareness about the brothers... at least more than a 100 people will know about the brothers.

[Rick Wamre]

As for the survey, remember that it was conducted to consider renaming Industrial Boulevard — Ross Avenue was not mentioned in the survey and really had nothing to do with it. Ross only became embroiled in the issue when the Trinity River subcommittee of the city council decided not to abide by the survey's result as it relates to Industrial and instead started looking around for another street to rename for Chavez.