Back Talk Far North Dallas

Faith vs. hope: Leppert seems to have the two confused

Over at DISD, Supt. Michael Hinojosa made a $64 million mistake with his budget, and the DMN is leading the lynch-mob to get his job.

At city hall, Mayor Tom Leppert decided — pretty much on his own — to spend an additional $250 million or so on a convention center hotel, and instead of demanding that Leppert be recalled, the DMN and city council praised his leadership.

What's going on here? We're about to find out, thanks to a pending referendum campaign against the hotel and some interesting comments Leppert made to the Real Estate Council that were recently reported by the DMN's Dave Levinthal. Given Leppert's autocratic governing style and his apparently bloated hat size, his comments say a lot about what he thinks of the rest of us.

Dallas convention center hotel: Crow petition drive to kill it?

Now here's an interesting development: associates of Anatole Hotel owner Harlan Crow (yes, that Crow family) will announce Tuesday, Sept. 16, that a political action committee is being formed to push for a referendum to kill the taxpayer-owned convention center hotel project planned downtown — all of this according to Sam Merten at the Dallas Observer. As Merten points out, this coalition of the willing is an interesting mix: Crow as the chief funding agent and political consultant Brooks Love, who with Angela Hunt very nearly pulled off last year's Trinity River referendum. And that combo is interesting because Crow was on the opposite side of Hunt's Trinity push. More info tomorrow, but this has the looks of our second big-time political cage-match in a year, and this time all of the heavyweights won't be on the same side.

Chavez to Ross update: Maybe he did come to Dallas after all

Some of the discussion about renaming Ross Avenue to Cesar Chavez has mentioned that Chavez has no Dallas or Texas connection; not so, say some historical documents and longtime residents in a DMN story. It turns out Chavez apparently participated in "protest marches and peaceful public demonstrations in Dallas" and visited the city at least 20 times, according to longtime residents. In fact, the story says he "led a group of 70 demonstrators in the parking lot of an Albertson's on Abrams Road" in 1990 and took part in a peaceful "demonstration against grape consumption" in 1985, this time at a Minyard's store on Live Oak Street.

That could turn out to be bad news for Live Oak Street if you're keeping score in the peanut gallery and waiting for Mayor Tom Leppert to come up with a Solomon-like solution — and promote it himself as such to local TV stations — to this problem he created.

Meanwhile, a former city council rep had this comment about Leppert's sudden disappearance from the public stage regarding the whole Chavez issue: Maybe Leppert has finally developed a little political savvy by learning to keep his mouth shut on a controversial issue, albeit one he created and fostered by trying to protect the real estate guys panting to develop the soon-to-be-former Industrial Boulevard.

Trinity project model: It's the only evidence of progress

The city is set to unveil a model of the Trinity project Sept. 10, but Jim Schutze points out in this week's Dallas Observer that the model is about the only visible progress on the project so far. We already knew that bridge construction has been delayed 10 months due to what was reported as steel fabrication problems; Schutze says the real reason for the delay is that it took the architect 10 extra months to "value engineer" the project — and I imagine there's still some question about how that will all work out.

And Schutze says the tollway — the big centerpiece for the project and, as I recall the pre-election argument, the precursor to any meaningful construction of downtown lakes and parks — is still on the drawing board and moving glacially, owing to continued environmental and government studies about the intelligence of building the roadway into the earthen levees protecting downtown from the Trinity.

Ross to Chavez timeline: Gather 'round the TV Sept. 18

If you've been lying awake at night worrying about the city's procedure/process for changing the name of Ross Avenue to Cesar Chavez, you can rest easy tonight: Angela Hunt has posted a simplified walk-through of the process on her website. It looks like Sept. 18 is the red-letter day to get things moving, with a public hearing of the Subdivision Review Committee (a subset of the city plan commission) set to discuss the proposed name change at 9 a.m. at city hall.

That's just the first step in the process, though; no matter what happens Sept. 18, there are certain to be more fireworks to come thereafter as first the plan commission and then the council get their chance to weigh in. And that all assumes that Mayor Tom Leppert — the instigator of this mess who has been mysteriously quiet in terms of seeking media about it lately — isn't working some behind-the-scenes compromise to surrender Live Oak or Ash or some other relatively constituent-less street to the process.

You can rest certain of two things, though: Industrial Boulevard will become Riverfront and not Chavez, and Ross Avenue will stay Ross and not be renamed. Too many big-name donors office along Ross (you can start the list with the Dallas Bar Association's Belo Mansion and the up-and-coming Arts District), and Leppert is going to cave to their pressure before he throws in the towel on Ross. You heard it here first (well, maybe not first, but just remember you heard it here).

Rename Dallas for Cesar Chavez? That's what Schutze says

He says he means it, and so I guess we'll take him at his word: How about renaming the city of Dallas after the late California migrant worker organizer. At least, that's Jim Schutze's take on the whole Industrial to Ross to Chavez conundrum in the Observer this week. My favorite part of the column, which talks about the rationale for the change and the implications — Jerry Jones would soon be marketing the "Cesar Chavez Cowboys", just in time for the North Texas Super Bowl!

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...

Trinity bridge delayed 10 months

Someone didn’t do a very good job of bidding the contract, apparently. Even the people at Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper, who are about as supportive as humanly possible, are disappointed. Dare we even say surprised?

Which means you can watch your tax dollars at work, and not doing very much in the process.

Or, you can ask councilman Ron Natinsky, an ardent Trinity supporter, what happened at his town hall meeting tonight.

Technorati Tags: Trinity River bridge

Riverfront or Cesar Chavez, it still won’t solve the city’s problems

It’s time to bring in those well-known political analysts, Monty Python, to lend some perspective to the City Council’s deliberations about changing the name of Industrial Boulevard. I refer you to the Election Night Special. The Silly Party, indeed.

Today, the council’s Trinity River Corridor Project Committee will announce that it wants to rename Industrial to Riverfront. It will also float a plan to rename Field Street or a stretch of Ross near downtown to Chavez, the name that won the city’s infamous Rename Industrial contest.

The Trinity tollway: Why we were so afraid of doing it

The video below from TonyToneB at YouTube says it all. This is Davenport, Iowa, where they're scared to death of the Mississippi River flooding, and where an extensive levee system has been in place for decades. And if this kind of flooding happens there, what's going to happen here -- with our cut-rate, politically-motivated levee so we can squeeze in the toll road?

Reuters reported on Wednesday that 19 levees along the Mississippi have failed, and 7 more are on watch. And for those in charge who tell us that these kinds of events are 100-year floods? The same thing happened in 1993, when the Mississippi crested in St. Louis at a record 49.4 feet. And reports are that this year's flood is worse than the 1993 disaster.

Technorati Tags: Trinity River tollway,Mississippi River flooding