Update: The Dallas Morning News’ Robert Wilonsky reports that Caraway has pulled the Mandela renaming plan and is now calling for Lancaster to be renamed for legendary Booker T. Washington and Roosevelt High School football coach Raymond Hollie. Earlier in the week Dallas City Council member Dwaine Caraway told The…
The Dallas Morning News’ Rudy Bush got the scoop: a copy of memo from City Attorney Warren Ernst that says the City Council could walk away from building the Trinity River toll road despite the city’s contract with the North Texas Tollway Authority to build the thing. “There is no…
For the last few days, you may have been busy warding off a flurry eager people with clipboards. This weekend marked Dallas County voter registration days, and volunteers from both sides of the aisle were hustling to try to get your vote in November. They had good reason to be…
It’s really easy to recycle in Dallas if you live in a house. Just dump that unsorted mass of old newspapers, empty soda cans and milk cartons into a cavernous blue bin, drag it to the curb and let one the city’s lumbering dump trucks haul it away. For those…
Tim Headington, the oil billionaire behind the Joule Hotel, has a weird relationship with local preservationists. On the one hand, Preservation Dallas honored him with an achievement award last May for his work on the hotel, which sits in a restored 1927 building. On the other hand, Preservation Dallas Executive…
After being inundated with images of poverty stricken unaccompanied Central American children this summer, you might be surprised to learn that the stereotype of the poor working class immigrant is rapidly changing in Texas. The growing demographic, it turns out, are educated and highly skilled — and the Texas economy…
After last week’s trading of contemptuous memos, Unfair Park was pretty excited about a potential confrontation between Vonciel Jones Hill and Scott Griggs at Monday’s meeting of the city’s Transportation and Trinity River Committee. As far as city hall showdowns go, this one was likely to be pretty good, pitting…
One of Downtown Dallas’ oldest buildings, a 129-year-old Romanesque Revival structure at 1611 Main St., was razed on Sunday to make way for an expansion of The Joule hotel, the latest in a line of historic Dallas structures sacrificed on the altar of progress. A few blocks to the southeast,…
If the city won’t give money to Dallas libraries, maybe the community will. Thursday was North Texas Giving Day, which means Friends of the Dallas Public Libraries, along with other north Texas do-gooder groups, were busy rattling their tin cans for spare change to raise money that, in the library’s…
Rather than, you know, enunciating her concerns at the city council briefing both she and Scott Griggs attended on Wednesday, Vonciel Jones Hill fired off a memo Wednesday morning chastising her fellow council member for his “inaccurate, incomplete and insulting” writing. The rest of Hill’s memo is less alliterative, but…
A.C. Gonzalez took the time at the end of Wednesday’s City Council briefing to at least wink in the direction transparency. He didn’t jump into the open government pool by any means, but he took about 15 minutes at the end of the meeting to spew jargon in the general…
In a memo prepared in advance of Dallas City manager A.C. Gonzalez’ first of what he promises to be periodic progress report to the City Council, council member Scott Griggs outlined multiple issues with the city’s Trinity office and transportation department. Among them is the stagnation of the Oak Cliff…
Last night in Houston two masked men, armed with a revolver and a shotgun, stormed a Denny’s and raided the cash register. The same scene has played out on security footage at dozens of Houston-area IHOPs and Denny’s, albeit occasionally with bloodshed. Houston police officer James Taylor, testifying before a…
To understand just how badly City Hall has bungled its stewardship of the section of the Great Trinity Forest sandwiched between the Trinity Forest Golf Course and the Texas Horse Park, you can visit the delicate wetland pond the city illegally let a contractor drain last month for “dust control.”…
You could see the dark clouds gathering Monday morning. Word had come down from somewhere near Michael Morris’ Arlington compound that someone from the North Central Texas Council of Governments was going to make a contribution to the city’s interminable discussion about regulating Uber, Lyft, Yellow Cab and any other…
Hunched over a table at a Jack in the Box, Kevin Woods doesn’t look much like a cowboy. No hat, no belt buckle, no boots, not a horse in sight. Here, tucked between a cluster of warehouses and a bustling urban highway, is about as far from the open range…
Amid the storm of fast-food worker protests for better pay, Democratic candidate for governor Wendy Davis announced late last week her plan to boost Texas’ minimum wage to $10 per hour, which is generally how much national cost-of-living studies say is necessary for struggling workers to have improved quality of…
City Hall has done its part to make Patriot’s Crossing a reality. Over the past five years, it’s handed developer Yigal Lelah $4.4 million and promised another $1.3 million in HUD funds. It has endorsed him in three unsuccessful attempts to win lucrative, highly competitive low-income housing tax credits from…
City Council member Dwaine Caraway might be having a bit of trouble abiding by his own “Pull Your Pants Up” initiative after losing 15 pounds since the start of his Councilman Caraway Wellness Challenge three weeks ago. Caraway checked in at 300 pounds at the press conference announcing the challenge,…
I’m sitting next to a well-dressed home-schooled high schooler from just outside of Lafayette, Louisiana, watching failed Senate candidate and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina talking about the dignity of jobs that don’t pay a living wage. Why Fiorina is speaking at Defending the American Dream isn’t really clear. She…
The irony that Americans For Prosperity’s Defending the American Dream summit is being held in a hotel paid for with taxpayer funds can be a little overwhelming. Everyone you talk to opposes regulation and taxes with a religious fervor while at the same time praising the setting and the glory…
Friday and Saturday, the Omni Dallas hosts Americans for Prosperity’s “Defending the American Dream” conference. Featured speakers include Governor Rick Perry, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Jeb Hensarling and Indiana governor Mike Pence. We sent two of our reporters to get the full experience. Political rhetoric on both sides has the…
