Add this up. On March 16, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings told reporters that events he called “ghost calls” were crashing the city’s 911 emergency call center, causing potentially deadly backups in police and fire response times. Rawlings said solving the ghost call problem needed to be the city’s “number one…
A set of compromises and a City Council vote marked the birth of Dallas’ homeless commission on Wednesday, the latest effort to address the estimated 1,100 homeless people who live in the city. Initially, the city and the county will each contribute $50,000 toward the board’s operating costs for the…
Finally, after nearly three years of close calls, the Dallas City Council passed cite-and-release for marijuana possession Wednesday afternoon on a 10-5 vote. Starting Oct. 1, anyone caught with less than four ounces of marijuana in the portion of the city of Dallas that lies within Dallas County will get…
Tuesday afternoon, the Texas Senate gave the go-ahead to a bill that will, if it becomes law, allow Texas county clerks to recuse themselves from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The bill, written by Senator Brian Birdwell, would allow county commissioners courts to appoint another person to issue licenses…
Looks like the mayor loses this one. He has been maneuvering to stall the evictions of hundreds of poor families in West Dallas, probably hoping the hard hammer would not fall on these poor souls until after the May 6 City Council elections. But it will fall this week. Khraish…
During an impromptu press conference at Dallas City Hall on Monday morning, Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax revealed that the hack that caused weather warning sirens around the city to go off early Saturday morning came via a radio frequency, not a computer network. “Our system is not software related…
A local mayor organized a group of transgender people to position themselves in front of bathrooms at the state capitol on Thursday as the House of Representatives met to vote on the budget bill. The protesters said the budget bill is littered with amendments that they claim target the transgender community…
No matter who counted, Sunday’s “Mega March 2017” wasn’t anywhere close to as well-attended as organizers anticipated. The last time Dallas’ Latino leadership organized a march of this intended scale, in 2006, attendance was estimated at somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000. This time, even before the march, organizers guessed attendance…
A local mayor has organized a group of transgender people to position themselves in front of bathrooms at the state capitol today as the House of Representatives meets to vote on a budget. The protesters say the budget bill is littered with amendments that they claim target the transgender community…
Maybe there was a line in the sand once between people who thought the Dallas Police and Fire Pension Fund was well run and those who disagreed. That line has disappeared under a whole bunch of footprints. In fact, two full years have passed — dating from March 2015 when…
Dallas officials were united Monday. Not about what to do about the city’s woebegone police and fire pension system. There’s still plenty of arguing to do about what to do with the $3.6 billion unfunded liability that could threaten the fund’s liquidity in less than a decade. No, Dallas Mayor…
This month could be a critical one for marijuana reform as state and local politicians spar over changes in criminalization laws. Next week the Dallas City Council will again consider ending the Dallas Police Department’s policy to arrest people for possessing small amounts of marijuana. Five members of the City…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
If you put aside the issue of bribery in the ongoing federal corruption trial of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price — the jury will decide that one — and just look at what he did, his behavior may look mild next to the way public business gets done in…
A month ago civic leader Walt Humann posted an essay on the op-ed page of The Dallas Morning News saying it would be a terrible mistake for the city to take sales tax money away from DART, our regional mass transit agency, and use it to save the Dallas Police…
Wednesday morning, the Dallas City Council passed its long-gestating ethics reform package. The vote was unanimous,but it comes at the end of months of arguing over the grievances that serve as the basis for many of the new rules. In the end, some members griping that the new regulations aren’t…
