Despite his campaign being so low on cash it’s no longer paying staffers, former Texas Governor Rick Perry reiterated Wednesday that he’s in the 2016 GOP presidential race for at least the medium-haul. In Austin to watch his successor Greg Abbott posthumously award the Texas Legislative Medal of Honor to “American…
The white pit bull with no collar charged toward Charlie Howell as his wife restrained their own dogs behind him. Howell felt he had no choice but to tackle the animal. “I made the split-second decision that I was not going to let it get past me,” Howell says. As…
Tanya Ragan made her first foray into Downtown Dallas’ neglected southeastern corner in 2007 when she bought a piece of commercial property there. The Bridge, the city-funded homeless shelter, opened in 2008. In the seven years since, Ragan, who lives in a town home near the Farmer’s Market, has established…
Jan Mickelson should be radioactive. Just last week, the conservative Iowa radio host issued a ringing endorsement for enslaving undocumented immigrants who refuse to leave the country. Mickelson thinks the United States should give any resident without the appropriate paperwork two months to leave. If they don’t, Mickelson says, they…
Don’t know what was going on at the beloved Lakewood Theater in Old East Dallas when I stopped by this morning – either a very serious remodeling or the first stages of demolition. When I went inside, workers seemed to be ripping out the stage and a bunch of interior…
Maybe we need to accept a certain bottom line here and prepare to deal with it. Dallas is becoming a much cooler city — almost more cool than it has a right to be — because of the coming change in who’s in control. But the change-over is not here…
Dallas streets are bad. It’s axiomatic at this point. When the city asked residents what it should prioritize in its new budget, the resounding first choice was road repair. The city’s awkwardly beautiful video explaining next year’s budget touts the extra $16 million to be spent on “improving streets.” Everyone…
A couple of weeks ago, we told you about a push led by Downtown Dallas Inc. to bring more cops into Dallas Central Business district to combat what DDI sees as rising nuisance crimes. The meta-culprit for many of the crimes — like panhandling, public sleeping and public urination —…
The selling point for a professional “city manager” system of city government — we’ve got one of the biggest ones in the country here in Dallas — is that everything will be run in a professional or “businesslike” fashion, not all loosey-goosey and a mess like it would be if…
Last Thursday, during a routine stormwater inspection, city staff came upon an unsettling discovery: 300 to 400 dead fish in a West Dallas drainage pond on the landward side of the Trinity River levee near the Pavaho Pump Station. Workers plucked what fish carcasses they could safely reach — almost…
The state of Texas’ obstinacy about changing a Conroe man’s death certificate continues to have positive consequences. Last week it led to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the interim commissioner of the Department of State Health Services, Kirk Cole, being brought up on potential contempt charges. The state caved…
Wednesday’s decision by the Dallas City Council to allow Love Field vendors to charge higher prices in exchange for those vendors guaranteeing a higher minimum wage for their workers was standard-issue horse trading. Vendors got what they wanted — the ability to charge 10 percent more than street prices for…
David Jensen is a guy I have written about over the last six months who lives in a West Dallas warehouse in the path of a big new apartment development that is favored by the city. He showed up at City Hall Wednesday to try to stop the city from…
Call it a small, mostly symbolic victory for the anti-toll road bunch. Late Wednesday afternoon, the Dallas City Council unanimously approved a half-measure drafted by freshman council member Adam McGough that keeps the bond money already raised for the city of Dallas Trinity project — some $47.7 million — from being…
Today as the Dallas City Council returns from its summer slumbers, it takes up a number of prickly questions, none more so than the debate over asking developer Trammell Crow Co. to include some affordable housing in exchange for the company’s getting an enormous grant of extra development rights from…
A secret but common belief among political professionals here is that only people over 60 really care about local politics, and all they want is more stop signs. Yet here we are on a very warm summer evening at The Foundry, an indoor/outdoor bar that shares a small repurposed industrial…
My favorite part of the audit released yesterday of the city’s water meters: In 2008, when the water department was taking flak for too many “implausible” meter readings — meter readings that are either crazy, totally whacked out or you-gotta-be-kidding-me — they did what any head-up self-defending bureaucracy would do…
Recently I came across a great term of art I think aptly describes the contrast between the way the Bishop Arts/North Oak Cliff district of the city is growing and the way West Dallas is developing. It’s, “Orderly but dumb versus chaotic but smart.” A tight fit. In a conversation…
Whether on the prime-time slot graced by Senator Ted Cruz or the kid’s table afternoon debate where former Governor Rick Perry to his place, just too many candidates filled the stages. Neither Texan got more than about 10 minutes of cumulative time to speak and Cruz was additionally impaired by…
All right, I understand that very few readers of the Dallas Observer are worried about Social Security yet, but you all have to have Social Security cards. Right? That’s all I’m talking about. Just the card. And, yes, it’s more than that. I’m a lifelong libtard. I am pro-government. I…
Pop quiz: Aside from the obvious (i.e. poor judgment and inept management), what do the following events have in common? An employee of the city’s Trinity Watershed Management is helping organize her boss’s retirement money. To cover expenses, she solicits money from several companies that hold lucrative contracts with the…
Clint McDonough is chairman of the Dallas office and a managing partner in an accounting firm that was known since 1903 as Ernst and Ernst, since 1989 as Ernst and Young, now calling itself “EY,” which I thought was the name of a character in an A.A. Milne children’s book…
