By Jim Schutze - Dallas Observer - Oct. 25, 2007
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Showing posts with label Trinity Vote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trinity Vote. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Trinity park planners challenged to provide easy access over levees - Bridges, trails suggested as ways to enter planned oasis
By BRUCE TOMASO - The Dallas Morning News - Sunday, October 21, 2007
Designers of the Trinity River project have an ambitious vision.
They say they want to see the river transformed "from the city's back alley to its front yard."
The central element of that vision, for many people, is the proposed downtown Trinity River park. With its lakes, river meanders, hiking trails, canoeing course, greenbelts and promenades, the downtown park, at roughly 100 acres, is often extolled as having the potential to become Dallas' Central Park, or Dallas' River Walk, or Dallas' Town Lake – an urban oasis that will draw visitors from near and far.
Also Online
Interactive map: Trinity toll road issues
Map: Trinity toll road issues (.pdf)
Archive: Learn more about the Trinity toll road fight
But there's at least one big obstacle to that vision – or two, actually – having nothing to do with the Nov. 6 referendum on whether to build a toll road in the park.
Unlike Central Park, or the San Antonio River Walk, or Austin's Town Lake, the Trinity is cut off from the rest of the city by its levees – "two 30-foot mounds of dirt separated by a half-mile of weeds," in the memorable phrase of Paul Lehner, director of planning and development for the city's Trinity River Corridor Project office.
"We can't do exactly what they've done in San Antonio," said Mr. Lehner. "We won't have people who can just step out their doors and be right at the water, because of the levees. For that reason, providing connectivity to the park through a number of points has been very high on our list."
The levees, built in the 1920s and '30s to protect downtown against flooding, aren't going anywhere. In fact, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to raise the levees by about two feet over the next few years.
The corps has said emphatically that whatever else is done to the river corridor – park, lakes, toll road, no toll road – flood protection remains its primary function.
So to get to the park, folks would have to find ways over those "mounds of dirt."
Dallas being Dallas, many of them would drive. Their access to the park depends very much on what happens Nov. 6, when voters will weigh in on Proposition 1, a ballot measure to scrap the high-speed toll road now planned inside the levees.
Whether that toll road is built – and, if it isn't, what gets built instead – will affect many aspects of the Trinity project, from its funding sources to its build-out schedule to the aesthetics of the park to transportation through and to the central city. One of few things that both sides agree on in the toll road debate is that a lot of uncertainty looms – and a lot of recalibration will have to take place – if Proposition 1 passes and the toll road is scrapped.
In ways big or small, the vote could alter almost everything and anything about the park. So all of what follows is open to change. There are lots of things we simply don't know about how the Trinity project might look.
But for now, let us forget about toll roads, figuratively park our cars, lace up our walking shoes and take a stroll through some of the plans for ways that Dallas residents would be able to get to, and enjoy, their park on foot.
Reunion Overlook
This would be one of the prime entry points to the downtown park – and, Mr. Lehner hopes, a gathering point in and of itself.
Reunion Boulevard is the short roadway off Houston Street that now passes the Hyatt Regency Dallas, Reunion Tower and Reunion Arena before dead-ending at Industrial Boulevard.
Under its plans, the city would extend the boulevard another few hundred feet to the west, to the river levee. There, a building of some sort could be built – there is no final design now – at the level of the levee top. The building could house an information center, perhaps a history museum of the Trinity River, perhaps concession stands. From it, there would be "vertical access" via elevators or stairways, down into the river bottoms. At that point, visitors would be in the park, at the promenade along the water.
Mr. Lehner told a City Council committee last week that the Reunion Overlook could evolve into the main "linkage between downtown and the Trinity Corridor."
The trails
The park is to include a network of trails – some near the water and some, perhaps, along the tops of the levees.
Near Sylvan Avenue, these trails would connect with the Trinity Strand Trail, a new trail network being built just outside the levees, behind the Stemmons Freeway along the original, meandering channel of the Trinity River.
The Trinity Strand Trail, in turn, would eventually hook up with the Katy Trail at a point just north of American Airlines Center.
That means hikers, joggers, bicyclists and roller-skaters could come down the Katy Trail from as far away as Southern Methodist University – and eventually farther, as the Katy Trail expands – and get into the Trinity park.
And from the Knox-Henderson neighborhood south, those visitors would never have to cross a vehicular road, said Mike Kutner, chairman of Friends of the Trinity Strand Trail, a group raising private money to complete the trail.
He also noted that there are 13 hotels, including the huge Hilton Anatole, along Stemmons Freeway within a short walk of the Trinity Strand.
"For visitors to our city to be able to walk out of their hotel and get on these trails and enter the park – that would be fantastic," he said.
DART
The Dallas Area Rapid Transit station at Eighth and Corinth streets in Oak Cliff is the southernmost station that jointly serves DART's red and blue rail lines.
The station is close to the Trinity, near where the downtown levees stop.
It's also adjacent to an abandoned railroad trestle. That old railroad bridge, city officials said, could be converted to a pedestrian bridge. Visitors from as far away as Garland or Plano could ride DART to Eighth and Corinth and use the pedestrian bridge as a way into the river bottoms.
At that point, they'd be near the northern boundary of the Great Trinity Forest, an unspoiled hardwood stand covering several thousand acres that the city is assembling. A canoe launch into the river channel is also planned at Moore Gateway Park, near the trestle.
Continental Avenue
Work has just begun on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, a soaring structure by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava that will extend the Woodall Rodgers Freeway west over the Trinity to Singleton Boulevard.
It's the first of three Calatrava "signature" bridges over the Trinity that planners hope to see completed someday. The others are at Interstate 30 and Interstate 35E.
The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge will cost an estimated $115 million, according to the city. It's being built with $28 million in city bond proceeds, some funds from state and federal agencies, and a lot of private donations, notably from the family of Ms. Hill, the oil heiress and Dallas philanthropist who died this summer.
When the bridge is completed, the plan is to close the adjacent Continental Avenue viaduct to cars, allowing only pedestrians and bicyclists to use it.
From the east (downtown) side, the Continental bridge would provide a ready way into the park from the West End, Victory and Uptown.
On the West Dallas side, the city would build a "gateway park" that would afford spectacular park views, framed by the downtown skyline in the distance and the Calatrava bridge in the foreground.
"That becomes the Dallas postcard," Mr. Lehner said.
People walking or biking over the bridge would be directly above one of the man-made lakes that are planned as key features of the park.
"The experience," Mr. Lehner said, "will be unlike anything that you can see now in the city."
Oak Cliff
The West Dallas gateway park is one of several spots on that side from which people could enter the park. Another is a planned observation deck that would be built in North Oak Cliff, near Beckley Avenue and Commerce Street, so people could come and watch the progress as the park is built.
"It's the proverbial hole in the construction fence," Mr. Lehner said.
But really, said Bob Stimson, a former City Council member who heads the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce, almost anyplace along the levee on the Oak Cliff side would provide ready entry.
"When it comes to accessing the park, Oak Cliff is in a perfect position," he said. "At any number of spots, you'll be able to just walk up over the levees and enjoy this park."
He said that unfettered access is one reason the chamber supports the current Trinity River project plan, which puts all of the highway lanes on the downtown side of the river.
Mr. Stimson said he hoped that Oak Cliff's open access to the Trinity park would "give us a tremendous advantage in the eyes of developers. They'll be salivating at the chance to build over here."
TRACKING THE TRINITY TOLLWAY VOTE
What am I voting on? Passage of Proposition 1 would create a Dallas ordinance prohibiting the construction of a high-speed toll road within the Trinity River Corridor's earthen levees. If the proposition passes, any road built within the corridor would be limited to four total lanes with a 35 mph speed limit.
When to vote: Early voting on Proposition 1 begins Monday and runs through Nov. 2. Regular voting for the referendum is Nov. 6. Only registered Dallas voters may participate.
A "FOR" vote means: You want to prohibit the high-speed toll road's construction within the Trinity River's levees.
An "AGAINST" vote means: You want to preserve the current Trinity River Corridor plan, which calls for construction of the high-speed toll road within the levees.
What supporters of Proposition 1 say: A high-speed toll road would irreparably harm an adjacent urban park also planned as part of the city's broader Trinity River Corridor project. The road could be built outside the levees, along Industrial Boulevard, or elsewhere.
Supporters of the proposition say that since Dallas is endowed with a massive, empty greenspace in its city center, it should use its prime opportunity to develop it to create an urban oasis, unadulterated by a loud, unsightly highway carrying tens of thousands of vehicles each day.
They also say the toll road may be prone to flooding and would lead to more air pollution in downtown Dallas.
What opponents of Proposition 1 say: Removing the toll road from the larger Trinity project is akin to yanking on threads from a suit: It'll soon unravel.
Private funding for the park element, as well as county, state and federal funding for transportation components both related and unrelated, are contingent on the toll road being built as planned. Passage of Proposition 1 could also delay the project, which was originally passed in 1998, for years.
Opponents of the proposition say that building the road elsewhere could cost hundreds of millions of dollars more, and not building it at all would lead to unacceptable traffic congestion in downtown Dallas.
Voter turnout? Both sides expect it to be low, meaning individual votes carry more strength than in a well-attended election.
Designers of the Trinity River project have an ambitious vision.
They say they want to see the river transformed "from the city's back alley to its front yard."
The central element of that vision, for many people, is the proposed downtown Trinity River park. With its lakes, river meanders, hiking trails, canoeing course, greenbelts and promenades, the downtown park, at roughly 100 acres, is often extolled as having the potential to become Dallas' Central Park, or Dallas' River Walk, or Dallas' Town Lake – an urban oasis that will draw visitors from near and far.
Also Online
Interactive map: Trinity toll road issues
Map: Trinity toll road issues (.pdf)
Archive: Learn more about the Trinity toll road fight
But there's at least one big obstacle to that vision – or two, actually – having nothing to do with the Nov. 6 referendum on whether to build a toll road in the park.
Unlike Central Park, or the San Antonio River Walk, or Austin's Town Lake, the Trinity is cut off from the rest of the city by its levees – "two 30-foot mounds of dirt separated by a half-mile of weeds," in the memorable phrase of Paul Lehner, director of planning and development for the city's Trinity River Corridor Project office.
"We can't do exactly what they've done in San Antonio," said Mr. Lehner. "We won't have people who can just step out their doors and be right at the water, because of the levees. For that reason, providing connectivity to the park through a number of points has been very high on our list."
The levees, built in the 1920s and '30s to protect downtown against flooding, aren't going anywhere. In fact, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to raise the levees by about two feet over the next few years.
The corps has said emphatically that whatever else is done to the river corridor – park, lakes, toll road, no toll road – flood protection remains its primary function.
So to get to the park, folks would have to find ways over those "mounds of dirt."
Dallas being Dallas, many of them would drive. Their access to the park depends very much on what happens Nov. 6, when voters will weigh in on Proposition 1, a ballot measure to scrap the high-speed toll road now planned inside the levees.
Whether that toll road is built – and, if it isn't, what gets built instead – will affect many aspects of the Trinity project, from its funding sources to its build-out schedule to the aesthetics of the park to transportation through and to the central city. One of few things that both sides agree on in the toll road debate is that a lot of uncertainty looms – and a lot of recalibration will have to take place – if Proposition 1 passes and the toll road is scrapped.
In ways big or small, the vote could alter almost everything and anything about the park. So all of what follows is open to change. There are lots of things we simply don't know about how the Trinity project might look.
But for now, let us forget about toll roads, figuratively park our cars, lace up our walking shoes and take a stroll through some of the plans for ways that Dallas residents would be able to get to, and enjoy, their park on foot.
Reunion Overlook
This would be one of the prime entry points to the downtown park – and, Mr. Lehner hopes, a gathering point in and of itself.
Reunion Boulevard is the short roadway off Houston Street that now passes the Hyatt Regency Dallas, Reunion Tower and Reunion Arena before dead-ending at Industrial Boulevard.
Under its plans, the city would extend the boulevard another few hundred feet to the west, to the river levee. There, a building of some sort could be built – there is no final design now – at the level of the levee top. The building could house an information center, perhaps a history museum of the Trinity River, perhaps concession stands. From it, there would be "vertical access" via elevators or stairways, down into the river bottoms. At that point, visitors would be in the park, at the promenade along the water.
Mr. Lehner told a City Council committee last week that the Reunion Overlook could evolve into the main "linkage between downtown and the Trinity Corridor."
The trails
The park is to include a network of trails – some near the water and some, perhaps, along the tops of the levees.
Near Sylvan Avenue, these trails would connect with the Trinity Strand Trail, a new trail network being built just outside the levees, behind the Stemmons Freeway along the original, meandering channel of the Trinity River.
The Trinity Strand Trail, in turn, would eventually hook up with the Katy Trail at a point just north of American Airlines Center.
That means hikers, joggers, bicyclists and roller-skaters could come down the Katy Trail from as far away as Southern Methodist University – and eventually farther, as the Katy Trail expands – and get into the Trinity park.
And from the Knox-Henderson neighborhood south, those visitors would never have to cross a vehicular road, said Mike Kutner, chairman of Friends of the Trinity Strand Trail, a group raising private money to complete the trail.
He also noted that there are 13 hotels, including the huge Hilton Anatole, along Stemmons Freeway within a short walk of the Trinity Strand.
"For visitors to our city to be able to walk out of their hotel and get on these trails and enter the park – that would be fantastic," he said.
DART
The Dallas Area Rapid Transit station at Eighth and Corinth streets in Oak Cliff is the southernmost station that jointly serves DART's red and blue rail lines.
The station is close to the Trinity, near where the downtown levees stop.
It's also adjacent to an abandoned railroad trestle. That old railroad bridge, city officials said, could be converted to a pedestrian bridge. Visitors from as far away as Garland or Plano could ride DART to Eighth and Corinth and use the pedestrian bridge as a way into the river bottoms.
At that point, they'd be near the northern boundary of the Great Trinity Forest, an unspoiled hardwood stand covering several thousand acres that the city is assembling. A canoe launch into the river channel is also planned at Moore Gateway Park, near the trestle.
Continental Avenue
Work has just begun on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, a soaring structure by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava that will extend the Woodall Rodgers Freeway west over the Trinity to Singleton Boulevard.
It's the first of three Calatrava "signature" bridges over the Trinity that planners hope to see completed someday. The others are at Interstate 30 and Interstate 35E.
The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge will cost an estimated $115 million, according to the city. It's being built with $28 million in city bond proceeds, some funds from state and federal agencies, and a lot of private donations, notably from the family of Ms. Hill, the oil heiress and Dallas philanthropist who died this summer.
When the bridge is completed, the plan is to close the adjacent Continental Avenue viaduct to cars, allowing only pedestrians and bicyclists to use it.
From the east (downtown) side, the Continental bridge would provide a ready way into the park from the West End, Victory and Uptown.
On the West Dallas side, the city would build a "gateway park" that would afford spectacular park views, framed by the downtown skyline in the distance and the Calatrava bridge in the foreground.
"That becomes the Dallas postcard," Mr. Lehner said.
People walking or biking over the bridge would be directly above one of the man-made lakes that are planned as key features of the park.
"The experience," Mr. Lehner said, "will be unlike anything that you can see now in the city."
Oak Cliff
The West Dallas gateway park is one of several spots on that side from which people could enter the park. Another is a planned observation deck that would be built in North Oak Cliff, near Beckley Avenue and Commerce Street, so people could come and watch the progress as the park is built.
"It's the proverbial hole in the construction fence," Mr. Lehner said.
But really, said Bob Stimson, a former City Council member who heads the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce, almost anyplace along the levee on the Oak Cliff side would provide ready entry.
"When it comes to accessing the park, Oak Cliff is in a perfect position," he said. "At any number of spots, you'll be able to just walk up over the levees and enjoy this park."
He said that unfettered access is one reason the chamber supports the current Trinity River project plan, which puts all of the highway lanes on the downtown side of the river.
Mr. Stimson said he hoped that Oak Cliff's open access to the Trinity park would "give us a tremendous advantage in the eyes of developers. They'll be salivating at the chance to build over here."
TRACKING THE TRINITY TOLLWAY VOTE
What am I voting on? Passage of Proposition 1 would create a Dallas ordinance prohibiting the construction of a high-speed toll road within the Trinity River Corridor's earthen levees. If the proposition passes, any road built within the corridor would be limited to four total lanes with a 35 mph speed limit.
When to vote: Early voting on Proposition 1 begins Monday and runs through Nov. 2. Regular voting for the referendum is Nov. 6. Only registered Dallas voters may participate.
A "FOR" vote means: You want to prohibit the high-speed toll road's construction within the Trinity River's levees.
An "AGAINST" vote means: You want to preserve the current Trinity River Corridor plan, which calls for construction of the high-speed toll road within the levees.
What supporters of Proposition 1 say: A high-speed toll road would irreparably harm an adjacent urban park also planned as part of the city's broader Trinity River Corridor project. The road could be built outside the levees, along Industrial Boulevard, or elsewhere.
Supporters of the proposition say that since Dallas is endowed with a massive, empty greenspace in its city center, it should use its prime opportunity to develop it to create an urban oasis, unadulterated by a loud, unsightly highway carrying tens of thousands of vehicles each day.
They also say the toll road may be prone to flooding and would lead to more air pollution in downtown Dallas.
What opponents of Proposition 1 say: Removing the toll road from the larger Trinity project is akin to yanking on threads from a suit: It'll soon unravel.
Private funding for the park element, as well as county, state and federal funding for transportation components both related and unrelated, are contingent on the toll road being built as planned. Passage of Proposition 1 could also delay the project, which was originally passed in 1998, for years.
Opponents of the proposition say that building the road elsewhere could cost hundreds of millions of dollars more, and not building it at all would lead to unacceptable traffic congestion in downtown Dallas.
Voter turnout? Both sides expect it to be low, meaning individual votes carry more strength than in a well-attended election.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
City staffers accused of taking sides on Trinity toll road
By RUDOLPH BUSH, BRUCE TOMASO and DAVE LEVINTHAL - The Dallas Morning News - Saturday, September 29, 2007
Top Dallas city staff members appear to have a cozy relationship with leading advocates for the Trinity River toll road, a series of e-mails among them shows. The disclosure has infuriated toll road opponents and caused City Manager Mary Suhm to caution her top deputies about politicking on the job.
For instance, in a July 6 e-mail, Rebecca Dugger, director of the city office overseeing the Trinity project, encouraged toll road supporters to call a radio talk show to give a positive view of the project.
Twenty days later, toll road backer and former City Council member Craig Holcomb asked Ms. Dugger if she could assist him in making a presentation before the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce.
And in an Aug. 15 e-mail to Ms. Suhm, Ms. Dugger and other staff members, Mr. Holcomb felt free to take a swipe at council member Angela Hunt, the toll road's chief opponent.
The e-mail was intended to arrange a meeting between city staff and the nonprofit Trinity Trust organization and asked if the group could meet at the Original House of Pancakes. Mr. Holcomb liked the location "[f]or nostalgia's sake, to remember the days before AH," he wrote in reference to Ms. Hunt.
Mr. Holcomb said Friday that he had never asked the city staff to do anything inappropriate and that the staff never had.
He acknowledged being friends with Ms. Dugger and many others at City Hall, and he made no apologies for that.
Regarding his joke about Ms. Hunt, he said, "One council member out of 15 wants to derail the Trinity project, and I don't see anything wrong with being nostalgic for a time when that was not the case and we could all work together."
City staffers are prohibited from advocating for one side during an election, and Ms. Suhm said her staff has been careful to avoid taking a position on the Nov. 6 referendum on the toll road project.
But long-standing friendly relationships between some staff members and toll road proponents have at least led to the appearance that the city has gone out of its way to assist those who would see the referendum fail so the road can be built.
Former Dallas City Council member Donna Blumer, who opposes the toll road project, said she was shocked by the e-mails.
Ms. Hunt said that the e-mail exchanges "undermine any argument the city has that they're being neutral on this issue." But she does not plan to pursue the matter through legal or ethical channels.
Mayor Tom Leppert, who said he had not seen the e-mails in question, said the city staff should remain neutral and has tried to do so.
Voters will decide Nov. 6 whether a high-speed highway can be built inside the Trinity River levees. A yes vote prohibits such a highway. A no vote would allow the city's plans to go forward.
The Dallas Morning News obtained hundreds of e-mails originating at City Hall regarding the toll road project, using the state's open records law. The vast majority were between city staff and toll road proponents. Only a handful were from those who oppose the toll road and did not involve requests for information.
Defending the staff
Ms. Suhm broadly defended her staff's handling of what she said has become a delicate, even precarious, balancing act on the Trinity project.
City staffers are required to help the city realize a "Balanced Vision Plan," ordered by the City Council, that calls for the construction of a toll road between the Trinity levees downtown, Ms. Suhm said.
But they aren't permitted to advocate for or against a referendum that, if successful, would undermine that plan.
Further complicating matters is the fact that leading referendum opponents are City Hall insiders, from former council members and mayors to a former city manager.
As recently as Tuesday, Ms. Suhm cautioned her top deputies about how to handle requests for information about the Trinity project, she said.
As for Ms. Dugger's e-mails with Mr. Holcomb, Ms. Suhm acknowledged the two are personally close and said that led to an overly friendly tone in the e-mails between them.
She added that while she might have handled the matter of the radio talk show differently, she believes Ms. Dugger acted appropriately when she declined to go on the show.
Ms. Dugger also defended her correspondence.
Other e-mails
Ms. Suhm also was the recipient of friendly e-mails from toll road backers seeking help or information.
On July 5, she received a request from former City Manager Jan Hart Black, now the president of the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce.
Ms. Suhm said Friday that the city regularly fulfills requests for presentations on the Trinity project. Ms. Hart Black also defended the request.
In a July 18 e-mail, toll road backer and former City Council member Donna Halstead asked Ms. Suhm to personally review a poll intended to gauge support for the Trinity River toll road plan.
Ms. Halstead said the request was one of many she has made of Ms. Suhm regarding a variety of topics.
"Mary and I have known each other for many years. I ask her and others at City Hall questions all the time," said Ms. Halstead, who heads the Dallas Citizens Council. "I'm very lucky that they feel comfortable giving me answers."
Ms. Suhm acknowledged receiving Ms. Halstead's e-mail regarding the poll. She said she reviewed the poll for factual errors.
"If the other side came and asked us questions or asked us to speak about [the project], we would," she said.
City staff members are permitted to answer factual questions from the public regarding city projects, but Ms. Hunt questioned Ms. Suhm's decision to review the poll.
Texas Ethics Commission attorney Tim Sorrells said e-mail traffic of this nature doesn't appear to fall under his office's purview.
City Attorney Tom Perkins, meanwhile, declined to comment on his office's involvement, if any, in such a matter. Mr. Perkins did note that "we have certainly discussed with staff the permissible parameters of what they should or shouldn't do in a campaign."
Mr. Leppert, meanwhile, said he wants to make sure there isn't any appearance of bias on the part of the city's staff.
Mr. Leppert, who has become the major voice of the toll road supporters, said that it doesn't help his cause to have the staff seen as tilting toward one side or the other.
THE RULES FOR CITY OFFICIALS, EMPLOYEES
Read more in the Dallas Morning News
Top Dallas city staff members appear to have a cozy relationship with leading advocates for the Trinity River toll road, a series of e-mails among them shows. The disclosure has infuriated toll road opponents and caused City Manager Mary Suhm to caution her top deputies about politicking on the job.
For instance, in a July 6 e-mail, Rebecca Dugger, director of the city office overseeing the Trinity project, encouraged toll road supporters to call a radio talk show to give a positive view of the project.
"I am not going to call. Hope you can," Ms. Dugger wrote in response to a request that she call the show.
Twenty days later, toll road backer and former City Council member Craig Holcomb asked Ms. Dugger if she could assist him in making a presentation before the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce.
"I would LOVE to partner with you. ... Do you want me to attend as a backup/visual eye candy?" Ms. Dugger responded.
And in an Aug. 15 e-mail to Ms. Suhm, Ms. Dugger and other staff members, Mr. Holcomb felt free to take a swipe at council member Angela Hunt, the toll road's chief opponent.
The e-mail was intended to arrange a meeting between city staff and the nonprofit Trinity Trust organization and asked if the group could meet at the Original House of Pancakes. Mr. Holcomb liked the location "[f]or nostalgia's sake, to remember the days before AH," he wrote in reference to Ms. Hunt.
Mr. Holcomb said Friday that he had never asked the city staff to do anything inappropriate and that the staff never had.
He acknowledged being friends with Ms. Dugger and many others at City Hall, and he made no apologies for that.
"If you work with somebody for five years on a project, you get to be friends," he said. "It's deeply troubling to me that because you share a joke with someone in an e-mail, that anyone would question your integrity."
Regarding his joke about Ms. Hunt, he said, "One council member out of 15 wants to derail the Trinity project, and I don't see anything wrong with being nostalgic for a time when that was not the case and we could all work together."
City staffers are prohibited from advocating for one side during an election, and Ms. Suhm said her staff has been careful to avoid taking a position on the Nov. 6 referendum on the toll road project.
But long-standing friendly relationships between some staff members and toll road proponents have at least led to the appearance that the city has gone out of its way to assist those who would see the referendum fail so the road can be built.
Former Dallas City Council member Donna Blumer, who opposes the toll road project, said she was shocked by the e-mails.
"They're pretty damning ... city staff is collaborating with the Vote No! campaign," she said.
Ms. Hunt said that the e-mail exchanges "undermine any argument the city has that they're being neutral on this issue." But she does not plan to pursue the matter through legal or ethical channels.
"I'm focused on November 6th, getting our referendum passed and making sure we get the park we want and not a giant toll road in a floodway. Going forward with it doesn't win this election," Ms. Hunt said.
Mayor Tom Leppert, who said he had not seen the e-mails in question, said the city staff should remain neutral and has tried to do so.
Voters will decide Nov. 6 whether a high-speed highway can be built inside the Trinity River levees. A yes vote prohibits such a highway. A no vote would allow the city's plans to go forward.
The Dallas Morning News obtained hundreds of e-mails originating at City Hall regarding the toll road project, using the state's open records law. The vast majority were between city staff and toll road proponents. Only a handful were from those who oppose the toll road and did not involve requests for information.
Defending the staff
Ms. Suhm broadly defended her staff's handling of what she said has become a delicate, even precarious, balancing act on the Trinity project.
City staffers are required to help the city realize a "Balanced Vision Plan," ordered by the City Council, that calls for the construction of a toll road between the Trinity levees downtown, Ms. Suhm said.
But they aren't permitted to advocate for or against a referendum that, if successful, would undermine that plan.
Further complicating matters is the fact that leading referendum opponents are City Hall insiders, from former council members and mayors to a former city manager.
"It's a hard line. We talk about it all the time," Ms. Suhm said.
As recently as Tuesday, Ms. Suhm cautioned her top deputies about how to handle requests for information about the Trinity project, she said.
"I have been completely wound up about this since the start. I have been a major league nag," she said.
As for Ms. Dugger's e-mails with Mr. Holcomb, Ms. Suhm acknowledged the two are personally close and said that led to an overly friendly tone in the e-mails between them.
"I talked to her. I said, 'I know y'all are friends, but you need to keep the friendship part out of the business part,' " Ms. Suhm said.
She added that while she might have handled the matter of the radio talk show differently, she believes Ms. Dugger acted appropriately when she declined to go on the show.
"I would be concerned if she had called [in]," Ms. Suhm said.
Ms. Dugger also defended her correspondence.
"My basic concern is for the facts to be told. If I feel like the facts are not being told, and if others have the facts, then they should get those facts out there," she said.
Other e-mails
Ms. Suhm also was the recipient of friendly e-mails from toll road backers seeking help or information.
On July 5, she received a request from former City Manager Jan Hart Black, now the president of the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce.
"We will need a presentation from city staff on the issues and consequences of a successful election," Ms. Hart Black wrote.
Ms. Suhm said Friday that the city regularly fulfills requests for presentations on the Trinity project. Ms. Hart Black also defended the request.
"The city has a responsibility to respond and to provide us information and answer our questions. We request information from City Hall on many issues," Ms. Hart Black said in a prepared statement. "I am sorry that Angela Hunt is attacking city staff for simply doing their job."
In a July 18 e-mail, toll road backer and former City Council member Donna Halstead asked Ms. Suhm to personally review a poll intended to gauge support for the Trinity River toll road plan.
Ms. Halstead said the request was one of many she has made of Ms. Suhm regarding a variety of topics.
"Mary and I have known each other for many years. I ask her and others at City Hall questions all the time," said Ms. Halstead, who heads the Dallas Citizens Council. "I'm very lucky that they feel comfortable giving me answers."
Ms. Suhm acknowledged receiving Ms. Halstead's e-mail regarding the poll. She said she reviewed the poll for factual errors.
"If the other side came and asked us questions or asked us to speak about [the project], we would," she said.
City staff members are permitted to answer factual questions from the public regarding city projects, but Ms. Hunt questioned Ms. Suhm's decision to review the poll.
"I find it unusual that the city manager of the ninth-largest city in America is doing fact-checking on a partisan poll. ... What's she doing? Spell-checking?" Ms. Hunt said.
Texas Ethics Commission attorney Tim Sorrells said e-mail traffic of this nature doesn't appear to fall under his office's purview.
City Attorney Tom Perkins, meanwhile, declined to comment on his office's involvement, if any, in such a matter. Mr. Perkins did note that "we have certainly discussed with staff the permissible parameters of what they should or shouldn't do in a campaign."
Mr. Leppert, meanwhile, said he wants to make sure there isn't any appearance of bias on the part of the city's staff.
"My view is everybody is doing their best to play this thing as neutral and down the middle as they can," he said.
Mr. Leppert, who has become the major voice of the toll road supporters, said that it doesn't help his cause to have the staff seen as tilting toward one side or the other.
"I don't want it to be an issue," he said.
THE RULES FOR CITY OFFICIALS, EMPLOYEES
Dallas Administrative Assistant City Attorney Jesus Toscano sent a four-page memorandum to the City Council, City Manager Mary Suhm and her assistant city managers in August explaining what actions city officials and employees may take during the Trinity campaign. Mr. Toscano wrote that employees:Dave Levinthal
• May not use city facilities, personnel, equipment or supplies in support of or in opposition to the measure, except to the extent and in accordance with the terms that those city resources are generally available to the public.
• May be involved in political activities outside of work that support or oppose the measure, but cannot use their city titles.
• May participate in fundraising activities supporting or opposing the measure in his/her individual capacity, but not on city time.
• May not use the prestige of their position with the city on behalf of a political committee. This also applies to a city measure, if political committees have been formed to support or oppose the measure.
• May make personal contributions to political committees supporting or opposing the measure.
• May place campaign signs in their yards and on the premises of their homes supporting or opposing the measure.
• May display campaign bumper stickers supporting or opposing the measure on their personal vehicles (but not on any city vehicles under the employee's control).
• Should not push any subordinate employee to participate in an election campaign, contribute to a political committee, engage in any other political activity or refrain from engaging in any lawful political activity. A general statement merely encouraging another person to vote does not violate this provision.
Read more in the Dallas Morning News
Monday, July 30, 2007
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Eminent Domain, lies, manipulation and deceit on both forks of the Trinity
Jim Schutze of the Dallas Observer calls D Magazine publisher Wick Allison on distortation of "facts" (Trinity Toll/Park project)
Ed Oakley mutters against bothersome property rights in Dallas City Council;
Citizens face elected officials on both sides of the Trinity over eminent domain and property rights
By Faith Chatham - June 8, 2007
The saga in Dallas continues between media moguls, (DMN and D Magazine publisher Wick Allison, City Council person Angela Hunt and Dallas Observer columnist Jim Schutze. Biased coverage of the political scene is nothing new in big city journalism, but DMN under BELO's coverage of toll roads and transportation frequently seems to translate it into a new art form.
For a couple of weeks I've been posting articles on the Trinity Park-- er Tollway -- with sparring between opponents and proponents of the Trinity Toll Way. Trinity Vote has attempted to clarify the facts.
This week Jim Schutze's column (My Brain on Crack - Wick Allison, The Trinity Park Project. Have I gone mad?)
Irritated with coverage which he's termed "fiction" rather than "fact", columnist Jim Schutze ripped the facade off of the DMN's editorial a few weeks ago. City Council woman Angela Hunt took her speaking tour on the road and penned an open letter to Wick Allison to set the record straight. A soft-spoken very articulate lady with a Mission, Council Woman Hunt is upset that the project described to the citizens before they were asked to vote on the bonds for Trinity Park is vastly different now than what the citizens approved. She's (along thousands of other registered voters who have signed the Trinity Vote petition) are demanding that the Toll Road be taken back before the voters before ground is broken. Hunt outlines the differences between what the citizens were told prior to the bond election and what the City of Dallas, TxDOT, the RTC of the NCTCOG and other planners plan to deliver with those precious bond dollars which get paid by hard-earned dollars out of citizens’ pockets plans to actually build. The Belmont Debate between Councilwoman Hunt and Craig Holcomb has made it onto YOU TUBE VIDEO)
Numerous decades old DMN news stories and public meeting descriptors of Trinity Park with its PARKWAY, described as a 'low speed 45 mile and hour parkway with numerous entrances in to the park' have surfaced recently. Big dollars backers of the Toll Road (Trinity Commons Foundation) have been on the speaker’s circuit, trying to strike fear into the public about flood control and potential loss of Federal flood control dollars if the Toll Road proposal is killed. Jim Schutze came out with his computer keys blazing over that one. He quoted U.S. Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson who fought hard for those flood control dollars and clarified for the Dallas Observer readers that there the flood control dollars remain for flood control whether any road ever gets built in or near or through the Trinity flood plane near downtown Dallas! Amid charges (and a YOU TUBE VIDEO of what some allege are "paid educational consultants" who functioned as political operatives during the May 12th City of Dallas elections to interfere with the petition drive to collect signatures calling for a referendum on the Trinity Toll Way, and charges that they were employed by the non-profit Trinity Commons Foundation promoting the Toll Way, and rumbles about possible lawsuits and/or charges for violations of election law, the plot thickened in Dallas and the soup smelled worse than the stagnant sediment ponds cropping up in Wise County and other places where injection gas drilling is changing the landscape. Schutze referred to "Laura's goons" in earlier columns.
Angela Hunt earned accolades from Schutze in the spring for detailed research and for saving reporters from boredom at meetings of Dallas City Council Trinity River Committee.This week's Jim has devoted his column to taking DMagazine publisher Wick Allison to task. I'm including excerpts here but urge you to read it in its entirety.
Jim Schutze is one of the best columnists in this area. He's consistently refused to cave to pressure by publishers or peers to water down his rhetoric or avoid topics which fly counter to the financial interests of the high and powerful, politically ambitious, or his own publishers (which has changed over the years, probably due to his refusal to sell out his journalist integrity to satisfy the corporate board room.
Schutze writes:
I'm a big advocate of following the money. Schutze lays out the Trinity Park -er Toll Way? Project shortfall.
Tarrant County citizens are up in arms over Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, Whitley, a board member on NASCO, an international non-profit organization based in Dallas with a stated mission to develop interstate international super transportation corridors to speed up shipment of freight from ports in Mexico through Texas to Kansas City and Canada), fervently lobbied the Texas Legislature to exclude the DFW region from the 2 year moratorium on toll roads. Now Whitley is trying to persuade the Tarrant County Commissioners Court that it is wise for them to sign a letter urging Governor Perry to veto HB 2006 - a bill which curtains some of the dubious practices enacted in the previous session of the Legislature in TTC empowering legislation (promoted by NASCO!). Arlington school teacher Linda Lancaster showed up at Tarrant County Commissioners Court Tuesday (6-5) and said her piece. They delayed voting on signing the letter until next week. Hopefully many others will show up at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday the 12th and remind those folks that the powerbrokers who met in Fort Worth last week with NASCO are not the people who voted them into office and can vote them out!
The Dallas Observer readers also weigh in this week (published June 7, 2007) on Eminent Domain. Kudos to Fort Worth Star-Telegram political reporter Anna Tinsley for alerting readers to Whitley's attempt to undermine the citizens of Tarrant County to the detriment of landowners all over Texas.
Pirates of the Council |Hardee Har |Past Tense |And Finally Pirates of the Council and subtitled: The Pixies, The Police, Dallas comics, property rights ,
Jim Schutze's column (published May 31, 2007) The Good Laura, Or, how Bill Blaydes locked up the Bastard of the Year award
The saga moves to the City Council chamber:
Oakley, a City Hall apologist who has replaced Laura Miller as the city's point person working with Trinity Commons Foundation to get the big high speed Toll Road built through the what the voters voted to fund as a Park, is not high on the list of many of his former supporters. His opponent in the Dallas's Mayoral runoff also favors building the Parkway, but as an outsider, Tom Leppert seems less offensive when he discusses it than does insider Ed Oakley. Oakley, who represents a district in the southern quadrant of the city, should be concerned for the property rights of the little guy, but seems to spout the Corporate, big developer, big dollar interest line more than adhering to a more populist Democratic line. The Dallas County Democratic Party made an unprecedented move in endorsing a candidate in what is normally a nonpartisan city race, yet many of the Democratic activists I know are less than enthusiastic about the prospects of having Mr. Oakley as Mayor. Objections do not seem to relate to his openly gay lifestyle but to his conduct in rubbing elbows with the rich and powerful and failure to champion the plight of the little man in eminent domain squabbles and other issues when John Q Citizen must face off against the City of Dallas.
In previous column's Schutze has chided DMN reporter Steve Blow for superficial coverage of City Council and the Trinity Toll /Park Project in particular.
Today, as our fledging group of activists (DFW REGIONAL CONCERNED CITIZENS) trot down to the NCTCOG offices on Six Flags Drive in Arlington to tell the RTC and NCTCOG staff how their policies disturb us, it is encouraging to open my e-mail box and find Jim Schutze's column. Schutze can make dead serious squabbles entertaining. The Texas Legislature has scattered and I'm left to summer re-runs on television. Honestly, video links to Texas Senate Transportation Hearings and battles on the Texas House Floor as representative after representative asked Speaker Craddick to vacate the chair provided much more entertainment to me this Spring than slick news entertainment journals on network TV. (For me, one of the definite pluses to watching the Texas House and Senate via internet is that they don't cover Anna Nicole, any of her offspring or relatives or alleged paramours!)
Maybe it's those early bedside stories read to me as a child about knights and the round table and crusaders rescuing the underdog from the wicked, selfish despot that are rekindled when I watch Angela Hunt and Jim Schutze take on Trinity Commons, big corporate donors and Dallas City Hall. Whatever it is, I'm gratified that the Dallas Observer fights the giant with their feather.
In Fort Worth, Mayor Mike Moncrief (dubbed by the Fort Worth Weekly as the "GASFATHER" for his facilitation of the drilling of hundreds of gas wells in the densely populated cowtown,( and Fort Worth City Council members voted to send a letter to Perry urging veto of HB 2006 (restoring protection to landowners from seizure of property through eminent domain for private commercial development. Decades of property rights were bartered away by legislators in the 78th and 79th session of the Texas Legislature by massive changes to the Texas Transportation Code and eminent domain laws were enacted by state representatives and state senators who had accepted substantial campaign contributions from pro-toll road proponents. Speaker Craddick and Lt. Governor David Dewhurst moved the bills at rapid speed through their branches of the house. (Craddick, Dewhurst, Perry, Abbott, and Susan Combs all accepted campaign donations from Zachry Construction and Zachry family members. A significant correlation emerged between Democratic and Republican incumbents who accepted Zachry and other toll road proponents campaign contributions and their roles in sponsoring, voting for and moving TTC/CDA enabling legislation through both houses of the Texas Legislature. Public outcry against the taking of hundreds of thousands of acres of Texans unified grassroots activist in both parties to descend upon Austin. This past legislative session several folks who were instrumental in getting these bills passed stood and appeared to repent. (Steve Odgen, Florence Sharpio and others). When it was time to vote, however, Odgen's "Come to Jesus" contrition evaporated and he voted for Perry's detested "market valuation language" which many think negates the two year moratorium on CDA toll roads for most of the state.
It's been a busy season. Keeping up with who's pulling what and how the truth is twisted to give an illusion but the citizens are left holding lots of debt, empty promises, and developers, politicians, and engineering firms and highway contractors sit licking their lips with cream all over their greedy mouths seems to surpass the energy it must have required British Royalty to keep up with the palace intrigues in centuries past. We may be "tilting at windmills" but with citizens' access to the internet and writers like Jim Schutze of the Dallas Observer and Jeff Prince of the Fort Worth Weekly maybe enough voters will wake up and realize that Judge Glen Whitley, Mayor Mike Moncrief and most of the City Council and County Commissioners in the DFW Region have conspired to fleece them of property and to double tax them for use of public infrastructure! Hammering on computer keys helps, but ultimately it is the voter's responsibility to evaluate whether local officials are truly looking out for citizens' welfare. Pushing that button or marking that little box in the election booth is ultimately the only way we can depose folks who misuse their office to lobby to ensure that the rich and powerful get richer and richer and the honest working folks forfeit property and political privilege to the dark room schemes of scum bags who think that the TTC is good for Texas!
Ed Oakley mutters against bothersome property rights in Dallas City Council;
Citizens face elected officials on both sides of the Trinity over eminent domain and property rights
By Faith Chatham - June 8, 2007
The saga in Dallas continues between media moguls, (DMN and D Magazine publisher Wick Allison, City Council person Angela Hunt and Dallas Observer columnist Jim Schutze. Biased coverage of the political scene is nothing new in big city journalism, but DMN under BELO's coverage of toll roads and transportation frequently seems to translate it into a new art form.
For a couple of weeks I've been posting articles on the Trinity Park-- er Tollway -- with sparring between opponents and proponents of the Trinity Toll Way. Trinity Vote has attempted to clarify the facts.
This week Jim Schutze's column (My Brain on Crack - Wick Allison, The Trinity Park Project. Have I gone mad?)
It costs money. We have to borrow. We have to pay more taxes. It's an investment.
But look. This is also like a car deal. We went to the showroom in 1998 when we voted to let the city borrow $246 million for the Trinity River Project. We chose a fancy one—the Lexus SUV with the leather and the mag wheels and the two DVD players and the GPS navigation.
Now it's eight years later. They're trying to get us to take this Ford Escape with steel rims, cloth seats, a cheap portable CD player with earbuds and a map of Texas in the glove box. And the contract says we could owe them a billion dollars.
Irritated with coverage which he's termed "fiction" rather than "fact", columnist Jim Schutze ripped the facade off of the DMN's editorial a few weeks ago. City Council woman Angela Hunt took her speaking tour on the road and penned an open letter to Wick Allison to set the record straight. A soft-spoken very articulate lady with a Mission, Council Woman Hunt is upset that the project described to the citizens before they were asked to vote on the bonds for Trinity Park is vastly different now than what the citizens approved. She's (along thousands of other registered voters who have signed the Trinity Vote petition) are demanding that the Toll Road be taken back before the voters before ground is broken. Hunt outlines the differences between what the citizens were told prior to the bond election and what the City of Dallas, TxDOT, the RTC of the NCTCOG and other planners plan to deliver with those precious bond dollars which get paid by hard-earned dollars out of citizens’ pockets plans to actually build. The Belmont Debate between Councilwoman Hunt and Craig Holcomb has made it onto YOU TUBE VIDEO)
Numerous decades old DMN news stories and public meeting descriptors of Trinity Park with its PARKWAY, described as a 'low speed 45 mile and hour parkway with numerous entrances in to the park' have surfaced recently. Big dollars backers of the Toll Road (Trinity Commons Foundation) have been on the speaker’s circuit, trying to strike fear into the public about flood control and potential loss of Federal flood control dollars if the Toll Road proposal is killed. Jim Schutze came out with his computer keys blazing over that one. He quoted U.S. Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson who fought hard for those flood control dollars and clarified for the Dallas Observer readers that there the flood control dollars remain for flood control whether any road ever gets built in or near or through the Trinity flood plane near downtown Dallas! Amid charges (and a YOU TUBE VIDEO of what some allege are "paid educational consultants" who functioned as political operatives during the May 12th City of Dallas elections to interfere with the petition drive to collect signatures calling for a referendum on the Trinity Toll Way, and charges that they were employed by the non-profit Trinity Commons Foundation promoting the Toll Way, and rumbles about possible lawsuits and/or charges for violations of election law, the plot thickened in Dallas and the soup smelled worse than the stagnant sediment ponds cropping up in Wise County and other places where injection gas drilling is changing the landscape. Schutze referred to "Laura's goons" in earlier columns.
Angela Hunt earned accolades from Schutze in the spring for detailed research and for saving reporters from boredom at meetings of Dallas City Council Trinity River Committee.This week's Jim has devoted his column to taking DMagazine publisher Wick Allison to task. I'm including excerpts here but urge you to read it in its entirety.
Jim Schutze is one of the best columnists in this area. He's consistently refused to cave to pressure by publishers or peers to water down his rhetoric or avoid topics which fly counter to the financial interests of the high and powerful, politically ambitious, or his own publishers (which has changed over the years, probably due to his refusal to sell out his journalist integrity to satisfy the corporate board room.
Schutze writes:
Wick Allison, the publisher of D magazine, has devoted his entire publisher's note in the December edition to a discussion of whether Jim Schutze—that would be moi—has been telling the truth or distorting the facts about the Trinity Project. He doesn't come right out and say it, but I think his implied conclusion is that Jim Schutze smokes crack.
So first off, let me take you back to what we saw in that showroom eight years ago. Before the 1998 bond election the "We Love Dallas" bond campaign committee published a brochure showing a sailboat regatta on a lake the length of downtown with a huge fountain in the center and promenades and terraces on the downtown bank.
The brochure's promise to voters was clear and explicit: "If you've ever taken a stroll down San Antonio's Riverwalk, sat by a lake in New York's beautiful Central Park, or driven along Austin's scenic Town Lake, then you know how valuable these recreational resources are to a city...
"With absolutely no tax increase to Dallas citizens, the Trinity River Project is the key to making 21st Century Dallas a world-class city—an 8,500-acre greenbelt bursting with new business and entertainment."
I'm a big advocate of following the money. Schutze lays out the Trinity Park -er Toll Way? Project shortfall.
In response to my open records demand, Trinity Project director Rebecca Dugger provided me with numbers to show the ultimate cost of each portion of the plan as it exists now. She also gave me the amounts available from the 1998 bonds and all of the money that has been found from other sources to help pay for the project.
I put all this in a simple spreadsheet and figured the shortfalls. Let me just give you some highlights. According to the city's own official numbers, provided to me in response to a legal demand for them, the cost for building trails alone will be $36.149 million.
Of that, the bond money will pay for $10.256 million. The city told me it had found $7.067 million from other sources. That leaves a shortfall of $18.826 million for the trails.
Look at it again. The money we approved eight years ago now only pays for 28 percent of the cost of the trails. The city has persuaded other entities to pick up an additional 20 percent. That means you and I, dear local taxpayer, are on the books for an additional 52 percent or almost 19 million bucks just for trails.
I sat at a conference table in City Hall and challenged the mayor, the city manager, Dugger and Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan to show me where my shortfalls were wrong. I gave them my spreadsheets.
Here are samples of the things they did not argue with: a $16 million shortfall to make the river curvy instead of straight; a $50 million shortfall for park roads; a $19 million shortfall for digging out the proposed lakes; a $27 million shortfall for improvements to S.M. Wright Boulevard.
To me and in public, Mayor Miller has been offering an excuse for these shortfalls that strikes me as especially dishonest. Her mantra is that everything costs more these days. It's sort of the Neiman Marcus defense: Only a cheapster would be surprised that stuff costs more than it used to.
Tarrant County citizens are up in arms over Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, Whitley, a board member on NASCO, an international non-profit organization based in Dallas with a stated mission to develop interstate international super transportation corridors to speed up shipment of freight from ports in Mexico through Texas to Kansas City and Canada), fervently lobbied the Texas Legislature to exclude the DFW region from the 2 year moratorium on toll roads. Now Whitley is trying to persuade the Tarrant County Commissioners Court that it is wise for them to sign a letter urging Governor Perry to veto HB 2006 - a bill which curtains some of the dubious practices enacted in the previous session of the Legislature in TTC empowering legislation (promoted by NASCO!). Arlington school teacher Linda Lancaster showed up at Tarrant County Commissioners Court Tuesday (6-5) and said her piece. They delayed voting on signing the letter until next week. Hopefully many others will show up at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday the 12th and remind those folks that the powerbrokers who met in Fort Worth last week with NASCO are not the people who voted them into office and can vote them out!
The Dallas Observer readers also weigh in this week (published June 7, 2007) on Eminent Domain. Kudos to Fort Worth Star-Telegram political reporter Anna Tinsley for alerting readers to Whitley's attempt to undermine the citizens of Tarrant County to the detriment of landowners all over Texas.
Pirates of the Council |Hardee Har |Past Tense |And Finally Pirates of the Council and subtitled: The Pixies, The Police, Dallas comics, property rights ,
Is it safe?: "The Good Laura"—perfect title for Jim Schutze's article (May 31) exposing Bill Blaydes' ruthlessness and Ed Oakley's incredible disregard for individual property rights.
Folks, they can come after your property if they can do what Blaydes with Oakley's assistance tried to do to Jack Pierce at Hollywood Overhead Doors.
Makes you wonder if it's safe to invest in Dallas anymore. Well, at least Blaydes and Oakley will be private citizens in a few weeks.
Sharon Boyd
Jim Schutze's column (published May 31, 2007) The Good Laura, Or, how Bill Blaydes locked up the Bastard of the Year award
I have to tell you this story because it's three things: 1) an appalling example of arrogance and sleaziness at City Hall, 2) a stirring example of integrity and courage at City Hall, and 3) it's about Laura Miller.
This guy owns a business that has been in his family since 1938. Since the 1950s the business has occupied a series of metal barns on nine acres down in a hollow near Walnut Hill and White Rock Trail, in a little leftover remnant of countryside swallowed up by the city.
A small equestrian center is near him, as is a DART train track and a creek called Jackson Branch. You could pass this place a thousand times and never know it's there.
Across the DART tracks from him, major development plans are afoot. The guys doing the developing want this guy's nine acres. Offered to buy him out. He said no. Not interested.
Jack Pierce's business, Hollywood Door, makes garage doors, but its main business is the hand manufacture of huge, very heavy industrial overhead doors. His product is expensive to ship because it's so heavy. Over the last seven decades, his family has developed a good regional trade based in part on having the business right where it is.
He does not want to move, at least not at the prices being offered. The location is worth more to him than its real estate value. This company employs 40 people, and it makes a product, which it actually sells to other people.
Makes stuff. Sells stuff. This is what used to be called a "business," as opposed to insider grease-ball political land-flipping, which is what some people think is a business today.
Got it so far? Developers offer. Business owner says no.
Then he gets a letter. An official letter. A City Hall letter. It appears that Bill Blaydes, the council person for that area, wants to call a hearing to see whether the city should yank the man's zoning out from under him, which would force him to sell.
The saga moves to the City Council chamber:
I mean, are you still with me here? The guy's been on the property since the 1950s. His business is almost invisible from the road, emits no smoke or noise, generates very light traffic. But Commissar Blaydes comes along with his letter and pretty much tells him to get the hell off his own property.Read more
And even worse in my book: While Pierce is standing there at the microphone looking up at the mighty councilpersons with his life and his family's business in his hand, Councilman Ed Oakley, one of two candidates for mayor in the June 16 runoff election, launches into this big, sleazy package of lies aimed at pushing him into giving up.
Talking in his trademark incomprehensible used-car-salesman-on-crank cadence, Oakley says to Pierce: "Let me just ask you hypothetically if you were to go through this process and the process and the staff would allow you to have your area that allowed the use that you have there today which is a manufacturing facility and in addition to that it was created into a p.d. or sub-district that allowed for the other uses such as mixed-use or whatever the neighborhood would determine but you were allowed to be legal and conforming but along with that some of the obnoxious uses that maybe the neighborhood would be fearful of such as a recycling plant or something would be left out of that and would allow you to continue the family business in perpetuity which would be legal which would be a given zoning which would allow you to use that specific use but then the additional uses would allow for residential or mixed-use development or office or retail which aren't allowed there today which actually gives you more land-use rights than what you would have today giving up some of the things that would be obnoxious would you be amenable to sitting down having that conversation?"
Pierce gave the perfect answer. He said, "Sir, I am out of my depth here today."
Oakley, a City Hall apologist who has replaced Laura Miller as the city's point person working with Trinity Commons Foundation to get the big high speed Toll Road built through the what the voters voted to fund as a Park, is not high on the list of many of his former supporters. His opponent in the Dallas's Mayoral runoff also favors building the Parkway, but as an outsider, Tom Leppert seems less offensive when he discusses it than does insider Ed Oakley. Oakley, who represents a district in the southern quadrant of the city, should be concerned for the property rights of the little guy, but seems to spout the Corporate, big developer, big dollar interest line more than adhering to a more populist Democratic line. The Dallas County Democratic Party made an unprecedented move in endorsing a candidate in what is normally a nonpartisan city race, yet many of the Democratic activists I know are less than enthusiastic about the prospects of having Mr. Oakley as Mayor. Objections do not seem to relate to his openly gay lifestyle but to his conduct in rubbing elbows with the rich and powerful and failure to champion the plight of the little man in eminent domain squabbles and other issues when John Q Citizen must face off against the City of Dallas.
In previous column's Schutze has chided DMN reporter Steve Blow for superficial coverage of City Council and the Trinity Toll /Park Project in particular.
Today, as our fledging group of activists (DFW REGIONAL CONCERNED CITIZENS) trot down to the NCTCOG offices on Six Flags Drive in Arlington to tell the RTC and NCTCOG staff how their policies disturb us, it is encouraging to open my e-mail box and find Jim Schutze's column. Schutze can make dead serious squabbles entertaining. The Texas Legislature has scattered and I'm left to summer re-runs on television. Honestly, video links to Texas Senate Transportation Hearings and battles on the Texas House Floor as representative after representative asked Speaker Craddick to vacate the chair provided much more entertainment to me this Spring than slick news entertainment journals on network TV. (For me, one of the definite pluses to watching the Texas House and Senate via internet is that they don't cover Anna Nicole, any of her offspring or relatives or alleged paramours!)
Maybe it's those early bedside stories read to me as a child about knights and the round table and crusaders rescuing the underdog from the wicked, selfish despot that are rekindled when I watch Angela Hunt and Jim Schutze take on Trinity Commons, big corporate donors and Dallas City Hall. Whatever it is, I'm gratified that the Dallas Observer fights the giant with their feather.
In Fort Worth, Mayor Mike Moncrief (dubbed by the Fort Worth Weekly as the "GASFATHER" for his facilitation of the drilling of hundreds of gas wells in the densely populated cowtown,( and Fort Worth City Council members voted to send a letter to Perry urging veto of HB 2006 (restoring protection to landowners from seizure of property through eminent domain for private commercial development. Decades of property rights were bartered away by legislators in the 78th and 79th session of the Texas Legislature by massive changes to the Texas Transportation Code and eminent domain laws were enacted by state representatives and state senators who had accepted substantial campaign contributions from pro-toll road proponents. Speaker Craddick and Lt. Governor David Dewhurst moved the bills at rapid speed through their branches of the house. (Craddick, Dewhurst, Perry, Abbott, and Susan Combs all accepted campaign donations from Zachry Construction and Zachry family members. A significant correlation emerged between Democratic and Republican incumbents who accepted Zachry and other toll road proponents campaign contributions and their roles in sponsoring, voting for and moving TTC/CDA enabling legislation through both houses of the Texas Legislature. Public outcry against the taking of hundreds of thousands of acres of Texans unified grassroots activist in both parties to descend upon Austin. This past legislative session several folks who were instrumental in getting these bills passed stood and appeared to repent. (Steve Odgen, Florence Sharpio and others). When it was time to vote, however, Odgen's "Come to Jesus" contrition evaporated and he voted for Perry's detested "market valuation language" which many think negates the two year moratorium on CDA toll roads for most of the state.
It's been a busy season. Keeping up with who's pulling what and how the truth is twisted to give an illusion but the citizens are left holding lots of debt, empty promises, and developers, politicians, and engineering firms and highway contractors sit licking their lips with cream all over their greedy mouths seems to surpass the energy it must have required British Royalty to keep up with the palace intrigues in centuries past. We may be "tilting at windmills" but with citizens' access to the internet and writers like Jim Schutze of the Dallas Observer and Jeff Prince of the Fort Worth Weekly maybe enough voters will wake up and realize that Judge Glen Whitley, Mayor Mike Moncrief and most of the City Council and County Commissioners in the DFW Region have conspired to fleece them of property and to double tax them for use of public infrastructure! Hammering on computer keys helps, but ultimately it is the voter's responsibility to evaluate whether local officials are truly looking out for citizens' welfare. Pushing that button or marking that little box in the election booth is ultimately the only way we can depose folks who misuse their office to lobby to ensure that the rich and powerful get richer and richer and the honest working folks forfeit property and political privilege to the dark room schemes of scum bags who think that the TTC is good for Texas!
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Trinity Park or Trinity Toll Road - Get the Facts!
Trinity Vote wrote:
This is an extensive fact sheet. Only brief excerpts are shown here. Please see Trinity Vote for more.
Also, refer to RIGHT SIDE BAR: Specific Toll Projects - Trinity Parkway
--Dallas Morning News, Feb. 27, 2000
--Texas Department of Transportation Major Transportation Investment Study,March 1998S
Click Here to READ WHAT THE VOTERS WERE TOLD WHEN THEY VOTED ON THE TRINITY PARK BONDS and WHAT THE FACTS ARE NOW.
We love facts. Can't get enough of 'em. But our opponents? Not so much. Here, we set the record straight.
This is an extensive fact sheet. Only brief excerpts are shown here. Please see Trinity Vote for more.
Also, refer to RIGHT SIDE BAR: Specific Toll Projects - Trinity Parkway
When the roadway bond proposal was put to voters in 1998, the parkway was to be a 45-mph road with left-turn lanes allowing motorists to exit directly into the park. But the state, which was to foot most of the highway bill, said it couldn't tackle the project for at least a decade. So the city asked the tollway authority to consider building the road as a tollway."
--Dallas Morning News, Feb. 27, 2000
"Officials have proposed posting a 45-mph speed limit and banning trucks on the new road. They also have promised that the highway will have plenty of on- and off-ramps leading to parks along the river and nearby commercial areas."--Dallas Morning News, May 13, 1998
The Trinity Parkway reliever route would comprise of an eight-lane split parkway...with a posted speed limit of 45 mph....The Trinity Parkway reliever route would be constructed a s lower speed parkway design rather than a freeway design, allowing left turn exits towards the river floodway...The parkway design would incorporate access locations directly from the parkway lanes into the adjacent park area, serving ingress and egress at several locations as determined by the City of Dallas.
--Texas Department of Transportation Major Transportation Investment Study,March 1998S
So it does sound like in 1998, the Trinity Parkway was planned "to be a low speed access road for the park."
But we're fascinated by the opposition's logic. According to them, the City knew all along the "parkway" was really going to be a high-speed toll road. Luckily for voters, opponents of the 1998 bond referendum (not the City, mind you) put ads in the DMN stating the "Parkway" was really a toll road. So, apparently referendum opponents are arguing that voters shouldn't have trusted what the City was saying about the toll road back in 1998. To get the truth, voters should have listened to the opponents. Sounds reasonable.
Click Here to READ WHAT THE VOTERS WERE TOLD WHEN THEY VOTED ON THE TRINITY PARK BONDS and WHAT THE FACTS ARE NOW.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Angela Hunt calls D Magazine Publisher Wick Allison on Trinity
Angela Hunt Sends Wick Allison a Note; Smelled a Little Like Vanilla Maybe?
by Robert Wilonsky-The Dallas Observer - Tue May 29, 2007
Read more and view Angela Hunt debunking the lies on You Tube.
by Robert Wilonsky-The Dallas Observer - Tue May 29, 2007
On Friday, Jim Schutze had a little sumpin-sumpin to say about Wick Allison's D mag editorial in which Allison claims Angela Hunt's TrinityVote toll-road petition drive is nothing less than "a wrecking ball [aimed] at the largest public works project in Dallas history." ...
Hunt spent the end of last week debating the Trininty toll road with Trinity Commons Foundation's executive director Craig Holcomb; there's some video from the Thursday-night Belmont Neighborhood Association-sponsored shindig after the jump, and you can find plenty of it right here, courtesy Avi Adelman. This week, Hunt sets her sights on Allison as well: Yesterday on TrinityVote, she posted an open letter to Allison, in which she "humbly offer[s] to bring Mr. Allison up to speed on a few facts that he may wish to correct in his next editorial." Only there's nothing "humbly" about the letter, which is also after the jump. --Robert Wilonsky
An Open Letter to D Magazine's Wick Allison from Angela Hunt
Monday, May 28, 2007
If you picked up the June issue of D Magazine, you no doubt read the editorial by its publisher, Wick Allison, in which he claims that a public vote on moving the proposed Trinity toll road out of our Downtown Trinity Park "is to aim a wrecking ball at the largest public works project in Dallas history."
Now, we know a little bit about publishing. We are aware that it takes months of effort to put together a fancy, glossy magazine such as D. We understand that Mr. Allison likely wrote his editorial months ago, long before critical facts contradicting his assertions became public.
So we humbly offer to bring Mr. Allison up to speed on a few facts that he may wish to correct in his next editorial.
After years of embracing the Trinity toll road, Mr. Allison has finally acknowledged what TrinityVote has been saying all along: the planned toll road is a monstrosity, and we will end up with an ersatz North Dallas Tollway cutting through the last great expanse of nature in our city. Mr. Allison observes:
"I was driving back to the office the other day on the Dallas North Tollway after having listened to Angela Hunt speak against the design of the Trinity parkway. The speed limit on the Tollway is 55 mph, and I was doing 70. Looking at the six lanes of concrete over which I was speeding, it dawned on me that Hunt is right. The engineers want to build a Dallas North Tollway down the middle of the Trinity floodplain."
Mr. Allison is absolutely right on this point: The "Trinity Parkway," which was sold to voters in 1998 as a low-speed reliever route with direct park access, has become a high-speed toll road with no park access. Where Mr. Allison misses the mark is in his conclusion that the high-speed toll road "is not going to happen," and that with a little elbow grease, we'll get a terrific little park road. Mr. Allison is confident that we can fix this abomination if we all go back to the drawing board. He suggests we "lock the traffic engineers in a room and tell them not to come out until they have a parkway the entire city can embrace."
No doubt this method works splendidly at D Magazine's offices. However, in the context of designing the "Trinity Parkway," it will not. Mr. Allison seems certain that the toll road's high speed and lack of park access is somehow the fault of stubborn traffic engineers who simply refuse to sit down and discuss the design of this road. He seems to believe that if only these engineers had an eye for design, we'd have a lovely parkway.
But the fact is, engineers and designers have been planning this road for nine years. And after nearly a decade, they have been unable to resolve the fundamental conflict between a low-speed access road and a high-speed toll road: The North Texas Tollway Authority, the entity that will construct and operate the toll road, must generate tolls to pay for the road. To generate tolls, the NTTA needs lots of cars to travel on the toll road. To ensure a lot of cars travel on the toll road, the cars must go fast. So a low-speed route is out of the question. But what about direct park access? Unfortunately, that costs too much money and would slow down motorists, according to the NTTA's traffic engineers. All the good intentions in the world will not change these fundamental facts. Therefore, we’re stuck with a high speed toll road with no park access.
The toll road’s current plans did not result from the lack of a “context-sensitive” design, but from the NTTA’s practical need to generate tolls. The resulting design does not reflect the parkway voters approved in 1998. So why shouldn't we vote on this?
According to Mr. Allison, it would be unwise for Dallas residents to vote on the toll road because "The Trinity is the only place to build [the toll road]" and "The entire Trinity project is premised on the federal money the parkway attracts." We can only assume that Mr. Allison drafted his editorial before certain facts came to light and did not have time to make revisions before going to press. Unfortunately for Mr. Allison, with such a long lead-time, one risks looking foolish in the face of facts that are clearly contrary to one's assertions.
To Mr. Allison's claim that "The Trinity is the only place to build [the toll road]," we point out that the NTTA disagrees. They are currently investigating other locations for the toll road outside the levees: "An alignment outside of the levees is one of the alignments we are studying along with several alignments within the levee." (Kevin Feldt, NTTA Director of Project Planning and Development, on KERA radio May 16, 2007.)
Mr. Allison also states that "The entire Trinity project is premised on the federal money the parkway attracts. Without the parkway, the whole project could collapse." We find this claim curious, since U.S. Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson – who has been Dallas’ champion of the Trinity River Project – disabused referendum critics of that notion two weeks ago: "I'm never anti people doing a vote. It hasn't been voted on before. So I guess that's the right of people if that's what they want to do. There really is no impact because what we're doing through water resources [federal funding for levee improvements] is different than what is being discussed about the tollway."
As to Mr. Allison's claim that the petition will "aim a wrecking ball at the largest public works project in Dallas history," we are unclear as to his meaning. Surely he does not mean that the Trinity River Project would be delayed if we have a vote, since both the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the NTTA recently have stated that is not the case:
Gene Rice, Trinity River Project Manager, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: "The vote or the proposed vote, we don't think it wouldn't have a large impact on us as we have made some assumptions that keep moving along with our project."
Kevin Feldt, NTTA: "As far as the timing goes, the project is moving forward with or without the pending petition and pending election."
So we welcome and look forward to learning exactly what Mr. Allison means by his statement that TrinityVote’s petition effort will wreck the Trinity River Project. We would love to hear some specifics, rather than baseless rhetoric.
Mr. Allison concludes his editorial with the statement “Egocentrics make bad listeners and good populists. Because they won’t listen to facts, the facts never get in their way.”
Read more and view Angela Hunt debunking the lies on You Tube.
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