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SANTA FE TRAIL OFFICIALLY OPENS (Wednesday, July 01, 2009) Nancy Visser with the Dallas Morning News provides an update on a great new amenity in East Dallas: "Santa Fe Trail Opens in East Dallas with Legwork to Come." The city laid the groundwork by building the trail, but like the Katy Trail, it’ll be the friends groups that take the Santa Fe Trail to the next level. The surrounding community, the Santa Fe Trail Neighborhood Association and Crime Watch, and the Friends of the Santa Fe Trail are working together to make this a clean, safe trail. My hat’s off to them for adopting this new trail to make it a great asset for East Dallas. In the meantime, I’m going to keep pushing the city to put in stop lights/signs for traffic at Beacon and other major streets. Right now, there are no stop signs for cars, but there ARE stop signs for trail users, if you can believe that. I’ve never seen an SUV hit by a pedestrian, so that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. TRINITY TOLL ROAD UPDATE (Wednesday, July 01, 2009) Just a few updates on the Trinity Toll Road, for those playing along at home: First up, excerpts from Michael Lindenberger’s article in the Dallas Morning News, "U.S. postpones decision on Trinity toll road to evaluate levee problems": Problems with the Trinity River levees have prompted the Federal Highway Administration to postpone a decision about where to build the controversial Trinity toll road....The agency will take until April or May reviewing how the levees’ problems could affect the toll road’s cost or environmental impact....On the toll road, [FHWA Texas Division Chief Janice] Brown said, the FHWA will weigh any additional costs associated with putting the road between the levees when it issues its final decision...."Additional costs will be a factor," Brown said. "But we don’t yet know how much more the road will cost as a result of the levees." If costs for building the road between the levees become too high, that could prompt the agency to order the route changed or cancel it altogether. Next, over on the DMN Opinion Blog, Editor Sharon Grigsby discusses "Trinity Fatigue": "Today the Federal Highway Administration makes headlines with the news that it is postponing its decision on where to build the toll road because of the levee problems....It’s been eight years or more since now former Dallas Morning News reporter and Trinity expert Victoria Loe Hicks warned us that, with so many agencies in the approval process, it would be a miracle if they could ever all get on the same page." She asked Ms. Hicks about her assessment of the current situation: There’s a word for creating a new product from scratch or creating a product in a radically new way that has never been tried before: prototype. Lastly, excerpts from Sunday’s DMN frontpage report: "Corps’ caution on Trinity collides with desire to go forward": Dallas’ most complex and aggressive public works project ever is mired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ concerns about something in the Trinity River bottoms as old and common as dirt. Sand, to be exact....Their worry: Water could seep through the sand and undermine the levees. Construction could also create gaps in the hard clay covering the flood works, and a big-enough flood could force enough water through the sand and erode the levees from within....So the city recently extended the Trinity project’s timetable by 20 months to analyze the soil. COUNCIL DELAYS BOOTING ORDINANCE (Wednesday, June 24, 2009) This morning, the Council unanimously voted to delay the booting ordinance until it can be considered by the Council’s Transportation Committee in August. The delay was critical for those of us who want an ordinance with teeth that protects our restaurants and retailers that have lost customers due to unscrupulous booting. Here’s what happened: The booting issue was presented to the Transportation Committee of which both Councilmember Medrano and I are members. We represent the two districts most impacted by the booting problem: Downtown and Deep Ellum. On June 1, the Transportation Committee discussed the issue, but had outstanding questions that needed to be resolved before deciding the issue. At the end of the meeting, the committee wanted to: bring the issue back to the Transportation Committee, get input from impacted business owners, allow the committee two hours to discuss the issue, and hopefully, reach consensus on the booting ordinance. Despite the best efforts of Transportation Chair Linda Koop, it was not possible to find a time to hold a special committee meeting where a quorum of the committee would be present before council recess in July. (There are many special meetings crammed in right before the July recess, making it difficult to find time for yet another meeting.) Staff had proposed an ordinance similar to the City of Houston’s, which requires parking lots to provide a written receipt to their patrons. Then if a car is wrongly booted, the patron has proof of payment and can dispute the wrongful booting. Having talked with business owners who have lost customers due to wrongful booting, they like the receipt system because it will protect their customers. The issue was presented to the Economic Development Committee, of which neither Councilmember Medrano nor I am a voting member. So we could attend the meeting, but could not make a motion or vote on the matter. The committee recommended approval of staff’s proposed ordinance with a significant change: a parking lot owner could EITHER provide a receipt OR use something called "video monitoring." Video monitoring means the parking lot owner doesn’t issue receipts, but instead a parking attendant opens up the money box and videotapes the money in each slot. In theory, the money box is tamper-proof, and the parking lot owner cannot remove the money from any of the boxes before videotaping (making it look like someone hadn’t paid when they had). There’s a real problem with that. Unless the city hires money box monitors who regularly inspect the money boxes to ensure they are indeed tamper-proof, there’s no guarantee that the parking lot attendant won’t remove money from boxes, videotape the "empty" payment boxes, then boot the parking patrons who in fact paid. Without a receipt, the parking patrons have no evidence or recourse. Also, the video monitoring system puts all the evidence in the hands of the (possibly dishonest) parking lot owner, when it is the parking lot customers -- the potential victims -- who should be protected with proof of payment in their possession. Councilmember Medrano shares these concerns and, due to the many outstanding questions (including cost of implementing the receipt system, which some have argued is as little as $200 a month), the council agreed to delay the vote on booting until it has been considered again by the Transportation Committee in August. COUNCIL AUTHORIZES BOND SALE FOR CONVENTION CENTER HOTEL (Tuesday, June 23, 2009) Last Friday, the Dallas City Council unanimously authorized the City Manager to move forward in selling the bonds to build the city-owned convention center hotel. I did not, and do not, think that Dallas should wholly own a convention center hotel. After examining this issue very closely for more than a year, I still believe Dallas should have subsidized a privately-owned hotel, and that a private company should have borne the financial risk. As it stands, if the hotel fails, taxpayers would ultimately be responsible for the debt. I remain unconvinced that city consultant HVS’s overly optimistic financial projections will prove true. However, Dallas voters assessed this risk when they voted on May 9. They (narrowly) approved city-ownership of the hotel. In the end, it is their money and their decision. So when it came time to authorize the bonds, I felt my obligation was to approve the authorization IF there were sufficient protections in place for taxpayers (my responsibility to the 49% who voted against city-ownership of the hotel). I spent a great deal of time talking with city staff about the deal they have brokered for sale of the bonds, and what types of taxpayer protections were in place. My primary concern with the original deal was with the way the reserve fund was set up. A reserve fund lets you dip into it if you don’t have enough money to make your debt payment. Originally, $50 million was going to be put in a rainy day reserve account for the hotel. If the hotel wasn’t profitable enough to make its debt payment, it could dip into the reserve. However, the original deal required the reserve fund to be kept at $50 million (to protect the bondholders), and that meant using taxpayer dollars to shore up the reserve fund if funds were withdrawn from the account to make the debt payment -- like robbing Peter to pay Paul. That essentially opened up the city’s general fund to the hotel, a risk too great when the returns on the hotel were too uncertain. I am pleased that city staff took to heart the reservations expressed by those of us opposed to city ownership of the hotel. The current deal does not require that the reserve account be refilled by taxpayers. Instead, it is replenished only by hotel profits. That is a much better deal for taxpayers, and means that taxpayer funds will only be used if the various reserve funds are used up. There are several reserve accounts, starting out at over $50 million. While I still believe the city would be better off with a privately-owned hotel, I am very pleased with the protections put in place for taxpayers and hopeful that taxpayer dollars will never have to be used to rescue this hotel. As this project moves forward, I’m going to do all that I can to make it a success so that taxpayers never have to bail out this hotel. UPCOMING CITY BUDGET MEETINGS (Tuesday, June 09, 2009) Next year’s City budget (Oct. 2009 – Sept. 2010) is going to require serious budget cuts. I have opposed a tax increase because too many residents and families are struggling right now. So we’re going to have to make some tough choice. I want your input on next year’s budget, and would like you to get involved in the process as soon as possible. Because of the dire state of next year’s budget, the city is holding early meetings to give a budget overview: Tuesday, June 9 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. Goodwill Industries 3020 N. Westmoreland Rd. Dallas, TX 75212 Monday, June 22 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. Jewish Community Center 7900 Northaven Rd Dallas, TX 75230 Thursday, June 25 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. Winfrey Point at White Rock Lake 950 E. Lawther Dr. Dallas, TX 75218 Take a look at the city’s budget presentation and the draft budget. If there is a service that’s being cut that you would like to keep in the budget, please tell me how you propose to fund the service (is there something else you propose to cut?). I hope you will attend one of these meetings and let me know your thoughts. Neighborhood leaders, please pass on this info to your neighborhood residents. Home | Blog | District 14 | City Council | Photos | Biography | Contact
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