And then there were six

Why is it that the current members of the Dallas City Council can't make a decision? Today the Trinity River Corridor Committee of the Council, led by Chief Wimp David Neumann, was supposed to narrow the list of 10 recommended new names for Industrial Boulevard to three. You could spot the indecisiveness rising immediately when someone on the committee objected to just three names and instead moved it be expanded to four. That, of course, was approved. Heaven forbid, these folks should exert some leadership, for heavens sake.

So they placed all 10 names across the top of a white board and asked each council member to write their names on three sticky notes and affix them under the names they preferred. When that exercise was finished, two names led in the voting and four others tied for third with four votes each.

Now why he didn't ask them to rank their votes is beyond me. But that would have required some thinking and decision-making on the part of the council members and we shouldn't be forcing them to take actions like that, should we?

So Neumann now asked each member of the committee to vote for two names from the four that were tied. What happened? All four tied again. But instead of asking the committee members to vote again, but this time for just one of the four -- in other words forcing them to actually make a decision -- he wimped out and said, lets submit all six names.

The six are Cesar Chavez Boulevard (which was favored by most of the citizens who came to speak before the committee wasted everyone's time with their non-vote), Eddie Bernice Johnson Boulevard, Riverfront Boulevard, Trinity Lakes Boulevard, Trinityview Boulevard and Waterfront Boulevard.

I have already expressed my opinions on the proposed names so I won't go into all that again, but I must admit I am disappointed (although not totally surprised) by the non-actions of this council committee today. What happens now is anyone's guess. Supposedly the public -- that's you and me -- will have a chance to express our opinions by a yet-to-be-announced polling system. How that will work and, more importantly, how "ballot stuffing" will be prohibited, has not been revealed. I can predict right now that none of the six will receive a majority of the votes, so what happens then? A runoff? And will those vote really even matter? I already said the majority of the citizens speaking before the vote favored Cesar Chavez, but second was Stevie Ray Vaughan Boulevard and that didn't make the committee's cut. I realize I'm being a little facetious here, but this whole process is becoming just as silly.

The City Council is supposed to make a decision June 25. That ought to be good for a couple of chuckles as well.