When is a grocery store more important than a first-class college education?

Obviously it’s when you attend Paul Quinn College. For some reason that completely baffles my mind, Paul Quinn College President Michael Sorrell brought a bunch of students, staff members and faculty to Dallas City Hall today to say we don’t want an upgraded science program on our campus but we want the government to provide us with a grocery store in the neighborhood.

Didn’t PQC have some problems with its accreditation recently? With people like Sorrell in charge, it’s easy to see why.

The City of Dallas has a marvelous plan to convert the McCommas Bluff Landfill into a fully enclosed environmental recycling center similar to the one pictured here about to be built in East London. It will take garbage and convert it into all kinds of heating and motor fuels. What’s more, it will take no public money to build. A number of high-tech private companies that possess techniques to make this conversion process work are chomping at the bit to build such a facility. The only catch is that it will take about twice as much garbage as the city now collects at the landfill to make this an economically viable undertaking for these private companies. The good news is, however, that amount of garbage is already being collected in Dallas — but it’s currently being taken to landfills outside the city. So the city is proposing something called “Resource Flow Control” that will require that all garbage collected within the city limits of Dallas be deposited at sites within the city limits of Dallas. (As an aside here, the city collects all residential garbage and deposits it at the landfill or the Bachman Transfer Station. The trash at apartments and businesses are collected by private haulers, who are currently free to dump the junk anywhere they want to, even if it means traveling further to do so.)

I’ll get back to that Resource Flow Control, which assuredly will be included in the upcoming budget passed by the City Council in September, in a minute. But first I want to address some issues surrounding the proposed recycling center. One City Council member, District 5's Vonciel Jones Hill, is going to go to her grave fighting this issue because she doesn’t like all that “garbage going south.” She can say that all she wants to but I don’t believe it. Not for a second. Here’s why. I’m willing to bet if you told Councilwoman Hill that Texas Instruments wanted to locate a wafer fab facility in her district, she would be ecstatic. That’s TI. That’s the kind of company we want in South Dallas. She would completely overlook/ignore all the well-founded environmental dangers involved with such a facility, dangers that have led many neighborhoods say “Hell, no!” to TI plans to construct wafer fabs. No, Councilwoman Hill has her own hidden agenda and I am not going to try to guess what it is.

But back to the Paul Quinn situation. Included as part of this proposal is a plan to “expand educational opportunities for ‘green energy’-related curricula” at Paul Quinn College. But for some reason Sorrell doesn’t want to expand his science curricula; he told the council he wants them to provide the neighborhood with a grocery store. I did not have the opportunity to corner him to ask him “(1) Why don’t you want to expand your educational offerings and (2) what makes you think it’s the government’s responsibility to provide you with a grocery store?” so I have no idea what was running through his mind, but my suspicions are he is motivated by the same things Hill is.

But now let’s get back to the ordinance. This item was briefed to council just two weeks ago. To return to council in this short of time is virtually unprecedented. Here’s what I think (although I have absolutely nothing whatsoever to back this up with except my own experiences working on the inside of City Hall): City Manager May Suhm counted noses and realized she had the votes to pass Flow Control. Problem is, there is only one more meeting of the current City Council and she didn’t know how she would stand when the new council convened. So she wanted this ordinance on the agenda of the final meeting of this council which takes place a week from today.

In the last few days, however, several of those originally thought to be “no” votes, including District 7's Carolyn Davis, have switched to be in favor and those on the fence have switched to yes for reasons that are not directly attributable to Resource Flow Control. Davis was concerned about the effect the ordinance would have on the immediate neighborhoods surrounding the McCommas Bluff. That was solved when she made her very first visit to the facility Tuesday and saw for herself there were no “immediate neighborhoods” surrounding the landfill. This removed the necessity to get this on the next council agenda. She knows she will have the votes she needs in September when the budget is adopted.

So here’s what’s going to happen. The City Council is going to take its regular vacation for the month of July, during which time City Manager Mary Suhm and her Merry Men and Women will be burning the midnight oil (believe me — I burned a lot of it around this time each year when I was there) in order to complete, print, bind and present to the council a balanced budget on Aug. 8. In fact, much of the details will probably be leaked around that Friday, Aug. 5. It will be evident when council members get the details of the budget because their screams will be heard probably as far away as the Panhandle. They simply will not permit all the cuts to services that Suhm will propose, nor should they. So they will grab for all the quick fixes that they can and one quick fix that will provide an additional $13 million is Resource Flow Control. They will simply have no other alternative but to adopt it.

Councilwoman Hill will still vote against it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she is the only one. District 8's Tennell Atkins has said he could not support it until an “independent consultant” verified the city’s income projections and until meetings could be held with his constituents. It would not surprise me in the least it Atkins and the rest of that council didn’t receive that verification from an independent consultant within the next week — surely before the July vacation — and the budget townhall process offers ample opportunities to talk to his constituents about this and to let them know it’s either Resource Flow Control or the rec centers in his neighborhoods will be closed. Their choice. What do they want him to do?

About-to-be-ex-mayor D-Wayne Carriedaway is still fuming over what he believes was Hill sabotaging his efforts to shutter a scrap metal yard and I wouldn’t be surprised if he voted in favor of Resource Flow Control just to spite her, because she is so adamantly opposed. He hinted at that very possibility during today’s briefing, although his stated reason for supporting it will be simply because the city needs this additional revenue to provide the city services his constituents will demand in order to vote for him again.

Of the two candidates vying to replace Carriedaway as mayor, Rawlins supports the plan, Kunkle doesn’t, but I would be shocked if Rawlins didn’t win Saturday’s election going away. Both candidates running in the District 12 say they oppose, but either will change their minds when faced the realities of the budget Suhm will propose. At least Sandy Greyson is intelligent enough to change her mind. Her opponent, Donna Starnes, is a former Tea Party organizer and those idiots never let reality interfere with ideology. But I think Sandy will pull this one out.

So that’s a lot of information on something most Dallas residents really don’t care one bit about, except when they learn Flow Control will be needed to fund the police protection required to keep their neighborhoods safe and then they’ll be saying “Whatever it is, pass it.”

The only question that remains is what is really driving Michael Sorrell and Vonciel Jones Hill because the stories they are telling publicly make no sense at all and are, on the face of it, completely unpersuasive and unbelievable.