Dallas mayor's race: Hunt's out (forever); Rawlings in; my off-the-chart candidate

Angela Hunt's decision not to run for mayor in this year's municipal elections means she will never be elected mayor of Dallas. Term limits will prohibit her from running for her seat again in 2013 and the next mayoral election won't come along until 2015, at which time the incumbent may just decide to run again. That means Hunt will be out of the public eye anywhere from two to six years and that's political poison. I can't see her in any kind of role that will keep her in the spotlight during that time.

But she also shot her chances when she said yesterday "I think what will be best for Dallas is a mayor who comes from outside the current city council." That statement would definitely come back to her haunt her should she ever decide to run in the future.

Now here's an idea for all the conspiracy theorists to chew on. Hunt wins re-election to her final term this year and then two years down the road hand-picks a successor to run for her seat in 2013. Hunt promises this candidate the full backing of her effective grassroots machine, but only if the candidate agrees to serve one two-year term. Then Hunt runs for the District 14 seat again in 2015. It's possible, but if she thinks that's the way she will eventually be elected mayor shes' only deluding herself.

Mike Rawlings decision to enter the race is an interesting one. I thought all along the Park Board chief was Da Mayor's hand-picked successor, but in the meantime City Councilman Ron Natinsky seemingly lined up the support of the city's traditional power brokers, illustrated by the fact that Carol Reed is running his campaign. Both Rawlings and Natinsky appeal to the same downtown business/North Dallas resident voting base. Thus, Rawlings entry into the race is a shot in the arm for former police chief  and mayoral candidate David Kunkle who is going to emerge as the closest thing we might get to a "people's" candidate, now that Hunt has bowed out.

For my money, Rawlings brings a pedigree that's superior to Natinsky's into the race. What impresses me the most about Rawlings is that during the time he served as president of Dallas-based Pizza Hut, the largest pizza chain in the world, from 1997 until 2003, he directed a major turnaround in the company’s business, resulting in the then highest weekly store sales in Pizza Hut history with system sales over $5 billion. Under Rawlings’ leadership, same-store growth rose 19 percent, overall operating profit doubled and margins improved to record highs. As the city’s Homeless Czar, he helped Dallas reduce its number of chronically homeless by nearly 60 percent. Those are measurable results that Natinsky can't match.

However, neither of them will be able to tout the public safety issue as successfully as Kunkle. And public safety is still the No. 1 issue resonating with Dallas voters in municipal elections. During his term as police chief, the crime rate dropped dramatically and Kunkle will be the only candidate who can legitimately claim responsibility for that.

So what we have right now is a race among three candidates: Ron Natinsky, the candidate of the downtown business cabal; Mike Rawlings, the candidate with an impressive record of results, although not on matters voters really care about; and David Kunkle, the man who actually produced a reduction in the city's crime rate.

What bothers me is that the race is among three white men. I don't suppose there is any way someone could convince Dr. Elba Garcia to resign her just-won County Commissioner's seat to run for mayor. Probably not. I know I wouldn't do it if I were her.

But I'm going to throw a name out there that I'm betting no one else has ever mentioned, but makes a lot of sense to me: Clarice Tinsley. She has more integrity in her little finger than most of us have in our entire bodies, she's knowledgeable and she's absolutely capable. Anyone want to join me in a Draft-Clarice-Tinsley-for-Mayor campaign? It could be fun.

Hunt blames others for problems she helped create

Displaying the height of hypocrisy, Angela Hunt has a scare piece on her blog today about the city's debt and its ability to repay that debt. The issue is the 2006 bond program and how miserably Ms. Hunt and many other city council persons have handled the sale of those bonds. "But don't blame me," Ms. Hunt essentially writes today, "let's disregard the wishes of the voters even more than we already have."

Ms. Hunt's undemocratic suggestion is to curtail by as much as 50 percent some of the bond programs scheduled for next year.

Let's review, shall we. In 2006 voters passed the largest bond proposal in the city's history after being told exactly how much the these capital improvements would cost. The voters said "Hey, we want these projects and we're willing to pay this price for them."

Ms. Hunt and the the majority of her council colleagues then reneged on the entire deal, saying "Hey, we can get you all this stuff for free. You won't have to pay a cent for it. We'll just cut about $190 million in essential services, fire 800 city employees, close libraries and rec centers and pay for it that way."

Now Ms. Hunt has the unmitigated gall to criticize what she and the rest of the council brought on themselves by saying "Hey, we can't cut anymore so we just won't build what we promised we would build and you said you would pay to have us build."

Here's some advice for you, Ms. Hunt, and the rest of the City Council: Quit representing just the 43 percent of your constituents who are homeowners and start representing all of the people of your district, as you were elected to do. You failed to follow the wishes of the voters in order to protect this 43 percent minority and now your solution for your failure is to disregard their wishes even more by not giving them the improvements they voted for.

A new Mark on the Office of Cultural Affiars?

Angela Hunt revealed -- oh so quietly -- at her townhall meeting last night that "a way has been found to preserve the Office of Cultural Affairs" as a separate entity. Now this is a big deal to all the arts groups around the city and for Ms. Hunt to be so covert about this revelation had me scratching my head. What's going on here? Why not trumpet this news from the rooftops?

Obviously, General Fund moneys are not involved in this. Private donations were secured. Those who donated these funds would be regarded as heroes within the arts community. So why aren't these heroes coming forward to be recognized?

Here's my guess: The money was donated by Mark Cuban, who doesn't want anyone to know he regularly comes to the aid of the city when it is financially strapped. Let me give you an example, although Cuban himself will deny any involvement in this, as will the City of Dallas. There are two Calatrava bridges designated to span the Trinity River. The first and best known, because it has been in the news so much lately, is the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, named after its benefactor. The city, however, had major problems securing the private money needed to pay for the second bridge until Cuban wrote a check to cover it.

Cuban, however, doesn't want anyone to know about his largess, because he fears knowledge of it will make him a "mark" (pun intended) for every money-hungry organization/individual, both legit and, shall we say, dubious. Cuban doesn't want to be on this list of "people you can always turn to when you need money donated." He considers himself a businessman who loves his adopted city but not a charitable foundation. And, frankly, I can see his point here.

Cuban has obvious ties to the arts community through his 2929 Entertainment, which, among other things, owns the Landmark movie theaters, and his Magnolia Pictures, the company that distributed two of my favorite films so far this year, Julia and Big Man Japan. So I can see his interest in coming to the aid of the Office of Cultural Affairs.

Now I'm not saying that Cuban positively donated the money to keep the city's Office of Cultural Affairs open. I'm just suggesting that a lot of signs are pointing in his direction.

Ann vs. Angela

Da Mayor charged Dallas City Council member Jerry Allen of Lake Highlands with finding ways to trim the Dallas City Council's budget. One of his ideas was to cut the number of city secretaries in half and letting each councilmember share one. District 14 council member Angela Hunt didn't cotton to that idea one bit: "... with the significant cuts in many city services, the council is going to see an increase in constituent phone calls and service requests, and the proposal to eliminate half the secretaries will, in my opinion, reduce our ability to respond to residents," Ms. Hunt wrote recently.

Freshman District 13 council member Ann Margolin sees it differently, however. "I have agreed to share a secretary and cut my office and travel budget by 25%," she writes.

I'm going to have to side with the freshman on this one. True, council members, in Ms. Hunt's words will "see an increase in constituent phone calls and service requests," but those can be handled by the council assistants, not the secretaries.

One thing they do agree on is cutting all that paper wasted on printing council agenda materials. Ms. Margolin writes: "I am also advocating reducing our annual council bill for printing agendas which costs about $140,000 ...:" and Ms. Hunt's list of suggest council budget cuts contained this item: "Eliminate photocopying agenda materials (use online agenda). Savings: $148,000." These materials were hand-delivered to council members at their homes on Friday evenings and going to an on-line agenda would also mean eliminating that delivery service, which Ms. Hunt noted, would save another $6,024.

Angela Hunt and the city's committee system

There's been a lot of unnecessary conversation about the fact that Da Mayor announced his second round of committee assignments and, once again, council member Angela Hunt was passed over for a committee chair or vice chair position. And I'm thinking "So, what's the big deal?" It's not like she's been kicked off the council. Her voice will still be heard where it matters, at the council horseshoe and at full council briefings. She will continue to be an active voice -- undoubtedly one of the most active voices -- on the council. Not only that, Ms. Hunt will still be on committees and will be an outspoken member of those committees, shaping agenda items that go before the full council. I haven't seen what committees she's been assigned to for the next two years, but I don't think they'll change that much from the ones she was already assigned to: Finance, Audit & Accountability; Housing; Quality of Life; and Transportation & Environment.

I wasn't even going to write the chair snub about it until I saw that Ms. Hunt said essentially the same thing today on her blog. She writes:

"99% of my district couldn’t care less who the council committee chairs are. They care about how the city’s going to handle this budget crisis, what we’re doing to lower crime, how we’ll fix code and repair our streets. They worry about cuts to our libraries and parks and senior services. The very last thing they are concerned about is council committee assignments, and their priorities are my priorities. To that end, I’m going to keep focusing on the issues that matter."

I would also argue that 99 percent of all voters could car less about the council's committee chairs or even the committees themselves. Notice how many citizens attend committee meetings versus full council agenda or briefing sessions. I would also argue that most citizens are more concerned about zoning issues (What? You want to put a Wal-Mart in my neighborhood? Over my dead body.) than they are about "cuts to our libraries and parks and senior services." And zoning issues are not heard by any city council committee before they go to the full council.

So, in this matter, I agree completely with Angela Hunt. No committee chairs = no big deal.

Angela Hunt is gumming us again

Angela Hunt never misses an opportunity to take a symbolic, if not a realistic, high road. This time she has announced she will no longer use city funds to travel on city business. Sure. Fine. Whatever.

Dave Levinthal of the Dallas Morning News nailed it when he said Ms Hunt's latest stunt is "a move that's perhaps more symbolic than anything." Levinthal's report also said the council members with the highest travel budgets last year were Ron Natinsky who spent $14,925.75, Carolyn Davis who spent $13,388.75 (much of it on a trip to Belize to study, I guess, the habits of people visiting beach resorts for when Dallas gets a beach and a beach resort), Tennell Atkins who spent $12,790.60 and Pauline Medrano, $7,941.95.

Look, here's the deal. Each City Council member is allotted $4,000 annually for "any city related travel purposes." Hey, that seems like a good deal to me. If Ms. Hunt is really serious saving tax payer money, I suggest she introduce a resolution for a full vote of the City Council that restricts all council members from using any other funds, especially their office expense fund, for travel, so that all members will be limited to the $4,000 a year set aside for them for city related travel purposes.

Oh, if she really wants to get tough, then she should go this route. According to my rough calculations, city council members spent an average $2,310.45 each on travel. Now, Ms. Hunt, here's what I would like you to do: Introduce a resolution for a council vote that puts an absolute cap on all taxpayer-funded city travel at $2,500 per council member. Any amount over that must come from the council member's own pocket (campaign funds are permissible to use). If a council member uses less than that, the council person in question gets to pocket the change.

Now that would put some teeth in her message.

Hunting with Angela again

There is no question that Angela Hunt is the City Council's most coherently outspoken member. There are times that I have agreed with her passions (the proposed Trinity River Tollway) and many times I have not (the convention center hotel. Jenny the Elephant, her reluctance trim sanitation services expenses while demagoguing about the low pay of non-city employees as though they were city employees, immediately come to mind).

This time around I must applaud her arguments for better planning that will provide Dallas with more walkable and, thus, more livable neighborhoods. In this blog entry, she argues for mass transportation over mass highway and street construction (something I have been advocating for years and which was the basis of my opposition to the Trinity Tollway) and she holds up Vancouver as an example Dallas should follow when it comes to how to create a livable city and not just be a whore for the suburbs, which we are today.

Her arguments are a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of this city.

Make mine a cheese Danish while Angela "wastes" her time

City Council member Angela Hunt is continuing her Marshall Fellowship tour of European counties. Before leaving Brussels for Germany, she said, she met with the head Danish Industries, which turned out to be a bunch of lobbyists. Today she is in Lubeck, Germany, where she's "visiting Lubeck's state-of-the-art waste treatment facility. In addition to cleaning waste, they also create refuse-derived fuel, which is used to generate electricity." Hey, Angela, just in case you don't know, we do the same thing right here.

Things I learned in Brussels that I will bring back to Dallas (Part 1)

Dallas City Council member Angela Davis is Blogging from Brussels and it's going to be fun to read between the lines to see what ideas she's going to bring back to Dallas. For example, I have a feeling she likes the idea of having recycling carts out in public places and will suggest that the City of Dallas Sanitation Department introduce the same concept to downtown Dallas (without the accompany graffiti, of course). Then there is this entry:

"...six of us checked out the city's one-night-only arts festival, Nuit Blanche. It was very cool: streets closed off for concerts, art exhibitions, and musicians; museums open late; and lots of avant garde art pieces (like what looked like a giant, white bouncy house -- it took everything in me not to run up there and start jumping on it, but who wants to get arrested the first night in a foreign country?) I would love for us to do something like this in Dallas. ... This would be a great tradition for us to start in our city."

She's meeting with someone tomorrow (Monday in Belgium) to discuss homelessness and she finished off by saying "I really hope I get to meet with someone about their streetcar system here -- it's really expansive."

Can't wait to see the streetcar pictures.

Angela hopping

Dallas City Council member Angela Hunt is on her way to Brussels on a Marshall Fellowship, which she has convinced me is a pretty big deal. Her first stop was Washington, D.C. Fortunately for all of us left behind, she took her camera with her.

Angela is against renaming Ross, but what about that Industrial option

City Council member Angela Hunt has come down hard against renaming Ross Avenue after Cesar Chavez, but after the City Plan Commision's decision yesterday involving Ross, that renaming didn't seem likely to happen anyway.

But I found her most recent blog entry more interesting for what she didn't say about Industrial than what she did say about Ross. I know I'm reading between the lines here, but my instinct tells me she might vote to rename Industrial after the farm labor leader. At least, she may be the fourth vote need to block the proposal to change the name of Industrial to the bland and inappropriate Riverfront Blvd., which the majority of the City Council wants to do. She blames the Council's Trinity River Corridor Committee, a group she should have been appointed to but was not because of her opposition to a toll road in the park, for the entire mess. Here's exactly what she had to say on this subject:

"This debate has also become unnecessarily divisive, when it didn't need to be. The blame for this falls squarely on the shoulders of the city. First of all, if the intent was to give Industrial Boulevard a "riveresque" moniker, the Trinity River Committee should have stated upfront that only such names would be considered. That would have eliminated this whole debate about Industrial being named after a person. Second, the Trinity River Committee made a mistake by approving (on Dwaine Caraway's motion, seconded by Elba Garcia) a public survey about proposed names for Industrial Boulevard (Mr. Rasansky voted against doing so, and I'm not on that committee). If the committee wasn't going to respect the outcome of the survey, or make it a legitimate vote with real ballots, then it shouldn't have taken a vote at all. There were already signs at that meeting that this was becoming a divisive issue, and at that point, the city should have nixed the public poll. "

What I infer from this is Ms. Hunt is saying "Ok, committe, you got yourself into this mess, you now need to live with the mess you got into." And if this is indeed what she is saying, then I absolutely agree -- 100 percent.

This time Rasansky has a point

Faithful readers probably have figured out I'm usually not in agreement with Dallas City Council member Mitchell Rasansky. But today I must agree with him. During a council briefing session, the original agenda of which contained a item for a budget presentation that never happened, Rasansky slammed Mayor Tom Leppert for not having an adequate debate on the budget.

"Mayor, it's a travesty what you did," Rasansky said.

Here's what the council member is peeved about. Monday was set aside as a day the council members were supposed to submit their individual amendments to the city manager's proposed budget. What actually happened, however, was this. I don't know if it was a shrewd piece of political maneuvering to cut the amendment process off at the pass or what, but City Manager Mary Suhm revealed she had somehow found $2.7 million extra the council could play with. So the Monday's amendment meeting became not "How do we amend the proposed budget," but "How do we spend that extra $2.7 million." That task was handed over to council member Ron Natinsky who, with the advanced approval of the majority of the council, came up with a plan for the $2.7 million. Then, at Monday's meetings, Mayor Leppert ruled that Natinsky's idea would be the base from which all other amendment options would be considered. In other words, the budget couldn't be amended, only Natinsky's plan for spending the $2.7 million could be amended.

This appeared to catch Rasansky and fellow council member Angela Hunt off guard. They wanted to discuss the entire budget, not just the extra $2.7 million. They tried to introduce some amendments, but these suggestions seemed only to confuse their fellow council members, because they didn't seem to fit the Natinsky plan. The problem was both Rasansky and Hunt offered their ideas as a take-it-or-leave-it package. You accepted them all or you accepted none. At that point it seemed easier to accept none. Another mistake they made was not offering ideas for balancing that budget with their amendments. If you want to propose, for example, cutting iMedia's $50,000 supplement, then you must say what you want to do with that $50,000. If you want to add $500,000 to street repair, you must also say where that money will be taken from.

At its agenda meeting one week from today, the city council must approve a budget for the next fiscal year. If I were Mr. Rasasnky or Ms. Hunt, I would force the issue. I would insist that I have the opportunity to introduce each of my suggested changes to the budget one at a time, have a discussion on each of them individually, and force and up or down vote on each. Then perhaps we will get the complete discussion and debate on the budget Mr. Rasansky is calling for.

More than likely, I will probably disagree with every single one of Mr. Rasansky's proposals, but at least he should have the opportunity to get them presented in a public forum. It's called democracy.

You can't Hunt in here, this is Natinsky land

A big fuss was raised a couple of weeks ago when Dallas City Council member Ron Natinsky challenged colleague Angela Hunt over a zoning issue in her district. Ms. Hunt informed Mr. Natinsky that interference in someone else's territory was just not how it's done in these parts. And, it seemed to the consternation of many third party observers, she was right. Regardless of how council members may feel personally about a particular zoning issue, they will vote according to the wishes of the council member who represents the involved district. In fact, as I recall, the Dallas Morning News raised somewhat of an editorial stink about this practice.

That practice, if it every really existed, was not followed today at City Hall during a public hearing and subsequent vote on whether a new hospital should be located across Greenville Avenue from Presbyterian Hospital. Councilman Mitchell Rasansky, who represents the district in question, opposed the new facility because, as I understood his often convoluted arguments, it would create a mass traffic jam that might cause the death of someone with a heart attack trying to get to the emergency room. (This is the same councilman who opposed the city's current blue recycling carts because he just knew some little old lady would fall into one and never be heard from again until she was recycled, which may have just been her intention all along.) However, the majority of the council went against his wishes and approved the new hospital saying that the issue could not be decided on traffic but on land-use issues and on those, the hospital passed muster.

I'm thinking Presbyterian simply didn't want a competing, for-profit hospital, right across the street, but I could be mistaken.

I'm wondering if this is going to set a new precedent.

Hunt re-invigorates stale budget townhall meeting

If you've never been to a budget town hall meeting (and that's somewhere around 99.99999 percent of the adult Dallas population) what happens is one of the city's assistant city managers or, on a rare occasion, the city manager her own self, will narrate a city-staff-prepared slide presentation of the city manager's proposed budget. It gives all those special interest groups who feel they've been shortchanged the opportunity to jump up and proclaim "But what our little group does really enriches the entire fabric of the city's society so all 100 gazillion dollars should be restored to our efforts, but don't raise taxes and hooray to you for hiring all those extra police officers." Sometimes intelligent discussions do come up such as whether the city should go to a system of once-a-week garbage and recycling pickup and, if so, in what areas of the city should that switch be made and when and how can we get the residents in those dadgum apartment complexes to recycle.

But the centerpiece of the meeting is the slide presentation and, in a huge example of overkill and at the expense of way too many trees, this massive slide presentation is also handed out to everyone who shows up at the townhall meeting. That means, of course, you can jump to the section of the budget that most interests you and not even pay any attention to the assistant city manager who's trying to explain what debt service is and how come so much of the budget must be spent on it.

This year's City of Dallas budget is (and there really isn't any better word to describe it) dull and that makes the slide presentation even more monotonous than it ordinarily is. This not meant as a criticism to the City's staff because any slide presentation on a municipal budget is going to be dull. Let's face it, replacing the city's aging water infrastucture is necessary and important, but it's not exciting.

Which brings me to Tuesday night's townhall meeting at the Village Apartments' Country Club hosted by Angela Hunt, who said "No offense, city staff, but I think I can do this better all by myself." And you know what? By all accounts she did. She presented the budget, not an assistant city manager (although one, A.C. Gonzalez, was present) and she even made her own slide presentation to accompany it. Now, truth be told, tonight was draft night for the fantasy football league I'm in and our draft started at 6:15 p.m. So, by the time I arrived at the Country Club, Ms. Hunt had already made her presentation and was deftly handling comments from a couple of nut jobs, one railing about people with multiple DWIs who continue to drink (I guess he's never heard the term "alcoholic") and the other espousing his racist views on illegal immigrants and why Ms. Hunt doesn't singlehandedly ship them all back to northwest Arkansas where they came from.

It was only after the meeting that I learned Ms. Hunt flew solo. In a conversation with My Hero who has been to a couple hundred of these budget town hall meetings in the last few weeks and who saw the whole thing, she told me Ms. Hunt made the budget presentation and not an assistant city manager and that Ms. Hunt had made her own slides. "She really simplified it and presented it in a way that made sense," My Hero told me. "She did a great job of presenting the budget from the citizens' point of view and not the city's point of view."

For those who might want to see if she'll do it again, Ms. Hunt will have her final budget town hall meeting for this budget process Thursday evening at the Latino Cultural Center. Unfortunately, I will miss that as well because I will be attending a screening of this movie at the Angelika, and I know the rest of Dallas civilization will be at home watching the opening game of the NFL season and thinking "Those guys beat the Cowboys in the playoffs last year? How did they do that?", but just in case you're civic minded in the least, the Latino Cultural Center might be the place to be Thursday evening.

The correct answer to the Jenny destination quiz is D): None of the above

Jenny the Elephant -- the Jenny profiled just a couple of days ago in the New York Times -- yes, that Jenny -- will not be going to Tennessee as Dallas City Council member Angela Hunt and her animal huggers want. Nor will she be going to a safari in Mexico, the original plans of the Dallas Zoo. Nor will she, as Dwaine Caraway suggested in last Wednesday's City Council meeting, remain in Dallas to be joined by another elephant or two or three to keep her company. (I actually liked that idea, although I knew it would never happen -- a city that is in as dire financial straits as Dallas is right now can't afford to expand its elephant exhibition at the zoo.)

Paul Dyer, director of the city's Park and Recreation Department (which has oversight over the zoo) has come up with a fourth option and has already brokered agreements with the animal rights folks to go along with his plan. The zoo folks will go along with it because, well, Dyer is the boss of the zoo folks. I have absolutely no idea what The Dyer Solution is, but I know he plans to reveal it soon, perhaps as early as Monday.

Leppert, Caraway get it; Hunt doesn't

I just got to hear the last few minutes of the Dallas City Council discussion surrounding the ultimate destination of Jenny the Elephant, but it was enough to hear council member Mitchell Rasansky do his imitation of another zoo animal and to see that Mayor Tom Leppert and council member Dwaine Carraway understand the responsibilities of a Dallas City Council member, but Angela Hunt doesn't. Although Ms. Hunt certainly does know how to play to the masses -- she grandstands with the best of them and, in doing so, she manages to rally a lot of supporters to her side. It just goes to prove that the right way to conduct city business is not always the most popular way.

Ms. Hunt knows that few Dallas residents have a copy of the Dallas City Charter on their bookshelves; she knows that most Dallas residents have no idea when a city council member violates that charter.

Ms. Hunt has an interesting definition of micro-management. According to her, it's not micro-managing when you interfere in a departmental decision she doesn't agree with. This is like saying she supports freedom of speech as long as the speakers are on the same side of the argument that she's on. Plus, I'm not sure she's even that good of a listener. During today's city council meeting, a representative of the American Zoological Association said the AZA supports the notion that personnel trained in animal management are the proper individuals to make animal management decisions. Right after she spoke, Ms. Hunt said, in effect, "Don't pay any attention to what this woman's telling you; she's biased in favor of this facility in Mexico." The AZA woman didn't even recommend a destination for Jenny the Elephant; Ms. Hunt was criticizing this woman for saying something she didn't even say.

But the AZA woman nailed it. No matter how Ms. Hunt tries to twist it, whether Jenny is sent to Mexico, to Tennessee, down to the 7-Eleven, or anywhere else is a management decision and not a policy issue. And, as Mayor Leppert so perfectly stated it today, "At some point we have to let the people hired to make these decisions actually make these decisions."

Carraway, on the other hand, did move the argument over to a policy discussion. He said it should be the policy of the city council to operate a first-class zoo (something I have gone on record as disagreeing with, and since I have already dealt with that, I see no need to repeat it here) and, the way he sees it, having a first-class zoo means having a first-class top-notch elephant exhibit. He is arguing that, perhaps, the city should not consider getting rid of Jenny at all, that perhaps it should be adding to the number of elephants at the zoo and not subtracting from it.

I know it's not fashionable these days, especially among local bloggers, to disagree with Angela Hunt. But those who agree with her agree on the substance of her argument. I could care less about the substance. The issue here is simply this: She is overstepping the authority given to her by the City Charter by even engaging in the argument. Leppert and Carraway seemed to understand that, at least from the brief moments of the discussion I witnessed today. I fail to see why Ms. Hunt can't grasp that.

It's interesting to note that former Mayor Laura Miller understood it as well, although she didn't like it. She wanted to be free to do what Angela Hunt is doing now. But at least Ms. Miller tried to do it the proper way, by changing the City Charter to give her more authority in daily management decisions. That effort, as we all know, failed at the polls.