Plastic Bag Ban? What Plastic Bag Ban?

Born-again environmentalist D-Wayne Carriedaway, that District 4 Dallas city councilman who desperately wants to become mayor and hopes to achieve his goal through sheer bombast, came up with this idea that has become very popular among green cities: banning the use of plastic shopping bags.

Dallas wants you to believe it’s a "green city" and, in a moment of kindness, I’m willing to admit the city is lima bean green, at best. I also firmly believe a majority of Dallas citizens, when it is made clear to them all the harmful environmental effects as well as the detrimental financial effects resulting from the use of plastic bags, would support an all-out ban of plastic bags by a significant majority. Bans like those in already in effect in Austin; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Wasington, D.C.; Portland, Ore., and others. However, those who donate big bucks to the election coffers of those running for the Dallas City Council oppose an all-out ban by an even more significant majority. So, of course, Carriedaway’s Crusade had as much a chance of success as his hopes for higher office.

What he wound up settling for was an ordinance that allows store customers to continue to take their goods home in plastic bags, but they must pay 25 cents for each bag they use. (I still haven’t heard how this is going to be enforced at the self-checkout lanes, but that’s another story.) I guess Carriedaway figured (1) merchants would get weary of maintaining a separate product category for plastic bags, complete with their own scannable bar codes and/or (2) customers would quickly tire of shelling out 25 cents for a plastic bag and start using reusable shopping bags. Either one of those options would mean the end of plastic bags as we know them in Dallas. I don’t think either of those possible outcomes is realistic. Why?

Last night, in CFO Jeanne Chipperfield’s slide presentation during council member Adam Medrano’s budget town hall meeting, Ms. Chipperfield displayed a slide titled "Clean, Healthy Environment." The second bullet on that slide was: "Initiate enforcement of City’s new single-use bag ordinance." During the Q&A session following her presentation, one audience member asked Ms. Chipperfield what that bullet meant. Ms. Chipperfield replied "So (that’s the word she uses to begin the answer to every question directed her way) then went on to explain, from the city’s point of view, the purpose of the audience without ever once saying the "b" word, which led me to believe that word has been (pardon me for this) banned for use by city officials. She told the audience that the city nets 5 cents for every bag sold, money she suggested, would be used to pay for enforcing the ordinance. So, great news, folks, this ordinance pays for itself.

But the fact that the ordinance pays for itself was not what I was thinking when Ms. Chipperfield forecast the city would collect some $2 million in the 10 months of the fiscal year during which the ordinance will be law. What I was thinking was that amounts to 40 million new plastic bags introduced to the Dallas environment, 40 million additional plastic bags that will clog our water systems, strangle endangered wildlife and bringing a quicker demise to our landfill.

And Dallas has the gall to want to call itself a "green city."

Dallas Budget Town Hall Toodle-Loo: “They’re Still Out There”

Interior of Frontiers of Flight Museum: As empty as it was when I walked inside this evening

It’s that time of year again: That time when the serious, award-contending movies start being released, when students prepare for the start of another school year, when the minds of young men turn to football and the minds of older, out-of-shape, guys turn to fantasy football. Yep, it’s that time again: That time when those elected to the Dallas City Council venture out to greet a microscopic representation of their constituency during that annual rite of late summer known as the Budget Town Hall Meeting. That’s when the council member hosts a representative from the City Manager’s office who narrates a slide show (you can get your own copy of it before the meeting begins so you can follow along) outlining, in the sketchiest of terms, the budget the city manager has proposed the City Council adopt. Then, after that, advocates of arts groups and the libraries get up and complain how they were shortchanged, other citizens will ask questions that have absolutely nothing to do with the budget, and then everyone disperses until the same time next year.

City Manager A.C. Gonzalez

At least that’s how it usually goes. This year, however, I thought things might be different, In the first proposed budget A.C. Gonzalez has submitted since being named city manager, he made some recommendations his predecessor never dared to suggest, namely slashing funds from the police department and turning them over to (What’s this?) arts groups and the city’s libraries!!!

I ventured out this evening to my first budget town hall meeting of the current season, this one hosted by District 2's Adam Medrano at the Frontiers of Flight Museum.

First things first: The Frontiers of Flight Museum is, if not the worst place ever to hold such a meeting, a location that ranks right up there. The museum is rather large and spacious — at least it seems that way when you walk inside at dusk and there’s not another soul to be seen in the entire joint. But of course, there must be a sign somewhere to direct constituents to where the meeting is being held. Surely. Somewhere. A sign. Maybe just a paper arrow. Something? Nothing. I spent a lot of time walking around that empty place before I finally ventured upstairs to a landing that led nowhere. Took the stairs back down and this time I took an elevator up to an entirely different level than the stairs took me to. Still no one around. Then I spotted a gentleman in a semi-dark blue suit rushing down the hall pointing his finger in the direction from which he had come. I thought, "My heavens. Is he running to summon aid for a fallen companion?" So I picked up my pace in the direction from which he came and, waddya know, found myself at the site of Medrano’s town hall meeting.

Dallas CFO Jeanne Chipperfield

By the time I walk in, the somewhat less-than-dynamic chief financial officer for the city, Jeanne Chipperfield, is on about Slide 16 of her 36-slide narration giving me the impression that she would rather be anywhere else than where she is. But I’m going to give her some leeway here. Being the chief financial officer, she has been in closer contact with this budget than anyone else in the city and the document is, in fact, a comparatively boring budget. So I guess Ms. Chipperfield had every right to act as though she was suffering through a blind date with a turnip. One other thing: Has anyone else noticed she begins the answer to every question with the word "So."

But Ms. Chipperfield had one weapon at her disposal that no one else in the room had — a microphone. You could hear her. After she finished her presentation and it came time for the questions from the microscopic representation of you-know-who, all sound disappeared. Well, not all sound — the hum of the air conditioning system was quite audible. But the voices of humans? I might as well have been in a sound proof booth. That second floor auditorium at the Frontiers of Flight Museum has the worst acoustics of any public meeting room I have ventured into in my considerably long life.

Now what I expected to be a loud and boisterous crowd defending our men in blue didn’t materialize. In fact, to my great surprise, no one expressed any concern at all for the recommendation that the police department’s budget be cut by $2 million. But I guess when you have a budget of $438.1 million (38 percent of General Fund expenses), what’s a measly $2 million? Right? Not only that, it would be impossible for anyone to be loud and boisterous in the Frontiers of Flight Museum .auditorium.

But I did, however, pick up some morsels. Three people spoke out in favor of more money going to animal control. Not for the spade/neutering or adoption programs that need more money, but for capturing the millions of wild dogs apparently running amok around Love Field. To hear some of these people (or at least what I thought I head) there’s some kind of conspiracy afoot that involves all loose dogs in the city and surrounding areas being driven to and them dumped in District 2. Imagine that!

But the real surprise came when this lone advocate for the library stood up in effort to prove the gospel of Gordon Gekko is as alive today as it was in the Reagan era: "Thanks for the chump change," she seemed to be saying, "but we want more, more, more, MORE!!!!" Never mind that the Gonzalez proposed budget pays for the phase-in of 12 branch libraries and the Central Library being open longer every day, seven days a week. It also pays for the 15 remaining branches to be open six additional hours each week beginning next year. "We want more, more, more, MORE!!!!" Then someone from the cultural arts got up and made the same complaint about how their increases weren’t nearly enough. Now I will admit, most of the increases here are going to pay for the utility bills at the Fair Park Music Hall and the Sammons Center, but I’ve always maintained government shouldn’t be that heavily involved in subsidizing arts groups to begin with — that should come from private donations and these groups should be getting off their duffs and soliciting those donations.

Council member Adam Medrano

But the fact that the library and arts groups are still screaming for more, more, more, wasn’t the ultimate shock of the evening. That came when I spoke to Councilman Medrano after the meeting and discovered he stands right alongside them. I asked him directly what he thought about the budget and he said "It doesn’t do enough directly for the citizens." When I asked him to be more specific he told me directly and without hesitation "I intend to seek more money for the libraries and the arts." Then I asked him where he plans to subtract funds to pay for the library and arts additions. He said "The City Manager’s Office and the City Attorney’s Office. I asked the city attorney at the beginning of this whole process if he needed any additional attorneys on his staff and he told me he didn’t. But this budget pays for the addition of five more attorneys."

So there you have it. Oh, yes, the vivacious Ms. Chipperfield also told the assemblage something I had not heard before, but may be common knowledge and that’s the fact that the city will submit a "close to $1 billion) bond package to the voters in November 2017. So get ready for that.

　

Lessons learned attending Dallas budget town hall meetings

This season I attended five budget town hall meetings around the city — one in East Dallas, one in Central Dallas, one in Southeast Dallas, one in Southwest Dallas and one in Far North Dallas.

After attending the first two — the East and Central one — I thought the domineering theme of these budget meetings was going to be those descendants of Punxsutawney Phil, that rodent-like critter in Pennsylvania who peeps his head from his hole in early February and then ducks back in before Bill Murray can whack him with a golf club. Or something like that.

Anyway, these relatives I’m referring to are the Friends of the Library who poke their heads out of their holes every August to attend budget town hall meetings and, following some sort of script from Hole Central, proclaim the budget simply doesn’t contain enough funds for the libraries. These folks are relentless. I’m betting if the City Manager devoted the entire budget one year to the libraries, it still wouldn’t be enough to suit these people.

There were five of them poking their heads out in the East Dallas meeting and four more in the Central One. But then there was only one in Southeast Dallas, none in the Southwest and only one in Far North, an event during which City Council member Sandy Greyson told the story about how, at one of her earlier town halls, some stupid chap recommended cutting funding for libraries completely.



City Council member
Sandy Greyson

That’s when I realized the real theme of this comparatively benign town hall season is that while most of the city has escaped the August heat relatively unscathed and unharmed, it has resulted in craziness, kookiness and outright racism running rampant in Far North Dallas. These folks are living in some sort of time warp, imagining it’s still the 1970s and 1980s when the city council was comprised of only white men from North Dallas who could hand out all the goodies they pleased to their friends north of I-30.

This is Tea Party land. These people think Ted Cruz is normal and rational, and that Rand Paul, the presumptive 2016 Republican presidential nominee, is too liberal. They despise Mayor Mike Rawlings’ Grow South campaign (although at one point, the most vocal racist in the audience whispered to his friend sitting behind him "What’s the mayor’s name again?") The aforementioned racist was particularly critical of the City Council’s decision to invest in a mixed-use development in South Dallas’ Lancaster Corridor, an investment the council believed would return handsome dividends to the city’s coffers. They also don’t believe litter is a problem and that the city should take no initiative to curb anything that, in their minds, is not a problem.

These folks believe the city’s budget should be used for one thing and one thing only — to make sure their alleys are the very best alleys in the world today and to keep Wal*Mart from gaining a foothold in their community.

I walked out of that town hall meeting shook and stunned. I took off my rose colored glasses, wiped my brow and thought to myself "I can’t believe there are still people this insular living in this world today." I know none of these people have ever driven through the streets or ventured into the neighborhoods of South Dallas. Who am I kidding? These folks probably remain at least a mile north of LBJ Freeway at all times.

I must give council member Greyson, a Tea Party advocate herself, credit, however. She finessed the most outrageous comments from her constituents with style and grace.

Now back to those library fanatics.

I am convinced there is a role for public libraries these days, although it might not be the one it was when the institutions were conceived. I am convinced it was a brilliant move to devote this year’s city library funds to additional materials, especially the replacement of outdated computers, and not additional staffing.

Today’s libraries must become less of a place where citizens go to check out books and more of a place where citizens go to learn. To learn about citizenship and how to vote. To learn English as a second language. To learn how to craft and submit resumes. To learn how to search for jobs and how to prepare for that job interview. And more.

And here is how those Friends of the Library can be of real public service, much more than just showing up at budget town hall meetings every August. They need to find and recruit the volunteers that have the capabilities to instruct these programs. These instructors should not be on the city’s payroll. It won’t be easy finding these volunteers, but if the Friends of the Libraries are the friends they claim to be, they should do whatever they can to unearth them.

Just don’t try to locate them in Far North Dallas.

Give me the money

Good news. Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm sent word tonight that sales tax dollars continue to climb. The city collected $16.1 million in sales taxes in February, which is a nice 10.4 percent over what was collected in February, 2011, and 8.7 percent more than was forecast. That means the city has $1.3 million more to play with than it figured it would have. I say put that money right into street repair.

I hope Mary Suhm is right and I’m wrong, but …

Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm unveiled her recommended budget for fiscal year 2011/12 this week and most agree it was not as austere as originally predicted. The reason given is that the state did not cut as much funds to municipalities as was expected.

The city’s budget, as most budgets are, is not predicated on how much money the city has on hand, but on how much it expects to earn during the 12 months in question. The city gets money from many sources — the aformentioned tax dollars returned to it by the state, grants and other funds from the federal government, but mostly from fees it charges to businesses and individuals, property taxes and sales taxes. It’s that last source of income that has me concerned.

According to this item from Rudolph Bush, who covers City Hall for the Dallas Morning News, Suhm said in releasing her proposed budget: “Our budget situation this year, with the economic situation improving a bit, has enabled us to do some things we weren’t sure we’d be able to do.”

Frankly, I don’t see “the economic situation improving a bit.” Suhm is basing this on better than average sales tax receipts over the past couple of months. I fear that might be a temporary silver lining before the big black storm hits.

Look at the typical economic measuring tools — growth, consumer spending, manufacturing, housing prices, stock prices — and the news is not good. They all indicate a struggling economy. The only way an economy can prosper is through the exchange of money. But today consumers aren’t really spending and neither are businesses. That leaves only one leg of the triangle — government — but, as we all witnessed last week, Congress decided to move drastically in the opposite direction.

President Obama is saying, now that the argument over the debt ceiling is over, he wants to concentrate on job creation, which is the only remedy for our ailing economy. But like just about everything else from this administration, he will be all talk and no action on job creation. Fulfilling this pledge which would require a major investment from government and we all know that’s impossible giving the opposition by Congressional Republicans to any new spending or revenue enhancing measures.

According to figures released last week by the Labor Department, the unemployment rate dropped from 9.2 percent to 9.1. percent. That statistic is terribly misleading because it does not include the long-term unemployed who have simply given up looking for jobs. If you count those as well as individuals who can only find part-time jobs, the actual unemployment rate is an astounding 16.1 percent.

Unless you have working people, the city won’t get revenue from sales taxes. When spending is cut, more jobs are eliminated and the city gets even less revenue. Every dollar spent creates jobs.

The last time the federal government cut spending this drastically was in 1937, a move that led to what was called the Second Great Depression — the unemployment rate jumped to 19 percent, industrial production declined by 30 percent, manufacturing output fell by 37 percent, producers reduced expenditures on durable goods, and inventories and consumer spending declined. Only World War II snapped us out of that and I don’t wish for potential global annihilation as an antidote to our current economic woes.

I have a feeling Suhm did not factor the Congressional budget cuts into her revenue projections for the next fiscal year. Our economy won’t feel the ramifications of those cuts for perhaps another couple of months. But too many economists are predicting a double digit recession looming, predictions that resulted in Thursday’s Wall Street disaster. If those predictions are true, Suhm’s optimistic predictions are going to result in a major budget gap come next calendar year.

But, again, I hope I’m wrong about that. I really do.

Austin mayor to push ban on single-use plastic bag

Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell and two other council members will introduce a resolution at the next council meeting Aug. 4 calling for the “phase-out of single use plastic check-out bags” in the city.

The bags “cost Austin taxpayers a significant amount of money,” Leffingwell wrote. “In fact, Austinites use about 263 million plastic bags annually, costing the city about $850,000 per year for collection, litter clean-up, landfill management and recycling contamination. This figure does not include the cost to our environment.”

Makes you wonder what impact single-use plastic bags have on the meager City of Dallas budget. Dallas needs to join such cities as San Francisco; Portland, Ore.; and Washington, D.C., in outlawing these things. Hey, aren’t we supposed to be this super-duper “Green City” or is that, like so much else, just a lot of talk?

Leffingwell said Austin engaged in an 18-month voluntary “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” campaign with Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, Walgreens and Randalls (Tom Thumb to those of us here) hoping to achieve a 50 percent reduction of plastic bags sent to the landfill. The campaign resulted in only a 20 percent reduction, however, and that simply wasn’t good enough for Leffingwell. Hence his push for an out-right ban.

“Our resolution calls on the City Manager to conduct a stakeholder process and develop an ordinance to bring back to Council this November,” Leffingwell wrote. “Concerned citizens and affected businesses will have a chance to help shape the timeline of a phase-out and determine if any exceptions should be made for certain types of businesses or situations.”

Anyone listening on the Dallas City Council?

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.

Jeff Siegel needs to ease up on the wine he keeps reviewing

Street reconstruction like this is paid for with capital spending

I’m thinking that’s the reason this Advocate reporter keeps jumping at wrong headed conclusions. Yesterday he wrote about City Manager Mary Suhm’s upcoming budget briefing, which admittedly I have not read (I was more interested in the “From Trash to Treasure” briefing also on Wednesday’s agenda), and he talked about how dire it sounds — how the number of cops will be cut, the number of rec centers that will be shuttered, etc. But then he wrote:

“But, because this is Dallas, we will ‘continue investment in infrastructure through capital spending’ — which is money for a toll road that isn’t going to be built and bridges that we don’t need.”

No, it doesn’t mean that at all. What it means is that extensive repairs — such as the complete reconstruction of many of our roads — will be handled through the sale of bonds. These types of projects were the emphasis of the bond proposal that immediately preceded the last one. Money for filling potholes comes out of the General Fund; money for completely replacing a street’s pavement comes from capital spending.

The Dallas City Budget: Why there will be a tax increase and the budget killer no one is talking about

• If you, like me, regard a tax as any money you pay to a governmental entity in return for some form of service from that entity, then be prepared for some hefty tax increases from the City of Dallas in the upcoming fiscal year. The major one -- the one most homeowners will have to pay -- will come in the form of a water rate increase. There will be other "fee" (read that "tax") increases, to be sure, but the water rate increase -- and I understand it's going to be a hefty one -- will be the biggest one and will hit the most residents. There's also the chance that after two consecutive years of sanitation fee decreases, that rate may also go up. There is one glimmer of hope on this one, however. The city is proposing an idea that basically says all garbage collected in Dallas should be dumped in Dallas, namely at the city-operated McCommas Bluff Landfill. Private garbage haulers are launching a major attack on this proposal and are willing to spend whatever it takes to convince council members this is not a good idea. They have already bought off a couple of southern sector council members and are working on others. If their efforts fail, expect to see sanitation rates remain at their current levels or possibly decrease for the third straight year. Should they succeed, sanitation rates surely will increase
• Why will they increase? It has a large part to do with something on everyone's mind, but an item that has yet to be connected it to the Dallas budget (at least outside the city's budget planners) and that's the rising cost of gasoline. In case you haven't noticed, the city operates a lot of vehicles, not only garbage and recycling trucks, but police cars, ambulances, fire trucks and many other vehicles. All of them are dealing with the higher price of gasoline the rest of us are facing. Increased fuel costs are going to have a dramatic impact on the upcoming budget and I'm dreading what services the city proposes to cut to pay for these costs.

Here we go again -- another budget gap

Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm is expected to give the City Council good news and bad news next Wednesday. The bad news is that, according to current projections, city expenses could exceed revenue during the next fiscal year by as much as $96 million. The good news is that the gap may only be $41 million.

The City's tax-hike debate: "It ain't over 'til it's over"

Yesterday's meeting of the Dallas City Council made for great television. We had one council member, in a moment he probably already regrets, calling some of his colleagues snake oil salesmen. We had a video tour of South Dallas. We had an impassioned speech that had more to do with the history of civil rights than it did the city's budget woes. My favorite moment was when council member Angela Hunt, after hearing colleague Anne Margolin suggest alternate ways the money produced by a tax-rate hike could be spent, challenged Margolin to vote for the rate hike if the council voted for her alternative plan. Margolin, of course, refused to accept the challenge, proving her entire charade was another example of political grandstanding that had nothing to do with solving anything.

Then council member Vonciell Jones Hill requested a straw vote on an amendment to raise taxes nearly a nickel per $100 valuation and, after a failed stalling tactic by Da Mayor, got her wish. The amendment passed 8-7. That is leaving a lot of folks assuming (1) that property taxes will go up by that amount when the final budget is passed a week from tomorrow and (2) Da Mayor is about to suffer his first major political defeat.

However, I'm betting this fight is far from over. For one thing, I'm willing to bet that City Manager Mary Suhm is not happy with the mood of the council right now or about the very real possibility that resentments will linger among council members long after this debate is over -- resentments that could make it nearly impossible to accomplish many of her objectives. For another, if you think Da Mayor is calling it quits on this issue, you don't know the man.

Neither Da Mayor nor Suhm want an 8-7 vote on this. Her goal is going to be at least 10-5 one way or another and between now and when the budget is finally adopted, she is going to be working to accomplish that. I also think she will enlist the help of Da Mayor to work behind the scenes to get that done.

How might that happen? The first convert they will approach is council member Dave Neumann who says he would support a tax increase but not one as high as the one approved yesterday. So between now and next week (there is no concrete requirement that the budget MUST be approved next Wednesday; it just might mean that no one the city payroll gets paid if it isn't) Suhm must find a compromise increase that Neumann and the other eight can both accept. If that happens, then the vote becomes 9-6. I also heard a conciliatory tone in the comments made by council member Linda Koop and I think Suhm could use Koop to persuade the eight that, in the best interests of the city, to accept a lower tax hike and, if they do, she would join their ranks. Then you have it: Suhm's needed 10-5 vote and Da Mayor can claim partial victory in that he helped lower the inevitable tax rate hike.

Now, what happens if all this fails and it remains 8-7? Back in April I predicted Mary Suhm might retire following the passage of this budget. A couple of weeks after I wrote that, I had lunch with another former city employee who knows Suhm quite well -- probably talks with her three or four times a week --who leveled me with one great truism: Mary Suhm has too much energy to retire. If she did retire, what would she do with her time? She must stay busy and active. I couldn't argue with that. She needs to be running something. But if this 8-7 mess lingers, I'm going back to that original prediction.

First things first: Put the city employees back in their jobs

The Dallas Morning News' pair of intrepid city hall reporters,  Rudy Bush and Steve Thompson, co-authored a story that appeared on-line today which all but said flat-out the Dallas City Council will pass a property tax increase to balance the fiscal 2010-11 budget.

The two, indirectly attributing the thought to council member Angela Hunt, wrote "it's clear from town hall meetings that many people are willing to support a rate increase if the money is used for tangible services such as streets, parks and libraries."

All well and good; however, the first thing the money should be used for is re-instating the 450 city employees laid off under the budget proposed by City Manager Mary Suhm.

As any economist will tell you, a healthy economy is dependent on jobs. The more people employed, the more people there are who can spend money. The more money that changes hands, the healthier the economy. It's not rocket surgery. If Da Mayor and the rest of the council are serious about giving some kind of boost to the local economy, restoring those 450 employees to their jobs would be a step in the right direction.

Of course, restoring many of those employees will also mean the city will be able to keep rec centers and libraries open longer because they will have the people needed to staff these facilities during the extended hours. But I heard one member of a library advisory commission, one of the many boards and commissions who are appointed by city council members, stand up at council member Sheffie Kadane's town hall meeting and say the first thing the library should do with additional money is to purchase more materials.

Bullfeather. Purchasing books and magazines from some far-flung local publisher is not going to contribute dilly to Dallas' economy. Putting laid-off librarians back on the payroll will, however. If need be, have private corporations, solicited by all those folks wearing "friends of the library" buttons at various town hall meetings, pony up the funds for the materials. But putting people back to work will have a far more long-reaching and positive effect on the local economy.

Listen up, mayor, the natives are restless

This evening I attended a budget town hall meeting on the opposite side of town from last night's in Far West Dallas. This evening's confab was hosted by District 9's Sheffie Kadane at Winfrey Point on the eastern shores of White Rock Lake. Here's the headline from that meeting: The overwhelming majority of those in attendance favor a tax increase to keep libraries and rec centers open, to maintain city streets, to maintain cultural affairs programs and to restore the jobs of those individuals just axed from the city's payroll.


I counted 126 persons, (not including city staff members) at the meeting, including one of Dallas's icons, the great Jac Alder, the guiding genius of Theatre Three. At one point Kadane, who is philosophically adhering to Da Mayor's "no tax increase" litany, made the critical error of asking all those who favored a tax increase to either stand or raise their hands (it was SRO by the time I arrived). I didn't get to count all those who were standing, but Kadane compounded his error by asking all those who did not favor to either stand or raise their hands. I had plenty of time to count those. There were five of them. A measly five out of 126.

Now what does that prove? Admittedly, not a whole helluva lot except that those attending Kadane's budget townhall meeting overwhelmingly favored a tax increase to solve the city's budget woes. Not even I will try to extrapolate those numbers to his entire district. So, no, it is not proof of what the citizens want their council representatives to do. But it's an indication. It's a signal. Especially since those persons I quizzed at Kadane's meeting who had attended other budget town halls said those at the joint Kadane/Angela Hunt meeting were even more pro-tax increase as were those attending the joint Ron Natinsky/Linda Koop meeting in Far North Dallas. What was it Arlo Guthrie said in Alice's Restaurant Massacree about what constituted a movement? Whatever we have going on here more than meets Guthrie's criterion. Yesiree, Tom, what we have here is a movement -- an honest-to-goodness "We are more than willing to pay for the city services we want" movement.

A day with the council circus, an evening with the council budget process

I spent the majority of the day today watching the Dallas City Council do what it does best -- waste the time of too many individuals, taking nine hours to accomplish what should take no longer than an hour and a half.

I'm referring essentially to a pair of items on today's council agenda. The first was Agenda Item 5:

An ordinance amending Ordinance No. 27932 and Ordinance No. 27933 to change certain election day polling and early voting locations for the November 2, 2010 special elections on whether to legalize "the legal sale of beer and wine for off-premise consumption only" and on whether to legalize "the legal sale of mixed beverages in restaurants for food and beverages certificate holders only" - Financing: No cost consideration to the City

If you can read, you can plainly see that this item only concerned polling places. Yet D-Wayne Demagogue and Carolyn Davis decided to turn it into a platform on the evils of selling spirits in South Dallas. And they went on and on and on and no one had the courage to tell these two that this meeting was neither the time nor the place to campaign on how citizens should vote on the issue. It was only about changing polling places to locations that are normally assumed to be voting locations in municipal elections.

The second had to do with the bidding process for concessionaires at Love Field. On this issue, Da Mayor was right. (Later in the day I had the opportunity to tell the mayor to his face on that issue but wrong on the tax issue. But I'll get to that in a minute.)

The entire debate on the concession issue -- a debate that lasted, by my estimation, almost seven hours, revolved around the manner in which the matters being debated were fair or unfair to the current concessionaires. Wrong argument! I could care less about the current concessionaires. The only matter of importance in this debate is what is in the best interests of those who will be using the airport for whatever reason. And, until someone can prove otherwise, competitive bidding would seem to serve those interests best because the bids should be judged on exactly that consideration. If someone can produce customer satisfaction surveys that illustrate (1) airports without competitively bid concession services rank higher with customers than those that do and (2) the customers' satisfaction is directly attributable to the lack of competitive bidding, I could be persuaded to change my mind. I doubt, however, anyone can produce such statistics.

There were several references to the Pittsburgh airport, one of many airports my former business partner and I frequented on a regular basis. In fact, it was during a drive to the Pittsburgh airport one afternoon that we devised our "Name That Subdivision" game. But I digress. The Pittsburgh airport resembled a shopping mall more than it did an airport and I remember making that observation to a resident who told me, "You're right. In fact, more people go there just to shop than go there to catch a plane." Of course, that's all changed since 9/11. I attended seventh grade at a school in Vallejo, Calif., which is northeast of San Francisco. And I vividly remember that when my dad wanted to take us out for a great dinner, we would go to this then world-renowned restaurant that was located in the San Francisco Airport. I'm not even sure that restaurant still exists, but whether is does or not is beside the point. The point is that those airports functioned under the concept that the people who used the concessions at the airport were far more important than the concessionaires, a concept that seemed to escape the minds of those on our city council.

Fortunately, the vote on this issue was taken in time for me to shower, dress and drive from my Northeast Dallas home to West Dallas to attend my first budget town hall meeting -- it being my first because I have been "transportationally challenged" until just recently. Usually I just sit, listen and observe at these meetings. Tonight, however, I broke that pattern, feeling it was somewhat hypocritical of me to hide behind the relative anonymity of this blog and not take the opportunity to make the same points in a public forum, especially when Da Mayor was present to disagree with what I said. I made to points during Council Member Steve Salazar's townhall meeting and I will repeat them here.

The budget briefing tries to outline how we got ourselves into this fiscal mess we find ourselves in today. But it omits one important fact. In 2006, the city presented the voters of Dallas with a bond proposal. City council members held townhall meetings almost identical to the budget ones being held now. In the presentation of the bond package, the city staff member making the presentation always said "Here's how passage of the bond package will affect your property tax rates." Not, mind you, how passage might affect, but will affect them. However, by an overwhelming margin (All but one of the bond propositions passed with 65 percent voting in favor of them, the other received 55 percent approval.), the voters told the City Council they would be in favor of paying that bill in order to purchase those capital improvements. Yet the city council willfully disobeyed the instructions of the voters and never instituted the tax adjustments. Why? Because, I'm guessing, those were good economic times and the council mistakenly thought those good times would go on forever. Of course, they didn't and now, instead of correcting their error and doing what the voters instructed them to do in that election, the council is asking us to pay for their mistakes by taking away much-needed city services. Shame on them.

Interestingly enough, Da Mayor, who did repeat his worn-out "I'm against raising taxes" speech, never once challenged my statements on the bond election. I'm guessing because he knew he couldn't. He did challenge me, however, when I responded to his no tax increase speech by arguing that he does, in fact, favor tax increases -- he and the city staff are simply masters at masquerading these tax increases as fees. I reminded him and assistant city manager A.C. Gonzales, who recalled conversations I had with him on this topic last year, that PILOT is a tax increase. For those who don't recall, PILOT stands for "Payment In Lieu Of Taxes" and it's a form of property tax the city charges its own Water Department, which, in turn, raises our water rates to pay for those taxes. There is a proposal on the table -- although admittedly not part of the proposed budget (yet) -- to charge the Sanitation Department a franchise fee. Of course, if this does become part of the budget, the Sanitation Department will have to increase our fees to pay for it. I call that a thinly disguised tax increase because that money would go into the General Fund, just as PILOT does today.

Da Mayor and Mr. Gonzalez tried to argue it wasn't a tax increase, telling me after the townhall meeting that the city charges all its franchise holders these kind of fees and those folks would also pass those costs along to us in the form of rate hikes as well. The fallacy in that argument, however, is that none of those other franchise holders are a monopoly. I have a choice when it comes to my electrical provider or my television service provider, but I have no such choice when it comes to who will provide me with running water or who will pick up my residential trash.

I must give Da Mayor credit where credit is due him, however, and, as I alluded to earlier, I also had the welcomed opportunity to say this to his face as well. This mayor is the hardest working board chair this city has ever known. I make it a point to attend as many of those town hall meetings as I possibly can. More often than not, Da Mayor is there. In my 42 years of living in this city, I have never seen a mayor give more of his time and energy to this position as our current mayor. I salute him for that and tonight I had the opportunity to thank him for that, even asking him "Do you have any personal life at all?"

One final word before I end this long-winded monologue (although it will take you far less time to read this then D-Wayne spent ranting today on the evils of demon rum), I need to thank my soon-to-be doctor son for loaning me his laptop so I could compose this post. As I wrote in the post that follows this one below, my mid-20th century model gadget simply couldn't make it though the first part of this century before calling it quits. Until I can correct that situation (and because of other matters I won't bore you with, that may come much later than originally anticipated), these posts will come with greater-than-usual intervals between them. Thanks again for your patience. I will resume "jibberish as usual" as soon as possible.

A flawed comparison of property taxes

Mike Hashimoto of the Dallas Morning News is irresponsibly suggesting that, comparing Dallas to neighboring cities, Dallas already pays too much in porperty taxes and thus the City Council should not pass a property tax increase this year to solve its budget problems. It's difficult to list all the reasons why his comparison is so flawed.

But the major reason is the most common argument: apples and oranges. Any comparison like this must be with comparable cities, at least those with a similar population. Not only that, the comparison completely ignores property values. The study he quotes uses a home with a $175,00 value as its base. But it doesn't account for the percentage of $175,000 homes in each community. I'm betting the percentage in Addison, to use just one of his examples, is much higher than it is in Dallas, If property values as a whole are greater, the tax rate can be lower.

What his comparison also ignores is that Dallas is unique among cities in the area in that the majority of its population are renters and not homeowners, a fact that also makes Hashimoto's argument completely irrelevant. But this is another example of how Tea Party conservatives like Hashimoto can take figures to make a half truth to try to convince people of things that are simply false. Shame on him.

Budget vote to be closer this year

I'm going to call it the Rasansky tradition. In his eight years on the City Council, former member Mitchell Rasansky never made a budget he could like. He voted against the budget proposal every year he was on the council. During those eight years, the budget passed 14-1. Last year, Rasansky's District 13 successor, Ann Margolin, continued the Rasansky tradition by voting against a budget that passed, you guessed it, 14-1.

I'm convinced the Rasansky tradition will continue this year. The proposed budget contains too many fee increases, which Margolin correctly labels as masked tax increases, and because she is opposed to any tax increase, she will not support the proposed FY 2010-11 budget when it comes before the council for a final vote in September.

However, this year I'm betting a lot more council members will join her. District 8's Tennell Atkins wisely has been advocating for a tax increase for a couple of years now. But this year he has entrenched himself so completely in the need for Dallas to raise its property tax rate, I'm convinced that he, and probably District 6's Steve Salazar and District 7's Carolyn Davis, will not support a budget that does not include a tax increase.

I only had the opportunity to see the first two and a half hours of yesterday's budget debate so I was fascinated to learn that it's possible that a majority of the council would support a much-needed tax increase. District 1's Delia Jasso and District 2's Pauline Medrano say they will listen to their constituents at their respective town hall meetings before making a decision. My bet is that those constituents, faced with cuts to services they need more than those in North Dallas, will argue for an increase. I say that because I recall attending a joint District 11 and 12 town hall meeting in far North Dallas eight or so years ago when Dallas also faced some severe budget cuts. Then Mayor Laura Miller, who was as firmly against a tax increase as Da Mayor is today, made a surprise appearance and was stunned to hear many of those attending in this conservative area argue for an increase. Finally the matter was put to a vote and those in favor of an increase in this part of town clearly were in the majority. I heard Miller say to then council members Lois Finkelman and Sandy Greyson as she departed the rec center that she just might have to alter her opinion.

People are willing to pay for a government that provides them services that make their lives better. When folks yell "No new taxes," they are talking more about federal and perhaps state taxes because they fail to see how these positively and directly effect their day-to-day lives. But when it's closer to home, it's a different story. I'm convinced a majority of the people of Dallas would vote to pay more to keep the recreational centers, the libraries and the swimming pools operating as they should. I'm convinced they would pay to have their streets repaired and to make sure the city had enough ambulances to meet emergency situations.

I also think it's grandstanding for people like District 11's Linda Koop, District 10's Jerry Allen and Da Mayor to say the city won't grow if we pass a tax increase. Dallas becomes a more attractive destination if it's a city with clean parks, active recreation centers, drivable streets, and a superb, accessible library system.

It's getting to be that time of year when City Hall pretends it listens to you and me

The Dallas City Council takes the month of July off and the city staff uses that time to assemble and refine the City Manager's proposed budget that it will present as soon as the council gets back together in August. Right after that presentation, the various city council members schedule meetings during which an assistant city manager presents an unimaginative slide show (copies of which are handed out to everyone who attends the meetings in another example of a terrible waste of paper and taxpayer money) that says "here's the way it's going to be." Then attendees are given the opportunity to say, "No it shouldn't be that way, you can't cut that service." And the assistant city manager has to say "Yes we can, because we don't have enough money to fund it." Meanwhile, the city council person pretends to side with complaining constituents knowing all the while there is nothing that can be done to satisfy them.

I've been attending this meetings all over the city for about 10 years and I always see the same faces there. I like going to ones in different parts of the city because it's always fascinating to see attendees in the southern sector saying "Yes, go ahead and raise property taxes if that means keeping my rec center open on its current schedule" while those in the northern sector don't care a whit about rec centers -- those are for poor folks -- but pay lip service to libraries and cultural affairs, as long as supporting them doesn't involve raising taxes.

For those wishing to participate in one or more of these charades and are interested in when (between Aug. 9 and Sept. 7) and where these parties are being held, you can find out here. Last year, as I recall, Council member Vonciel Jones Hill scheduled the most meetings. Not this year. Our favorite demagogue, D-Wayne, has scheduled six meetings to Hill's five (and one of those is a joint meeting with Tennell Atkins, whose meetings are usually my favorites). Atkins, along with Carolyn Davis and Dave Neumann have scheduled four meetings; Ron Natinsky and Steve Salazar, three each; Pauline Medrano, Angela Hunt, Sheffie Kadane, Linda Koop and Delia Jasso, two apiece (some of them joint meetings with one other council member); and Ann Margolin figures just one meeting is all that's needed to convince her to vote against the budget again this year,

The solution to Dallas' budget problems: Fire everyone (or at least outsource more)

It's really not fair to compare Dallas with Maywood, Calif. After all, Maywood's population of (estimated) 50,000 is densely packed into a total area of only one square mile. And its entire government, including police, was comprised of 60 employees (compared to around 1,300 for Dallas).

But Maywood was facing the same budget problems as Dallas, declining sales tax revenues and depressed property values. So the city fired everyone and simply outsourced ALL city services.

Although Maywood may be much smaller than Dallas, some of its problems seemed much larger. Four years ago a deputy city clerk was arrested and charged with hiring a hit man to whack a city councilman who was arguing for job reductions. The clerk, who was afraid his job was among those to be reduced, was sentenced to a year in jail and (I loved this part) six months of anger management counseling.

And while the only thing bothering the Dallas Police Department seems to be unnecessary concern over a police escort at a funeral for the son of the police chief, the California attorney general described the Maywood Police Department as "one permeated with sexual innuendo, harassment, vulgarity, discourtesy to members of the public as well as among officers, and a lack of cultural, racial and ethnic sensitivity and respect.”

Now the city is patrolled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The budget for the police last year was $8 million. Outsourcing has cut that by 50 percent.

Like I said, this option probably couldn't work for Dallas and shouldn't even be tried. But outsourcing more services - perhaps starting with libraries, streets, and, of course, my old department, Public Information  - might not be such a bad idea. I'm betting a small elite team at a crackerjack PR company could do a great job for the city at a fraction of the cost of staffing PIO now. I would also explore outsourcing all payroll functions; just the cost savings in new software platforms alone would make this worthwhile.

If it was up to De-Wayne, we would never have parks because he would be afraid of litter

Mayor Pro Tem De-Wayne has come out against a plan that has the potential to add millions to the city's sales tax revenue and thus its general fund and might even result in some decent restaurants coming to his district. But De-Wyane wants no part of that stuff that's "a convience in wealthier parts of town." If he wants to keep his district poor and downtrodden, then so be it.

This Mary Suhm revenue-generating plan doesn't pass my legal smell test

Could you compel someone who earns a salary or a wage by working in the Dallas City limits to do all his or her shopping within Dallas's jurisdictional boundaries in order to generate more sales taxes? I have a suspicion that legal minds would say the answer to that question is "No, no, a thousand times no."

Given that, how can the city even suggest that it can require solid waste collected by commercial waste haulers within the city limits be disposed of in the city's landfill to generate more income? Someone needs to explain the difference to me.

I'm waiting.

I'm still waiting.