Daquella manera

The City Council keeps delaying the passage of an ordinance to require rest and water breaks for Dallas workers. What gives?

At Wednesday's City Council meeting, a group of Dallas day laborers and representatives from the Workers Defense Project were out in full force to advocate for local workers' rights. Their appearance yesterday was the latest in a push over the last several months to require Dallas employers to allow water and restroom breaks for workers -- an issue which particularly affects construction and minimum wage workers and day laborers.

See also: Dallas Construction Workers Want the City to Make Working Construction in Dallas Suck Less

It's an issue that, three months ago, City Council members overwhelmingly supported. But now, it seems to have stalled. So what exactly is the problem? Bureaucracy. The Dallas City Council doesn't want to make employers to give their workers water and restroom breaks because that might not be the City Council's problem.

More »

Dallas Observer

Vonciel Jones Hill and Carolyn Davis in happier times.

The issue at hand is a little wonky, but not too complicated. The Dallas City Council took bids for a contract to collect fines for the city's municipal courts. In the next fiscal year, the contract holder is expected to resolve more than 150,000 cases. MSB Government Services submitted the bid most favorable to the city by far, and was awarded the contract by an 8-7 vote Wednesday afternoon.

Right. Like it was that easy.

Since 2002, the law firm Linebarger, Goggan, Blair and Sampson has held the contract and submitted a bid for the new one, but it finished third under the city's scoring system this time. MSB had the highest-scoring bid, because it guarantees the city almost $21.9 million. Linebarger only guaranteed the city $300,000 -- not that they wouldn't have collected more for the city. That's just how much they were willing to guarantee in advance.

What MSB doesn't have is DeMetris Sampson as a former partner, or her firm's history of making generous political donations across Texas. Sampson is a longtime figure in southern Dallas politics and close associate of political consultant Kathy Nealy, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price's co-defendant in a pending corruption case in federal court. We're not saying the Nealy/Price case is in any way related to the city bid. It's just fun to note all the links that crop up in local politics.

Anyway, the point is that MSB submitted the best bid by the city's own rules, the well wired Linebarger et al came in third and several members of the City Council wanted to reconsider the bidding process for some reason.

More »

Mark Graham

Rep. Rafael Anchia and Mike Rawlings

Last week, we told you about an internet survey pushed out by Dallas state representative Rafael Anchia asking residents their opinion about the Trinity Toll Road. We speculated that Anchia's sudden interest might signal forthcoming action in Austin, likely an attempt by supporters to fund the currently unfunded (and unneeded) project. After speaking with Anchia, that seems even more likely.

See also: Rep. Rafael Anchia Just Released a Trinity Toll Road Survey. Why?

"It's pretty simple: We're just gathering information from the community to get a sense of where they are on this thing," he told Unfair Park. "If it turns out that it becomes a funding request in the legislature, I need to know what the sentiment is of the constituents I represent."

More »

City of Dallas

We get to vote on it again! Sort of.

Just two days after winning his unopposed re-election bid, state Representative Rafael Anchia has released a survey to gauge Dallas residents' opinion of the proposed Trinity toll road.

The survey was quickly pushed out on social media by opponents of the toll road such as City Council member Scott Griggs, who says it's good that people's voices will again be heard on the issue.

"This is a vehicle for the NTTA [North Texas Tollway Authority] to hear from the citizens of Dallas and the people who will be impacted by the toll road. I think it's wonderful that Rafael Anchia, our representative, is facilitating this communication," he said. "I'm concerned that there's been a disconnect between the NTTA and the people, and they need to know that people do not support this road."

More »

Dallas Observer

Thinks, correctly, that he can confuse us with jargon.

So, Dallas City Manager A.C. Gonzalez is making his twice-monthly report to the City Council Wednesday afternoon. This time, he's going to be talking about something called the Dallas Center for Performance Excellence which, well, we've read the whole briefing and still have no idea what it is.

Its purpose, as presented, is to "facilitate best-in-class levels of performance across the City of Dallas organization through an integrated systems approach that achieves results," whatever the hell that means.

Before those best-in-class levels of performance can begin to be facilitated, an advisory board and a working group -- featuring Assistant City Manager Jill Jordan -- need to be convened so there can be two levels of bureaucratic icing on top of the bureaucratic cake.

More »

Kent Wang

Not exactly a bastion of civic responsibility, says Dallas.

Digging through the this year's community survey, which you can see in full below, is like looking at one of those magic eye posters. You have to look past it to see what is really going on.

On its face, the results of the survey are positive. The survey's "major findings:"

1. "Residents generally have a positive perception of the City"
2. "While there are some differences for specific services, overall satisfaction with City services is about the same in most areas of the City"
3. "The City of Dallas is setting the standard for service delivery compared to other large cities"
4. "The City continues to maintain high overall satisfaction ratings even though the results for most other large U.S. cities have decreased"
5. "Although the City is generally heading in the right direction, there are still opportunities for improvement"

More »

Dallas City Council members were treated to the Commemorative Air Force's cinematic masterpiece "If These Planes Could Talk."

There are known knowns about Dallas Executive Airport. These are things we know that we know. One of the known knowns, courtesy of Dallas City Council member Tennell Atkins, is this: "We know that Dallas Executive Airport is an airport."

Another known known is how much the city of Dallas pledged to lure the Commemorative Air Force and its collection of vintage WWII warbirds to Dallas Executive: $8.7 million in grants, plus generous rent breaks, provided the group builds a museum and meets certain other benchmarks.

There are also several known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. Like whether the CAF will in fact deliver the 60 full-time jobs and $36 million boost to City Hall's bottom line over the next two decades like Atkins and the city's economic development staff are predicting. Or whether CAF's arrival will be the thing that pulls DEA, formerly called Redbird, out of the red ink its been drenched in for years. Dallas Aviation Director Mark Duebner would only say that DEA will be in the black "as soon as possible."

More »

Dallas Animal Services

Maybe we should leave them alone.

As of Tuesday, Amber Vinson and Nina Pham, the two Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital nurses to get Ebola after treating Thomas Eric Duncan, are Ebola-free. It's remarkable, inspiring news. Seeing the two speak at their post-release press conference was, in a way, like seeing someone back from the dead.

Then there's Bentley. Bentley, as you surely know, is Pham's impish, year-old King Charles Spaniel. After Pham's diagnosis, he was taken from her Marquita Avenue duplex to be monitored for signs of Ebola at Hensley Field in Grand Prairie. The dog's now officially Ebola free, so he's going to be reunited with Pham tomorrow.

That's awesome.

More »

Amy Silverstein

Eh.

Every hour or so, the Save the Cabana Hotel Facebook page reminds its 900-plus followers to SAVE THE CABANA HOTEL. Dallas' luxury Cabana Motor Hotel opened on Stemmons Freeway in 1962, and photographs on the fan page show legends like John Bonham and Robert Plant hanging out. The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Raquel Welch were also once inside the building.

In more recent years, the Cabana hosted a man named Danny Marvin, who describes his visit in the comments section of a Dallas Voice article:

I stayed there ... the food was horrible, staff wasn't very nice, and the worst part i had to stripe naked in front of other men. Nice architecture though.

More »

Patrick Michels

Dallas City Councilman Tennell Atkins

During a seven-year law enforcement career as a Dallas County deputy constable and Dallas City marshal, Tyler Atkins says he protected the public from fake security guards.

"I used to take people to jail who used to run security companies without a license," he says.

But for the past several months, it appears that Atkins, the 32-year-old son of Dallas City Council member Tennell Atkins, was doing just that. His company, Dallas Shield Inc., has been providing security guards for University General Hospital in Oak Cliff for the past several months, despite lacking the proper license from the Texas Department of Public Safety's Private Security Bureau. The company has applied for a license, but its application is listed as "incomplete" by DPS. According to the department, companies with incomplete licenses cannot legally operate.

Under state law, operating a security company without a license is a class A misdemeanor, which carries a maximum one year in jail and a $4,000 fine.

More »