For the past few years, the Dallas City Council says it's been trying to develop a vacant lot on Simpson Stuart and Bonnie View roads, in a section of Dallas south of Loop 12 that is 22.5 square miles but home to just 27,500 people.

What the relatively low-population area needs is another grocery store, Councilman Tennell Atkins has said, even though there apparently aren't enough people to support a grocery store. "Density of just over 1,200 people per square mile is an impediment to attracting established grocers," explains a city report.

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Dallas Animal Services

He's an expensive little bugger.

Of the just more than $155,000 the city of Dallas spent responding to Ebola, almost $27,000 -- just more than 17 percent of the total -- went to caring for Bentley, Nina Pham's King Charles Spaniel. The majority of the Bentley cash, $17,057.46, was spent on getting Grand Prairie Armed Forces Reserve Complex ready for the dog's stay and providing security at the former Naval Air Station.

The single biggest item on the full list, which you can check out below, was the $58,000-plus Dallas Fire and Rescue spent on hazmat response. It cost $18,824 to pay the paramedics subjected to 21-day quarantines after contact with the first diagnosed U.S. Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan.

The city won't bear the full brunt of the bill. It is seeking reimbursement of some costs from the state and about $19,000 of Bentley's burden will be covered by grants and donations.

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David R. Tribble

Taking out the middle man.

Sana Syed had a baptism by fire. Just after she took the city of Dallas' public information officer job, Thomas Eric Duncan was diagnosed with Ebola. Syed did an admirable job filtering and distributing the torrent of information that would come out over the succeeding weeks.

She would also show that she knew how to spot and promote a story that would be a winner for the city, however harrowing the circumstances. Bentley -- the King Charles spaniel who belongs to Nina Pham, one of the Texas Health Presbyterian nurses to get Ebola after treating Duncan -- quickly became the face and focus of many of Syed's tweets and press releases. The end of the dog's monitoring for Ebola and his reuniting with Pham was the unofficial end of Ebola in Dallas, however absurd the press conference that accompanied it was.

See also: Bentley Is an Extremely Cute Dog, But Tomorrow's Press Conference Is Insane

Wednesday, Syed outlined how she hopes to keep the positive news flowing with a new city news website, improved use of social media and something new called "The Communications and Policy Institute."

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Dallas Observer

He's in.

Put aside any thoughts you had about the 2015 Dallas mayoral election being competitive. Mike Rawlings is running again.

Just before his annual "State of the City" speech Tuesday, Rawlings formally revealed to The Dallas Morning News the poorly kept secret that he'll be on the ballot in May.

He will face a much easier task in seeking a second four years than he did in 2011, when he overcame a crowded field and a runoff with former Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle to win his first term. Rawlings showed he was a formidable fundraiser in that race, collecting $1.5 million, more than three times as much cash as anyone else in the race.

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Jay Barker

Back in February of 2013, Schutze shook loose a secret memo showing that City Manager Mary Suhm had struck a secret deal with Trinity East Energy to allow gas drilling on city parkland while, at the same time, promising the City Council that there would be no gas drilling on city parkland. The memo offered a rare glimpse behind the curtain at City Hall, a place where an unelected bureaucrat can and often does flout the will of the people.

One can almost imagine Suhm and Trinity East execs huddled in a dimly lit back room somewhere, a dense cloud of cigar smoke hanging about their heads, their knowing chuckle building to sinister peals of laughter as they imagine playgrounds being replaced by drilling rigs.

Plant that image in your mind, because that could be as close as Dallas gets to actually discovering what transpired between city officials and Trinity East.

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Occupy Dallas

The Dallas City Council's decision last week to repeal its anti-protest ordinance -- the one that has irked both the far left and far right, from the peaceniks railing against the Bush Presidential Library to the Obama-hating patriots -- was a tacit admission that banning people from protesting next to highways is probably unconstitutional, no matter how many times Dallas Police Chief David Brown says it's dangerous.

That realization came too late to save the city from a pair of free speech lawsuits (neither of which, for the record, is going away), and it came too late to save the city from legal sanctions brought on by its apparent legal strategy of mindless obstructionism.

We mentioned here before that the federal judge handling the lawsuit filed by the Bush Library protesters wasn't very happy with the city's knee-jerk refusal to answer rudimentary questions about how the anti-protest ordinance was drafted. Last Wednesday, the same day the City Council repealed the ordinance, a different judge, U.S. Magistrate David Horan, slapped the city with sanctions for its obstructionism.

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Here you go, Mr. Mayor.

One thing is clear after Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings' 15-minute speech Wednesday at a Trinity Groves breakfast: It can't possibly be about what he said it was about. There is no way that after all the time, all the "balloon juice," that's been expelled over the issue, that he can possibly be befuddled over what the road will look like or how he feels about it.
"I don't understand how a guy can be the mayor of Dallas and say that he's confused about this project. I don't think that's acceptable," says Philip Kingston, Dallas City Council member and curator of the Trinity Toll Road Naughty and Nice List.

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Rafael Anchia

And the survey says...

The results are in from state Representative Rafael Anchia's survey of Dallas residents' feelings about the Trinity toll road. They are exactly what you'd expect.

Of 1,014 respondents who reported Dallas ZIP codes, only 42 said they supported the toll road, and 955 were against the toll road and. Somewhat inexplicably, 17 people cared enough to log in and take the survey but said they needed more information about a project that's been in the works for more than 15 years.

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Dwaine Caraway (via Facebook)

Council member Dwaine Caraway doing his part to support A.C.'s initiative.

As we've mentioned before, City Manager A.C. Gonzalez's presentations at the end of City Council briefings are frequently excruciating and uninformative. Tuesday, though, there was an interesting tidbit in the midst of Gonzalez's promotion of the city's wellness initiative for city employees.

After singling out City Council member Dwaine Caraway's eager adoption of the wellness program, Gonzalez revealed that a full 20 percent of the city's employees are morbidly obese and 80 percent are at least somewhat overweight.

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Uber, Yellow Cab and Lyft's apps.

A debate that began more than a year ago when City Manager A.C. Gonzalez tried to slip an ordinance that would have banned car services like Uber and Lyft in Dallas will likely end December 10, when the council takes up new regulations for transportation-for-hire businesses.

The new regulations that will probably pass on the 10th -- it's clear that the proposal has at least eight votes from the 14 members of the council and the mayor -- are very similar to the existing regulations for cab companies, but they at least attempt incorporate the cell phone app-based services like Uber in a way that won't render them useless.

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