Wake and Bake With This Blunt Sneak Peek at the City Council's Back-to-Work Week

By Robert Wilonsky Sat., Jul. 31 2010 at 10:15 AM

Categories: City Hall, Development, Transportation, Trinity River Project

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It's going to be a long, effin' hot weekend -- good for staying inside and reading council docs, now that the brain trust is back from its summer vacation. Tomorrow morning I'll post my chat with the mayor, but for now a few highlights to consider, chief among them Park and Rec's proposals to finally slap some shade on the Easy-Bake Oven that is the Main Street Garden playground (where, I discovered last weekend, the only thing hotter than the equipment is the padding beneath it), negotiate a deal with the Texas Museum of Automotive History at Fair Park through August 2011, and resurrect efforts to sell Samuell Farm and Samuell New Hope Park by calling for an October 13 public hearing.

But there are so many other things from which to choose, should you so choose, such as: a peek at plans for redrawing council district lines, a must per the Dallas City Charter, which calls for redistricting every decade. And: a sneak peek at the lengthy laundry list fees being upped and added should you need to get a building inspected or demolished. Also: Maybe you recall the not-so-distant hubbub over yanking those trees out of the Trinity River levees? Well, at last "the Corps has determined that the City will need to remove the vegetation within 15 feet of the toe of the levees." Not sure of the cost yet. But in the past, $3 mil was the suggested retail price.

Speaking of the Trinity, you know that Continental Avenue Bridge Pedestrian Park and Meditation Plaza? Right. That one. One big questions, among others: How do you actually connect the surrounding not-much on the West Dallas side of the Continental to the park proper? Answer: West Dallas Gateway, at a cost of $1.8 million. And remember how people hate-hate-hated the proposed Beckley-Commerce redo? Meet the new plan for Beckley-Commerce, another West Dallas gateway to the Trinity, which is only $1.5 mil short. But I am sure Schutze is spending the weekend with this doc: Trinity River Levee System Emergency Action Plan! (Which is also his nickname.)

And, sure, you know the mayor and Dwaine Caraway want to ban K2 (which, full disclosure, is an acceptable enough substitute until that first, sudden, outta-nowhere psychobilly freakout) and other brands of fake dope. But the mayor pro tem is back on his ban-the-blunt campaign; hence a bongwater-soaked briefing that actually shows you "how to roll your own marijuana blunt using blunt wraps." Best. Briefing. Ever.

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