Whaddya Know, the City Council Decides Legal Businesses Along Trinity Are Still Legal After All

By Jim Schutze Wed., Oct. 13 2010 at 10:22 AM

Categories: Schutze

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Private property still legal in Dallas! Or should I say, legal again.

The Dallas City Council just voted unanimously to approve a plan to keep several businesses on Rock Island Street, right behind the Trinity River levee down by the Corinth Street bridge. Council members Steve Salazar, Pauline Medrano and Ron Natinsky spoke, urging approval. They talked about the value of the businesses as taxpayers and employers but also about property rights.

This is in direct opposition to and a contradiction of the council's posture over the last several years regarding the Trinity River plan. Up to this moment, the mentality has been very Soviet. Urged on by the intemperate rantings of Dallas Morning News editorial writer Tod Robberson, the council up until today has treated its Five-Year Plan for the Improvement of the People's Riverfront as trumping the property rights of any and all freeholders who suffer the grave misfortune of being in the plan's way.

So, today we heard -- even from Natinsky! -- caution! Caution! Maybe the city should tread more cautiously and respectfully where private property gets in the way of public imperatives.

Ironies could be heaped on ironies here, but I am too mature, measured and, well, sort of scholarly, really, for all of that. So instead I will summarize by saying, quite simply ...

Up yours, Robber Boy!

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Best quotes this week: 1) "...park Beemers out front, while the toilets are backing up."(-Schutze, There's your Big D nut graph!) 2) "Dude, nobody wants to buy their pot at Wal-Mart." (-Guy in Cal. being interviewed on PBS' "News Hour" re: proposition vote on pot legalization), 3) "I was 5 years-old before I came to the realization that clowns are as afraid of us as we are of them" (-Dude on TV show "Undercovers). 4) Slick-Rick Perry's suggestion to pass a law that already exists for student drivers under age 18. Keep 'em comin', folks! I'm fully entertained!!!!
Ellum08: The park could be O.K., I suppose. The only way we would know would be to some kind of competition or charette in which we solicited ideas from the world's best urban park designers. Otherwise all we get is this ad hoc cheesy amusement park effect where they propose ferris wheels down by the jail one day and wet-n-wild fake water features the next. But why would we even be talking about a park until we know what we're going to do about the levees? We have a tendency to want to park a Beemer out front even though the toilets are backing up. We need to curb our enthusiasm long enough to take care of basic business.
By the way: animal on Orr Reed sign is typical East Dallas feral cat, capable of picking locks and imitating 1,000 wild bird mating calls.
JimS....still waiting.....
How much $$$ does the Dallas Morning News waste on Tod Robberson and Sharon Grigsby's salaries for their collective output of a couple of lame blog posts a week? Does Belo ever wonder why their "newspaper" is hemorrhaging money?
Shaggy: I am an ungrateful dog. i should have said thank you long ago. I have been looking at that deal. It sounds like those levees up there are really old original agricultural levees, built without any engineering at all, so if I draw parallels here, the City Hallers will checkmate me for drawing in a red herring. But tell me I'm wrong. I am very interested.
I think the city should incorporate that image into its Trinity River "brand": a skunk drinking kerosene from a flask.
LOL Toad Robberson has responded, and he is even whinier and more insufferable than usual! http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/10/cedars-west-a-r.html
Schutze, have you seen/read any of my comments re: the Caledonia-Lewiston levee report by the WDNR? I'll keep bringing it up, unless you say "ok, I got it" etc. Also Ellum08, it's called, I think, "guilt by association." The tollroad story evolved; its taint now diffuse in the tangential workings of the project at large ... My guess as to Schutze's thorough scouring of the intent underlying all things Trinity. Just a guess.
Jim, honest question for you, are you completely against anything having to do with the Trinity River project now? Not that long ago it seemed that it was just the tollroad that would ruin what some touted as Dallas' 'Central Park' (whatever that means...) that pissed you off, but now it seems everything related to the Trinity (even park related items) seems to get your dander up. What gives?
No JimS we know you are not an ivroy tower liberal, tinfoil hat liberal, well that's another story
Lorlee, I may have been mistaken on what suburb she lives in, but you just essentially proved my point by pointing out that she moved away from Pleasant Grove. THANK YOU!!!!!
Actually Smarmy, I think Ms. Grigsby lives in one of the Eastern suburbs having moved from Pleasant Grove. One wonders why you feel the need to name call her. I expect you don't know and have never met her, so to resort to abusive ad hominem simply shows your true colors. (also you did it anonomously -- Afraid to claim your own comments)
Thelisma, it's a chupacabra. I think.
Sharon Grigsby lives in fucking Frisco. She is just another stereotypical bleeding-heart liberal hypocrite. The kind of scum who always lectures others on the amazing benefits of divershitty while they themselves consistently move to whiter and whiter areas.
I have to ask - what is that critter on the Orr-Reed sign? A skunk? Robber Boy?
But Bill. Unfair R Us.
All I know is my house was built in 1918 and Orr-Reed has been very very good to me. Nice accommodating people, running an honest business.
I don't know Todd, but there's nothing smarmy or Know-Nothing about Sharon Grigsby. That's not just unkind, it's also unfair.
Jim, you couldn't do smarmy if your life depended on it. ;)
Sucks: I thought I was.
Ha ha in your face, Tod Robberson! He and Sharon Grigsby are the very archetype of smarmy scolding nanny-state white liberal ivory-tower know-nothing eggheads.