Dallas News Blog

Constable Jaime Cortes

​Unfair Park has waited all day for a response from Larry Friedman, one of several lawyers representing embattled Dallas County Constable Jaime Cortes, concerning a digital sound recording somebody made of a meeting yesterday involving Cortes and 30 of his deputies. At 9 this morning he said he would get a copy to Cortes and come back with a comment. Time's up.

The audio file -- a scratchy recording from a device somebody must have had inside a pocket -- features Cortes warning his deputies not to cooperate with ongoing criminal investigations of Cortes. The source who sent it to Unfair Park, who is familiar with the back story on Cortes's problems, believes the recording catches the constables threatening and intimidating witnesses in a criminal investigation.

Friedman didn't call us back to speak for Cortes. But Unfair Park thinks there are probably at least a couple of ways to read the transcript of the recording provided by the same source. The exculpatory version would be that Cortes was merely trying to buck up morale and show his troops that he is unbowed.

On January 28 Cortes's top deputy and the deputy's wife were arrested on several charges, the result of separate investigations by Dallas County Judge Jim Foster and Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins of corruption in Cortes's office. Some witnesses also have reported being questioned by the FBI.

The source who provided the recording and transcript to Unfair Park asked not to be named in order to avoid compromising the investigations. The source claimed to have spoken with more than one person present at the meeting yesterday in Cortes's office. The source said the impression conveyed by them was that Cortes was warning people not to cooperate with law enforcement investigators. They told the source Cortes wanted them to know that he would get their names, that he would be out of jail soon on bond if arrested and that those who had wives and children should remember that Cortes is a tough guy from West Dallas.

A full transcript follows.

Patrick Michels

Remember the levee collapse in December? Sure you do.

​Interesting story inside The Dallas Morning News today about cuts in the federal budget for the Dallas Trinity River levee project. I'm not saying The News story is any kind of propaganda. Just saying there's more there than meets the eye.

Here is what is sort of buried or smooshed over in The News's account, probably because their Washington guy doesn't quite get it, not because he's trying to cover something up. We have two distinct and separate Trinity River levee issues.

The first is the big Trinity River "Project," to raise the levees and build a highway out between them. The second is more recent and has to do with the levees we already have, just sitting there: Are they screwed because of poor maintenance, with or without the whole raising thing? If we never did the raising, would we still have to fix or replace what we've got out there now?

What's the difference, in terms of today's story? Mega.

Maintenance of the existing levees is a city responsibility, not federal. If the levees have to be substantially rebuilt, it's a hit in the billions of dollars. If the Corps isn't going to pony up that money, we will have to. It's huge.

Flickr user: ksbuehler

If nothing else, we're glad we got to do a third item about the old Age of Steam museum. We finally found the perfect picture.

​[Editor's note: Tonight, Jim spoke with sources familiar with the negotiations between the Museum of the American Railroad and the city. Among those to whom he spoke is Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm. His update follows at the end of this item. But, long story short, reports Jim: "This has everything to do with Ron Natinsky."]

I spoke this afternoon with Tom Smith, president of the board of the Museum of the American Railroad at Fair Park, who had some fairly appalling stuff to tell me about how the museum is being treated by Dallas City Hall. It's starting to look exactly like those politically driven "Safe Team" vendettas they carry out against landlords who have made the mistake of pissing off a city council member.

The landlord vendettas are bad enough. But this is a nonprofit. It's the old Age of Steam, for goodness sake. Sic the goons on the Age of Steam?

Wilonsky is all over this. I spoke with Smith because I have known him and known of him for a long time. He was a very important director of Old City Park who captained it through its period of growth in the late '80s and early '90s. Then he went to Arlington and set up the "Legends of the Game" museum for the Rangers. He came back to Dallas in 2001 to become the founding director of the Old Red Museum. After that he was the pinch-hitter at the Dallas County Historical Society while they replaced a longtime director who had departed.

I'm just saying, this is a recognized leader in the field of state and local history with a distinguished record in local museums, and he's not used to being treated like some kind of trespassing vagrant.

"It's unusual," he told me.

Yeah. You could say.

Eric Nicholson, Jim's hero

​Well, as usual, The Dallas Morning News prints stuff, and then it's up to me to come along behind them and do clean-up on the story. What am I? Their journalistic janitor?

Mariana Greene, The News's garden editor and author of a column called "Gardening Fool," has a story in the paper today about a hen that got lost in the ritzy Preston Hollow area (near where George II lives) and how she rescued it and so on.

I happen to know some of the behind-the-scenes on this deal, for reasons not worth going into in this space. But when I read Greene's column about how the hen was returned to its rightful owner, I thought a little more credit could have been given to the real hero of the tale. Typical DMN.

O.K., Greene is my wife. Now I have bared my soul.

Yes, the hen turned up alone and lost on a big estate. Yes, Greene brought it home to her own modest abode in East Dallas (where I also dwell) and gave it a temporary home. Yes, she sort of gives credit in her column to the guy who actually turned up the owner -- one Eric Nicholson of People Newspapers.

But I don't think she gives Nicholson enough credit.

Richard Allen

​Over the last year, whenever I have spoken with Richard Allen, CEO of The Allen Group, he has been open at times, guarded at others. But I have to say today, when he and I talked about his entry into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, he sounded better than he has in some time -- more confidant and maybe even a little easier-going than in the past.

The Allen Group filed for federal bankruptcy protection last night under Chapter 11. That's the form of bankruptcy that allows management to hold on to a company while it negotiates understandings with creditors.

The Allen Group is the principal in Dallas's Inland Port Project, a 7,500-acre real estate development intended to become one of the continent's most important shipping and warehousing centers. Allen was adamant today that neither he nor his project is going away. "This is a single project that's going to be kept together," he said.

He said his support from the cities and other local entities is solid: "I have talked to the major political leadership, and everybody continues to be supportive. The capital and infrastructure support that we have received in the past is going to continue.

"I mean, hey, everybody understands that it's a good project. It's just a timing issue."

The timing, of course, has to do with lasting out a bad patch in the national economy. I had asked Allen a month ago about rumors the bad economy might force him to sell.

"The rumor that you asked me about previously was false. I can tell you honestly that I have had no conversations or discussions along those lines."

I get that a lot.

​For me, a good City Hall audit report is better reading than a John Grisham novel. You just have to know how to read it (upside down, holding it up to the mirror, between the lines). Today's offering is the City Auditor's report on the police department's Employee Morale Fund, for which the sub-head should have been, "What kind of morale are we talking about?"

But first this disclaimer: The audit was requested by Chief David Kunkle. So Kunkle must have known something wasn't right. And Kunkle has already answered the audit saying he's going to do almost everything the auditors recommend to fix the issues they found.

The audit, posted Friday, was officially released today. The official money line is on Page Three: "The integrity of the employee morale fund (EMF) could not be determined." That's CPA-speak for "We got no idea what we're lookin' at here."

The back story is about a thing called the city-wide morale fund, funded by vending machine royalties and intended to pay for commendations, retirement parties and stuff like that for all city employees. It's a practice that has parallels in the private sector, of course. Here at the Observer, we have an employee morale fund called "your paycheck." Every two weeks we have an employee appreciation ceremony called, "Here's your paycheck." I say every two weeks. In my personal case, I think of it as every two weeks so far.

Anyway, the audit found a number of discrepancies in the way cash has been handed out in the police department's version of the morale fund -- advanced in the form of cash, apparently -- to pay for various morale events. In a fund that averages $28K a year for the police department alone, the amount totally missing, according to the auditors, was only $2,200 in fiscal years 2007 through 2009.

But remember the line about "integrity could not be verified."

​Ah, you know, even a blind hog can find the truth buried somewhere in The Dallas Morning News if he knows how to root-hog-or-die. Reminds me of the thing I wrote about two years ago, when The News waited until the day after the Trinity River referendum to reveal something its transportation writer, Michael Lindenberger, had known for a week: that Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert was misleading voters by telling them the toll road would never require more money from Dallas voters.

So today on his blog (but not in a story in the newspaper the previous day) --- and, waaaaaaay down at the very bottom of a very long item --- Linderberger reveals something else Wagemen has told him: that the toll road authority will not mortgage its system to build the Trinity Toll Road.

Lindenberger hints coyly about what that means: "Absent a windfall from Washington or a tooth fairy in Dallas, I am not expecting the Trinity Parkway to be built anytime ... soon," he writes.

Sure. But, Michael, but why not say it right out loud, since that, at least ostensibly, is the business we're in?

The Trinity River Toll Road cannot be built.

​Lori Stahl, over on The News's Park Cities Blog, is making light of a serious situation in my home. My wife got talked into bringing a lost chicken into the house this week. You could talk her into rescuing anything. She's never come home with a lost gorilla (and I knock wood), but we've had everything else.

I did not know until I read the Park Cities blog that this is a chicken from a rich neighborhood. That just makes the whole thing worse. It's sitting in a steel cage in the middle of our kitchen. The thing is the size of a feral hog. You stick your hand in there, you're going to come up missing a pinkie. Also, when it flaps its wings it showers us with chicken offal. I think I got some in my mouth last night.

Why do we have to take care of the chickens of the rich?

If anybody recognizes this chicken, please leave a comment here. About one more day of this, and I'm off to the Days Inn Suites. Cable TV, Internet and no livestock.

Hey, Jim, maybe Frank Librio can come pick up your trash in this sweet ride.

​The Schutze household has been working on a mystery all day about how to call the city for bulk trash pickup if the trucks keep skipping your block during pickup week. We found that we could not reach 311 -- the service number for the city -- from our cell phones or from our home line.

Every time we tried, we got a recording that said, "Your call cannot be completed." So, naturally, I called Frank Librio, the media spokesman for the city, with my issue. I mean, what is this guy even there for if not to help media people with their problems? I'm going to call him some day when I need a ride. That's how strongly I feel about it.

Anyway, Mr. Librio wrote to me this afternoon as follows:

If you have a Dallas-area area code and you call within city limits, you should be able to dial 311 directly from your cell. If you are having difficulty it may be a carrier or provider issue. If it is a carrier or provider issue -- you can reach 3-1-1 via cell by calling 214-670-5111.

We've tried on our end for the past hour using cell and land lines and have had no issues. 311 did have a similar issue with two other residents and the issue turned out to be a provider/carrier issue.

So, our cell phones should work. They don't.

​In order to help Haiti, you don't have to just sling cash out into the great unknown. Several groups in Dallas have long-standing involvement in relief efforts there -- among them Dallas-Haiti Project, which has been around for eight years. It began with nine women connected with St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church; now, it's a stand-alone 501(c)3.

The group was put together by Gretchen and Warren Berggren of the Harvard School of Public Health when the Berggrens were living here to be near a daughter. Now, the Dallas-Haiti Project raises money in North Texas, often through schools, to support the St. Vincent School for Handicapped Children in Port-au-Prince. Go to their site to see the dedicated fund they have started for earthquake victims.

They're still so small-scale they can only accept checks, member Susan Aberg told me this afternoon. But in the true spirit of giving, they are asking people who want to make donations by credit card to give the money to Partners in Health, a much larger organization associated with the School of Public Health at Harvard.

The final scene of the "One More Thing" promotional video, which Schutze now plays on a loop in his office

​Well, we're sort of zeroing in, slowly, on the answer to my question: Who paid for that "One More Thing" promotional video about Dallas shown to the city council yesterday? You know: scenes from around the city with exciting Dallas celebrities, like city council members, doing goofy dances, put together in a video for the members of the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA), a national group that was in town till yesterday looking over Dallas's convention and meeting facilities. It's been seen thousands of times since Unfair Park first noticed the video Tuesday morning. Sample YouTube comment: "Looks like an underfinanced high-school senior-class video."

Why do I care who paid for it? What business is it of mine? I'm nosy. It's my business if I say it is. And middle-aged office pinkies doing the boogie on TV make me nervous. Sorry. If you don't like it, pay my shrink bill, why don't you?

Phyllis Hammond, executive vice president of the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau, told me yesterday that the video was paid for by the "PCMA Host Committee." I told her I didn't now what that was, and I wanted to know if any city money was involved. I also asked how much the video, produced by DCVB chair Don Freeman Jr.'s company and shot by local filmmakers, cost to make.

The Trinity River looks fine to us in this conceptual rendering of the Standing Wave whitewater-maker.

​Environment Texas, an Austin-based research group, made available today a report on Texas rivers that lists the state's most dangerously polluted waterways, particularly those fouled by chemicals that cause cancer and birth defects. And to mark the report's release, at 1 p.m. the group will gather media types and local pols, among them state Rep. Allen Vaught, to wag their their fingers at the Trinity River from the overlook at Commerce Street and Beckley Avenue.

The group's cover letter blames much of the Trinity's problems on "riverfront development and storm water runoff containing chemicals, trash and solid waste." The bottom line, based on scientific data, is that the Trinity is unsafe for recreational uses in Dallas. As in: "The report also finds that the Trinity River running through the Dallas/Fort Worth Area poses a high risk to recreational users." (Odd thing: There's no mention of the Trinity by name in the actual report, only on this copy of a clean-water report fowarded by Environment Texas.)

Hmm. Unsafe for recreational uses. Riverfront development a major cause for pollution. I'm trying to remember. Did Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert mention any of this when he persuaded Dallas citizens to vote in favor of building a major new highway right next to the river? Oh, sure, he must have. What responsible mayor would forget to mention that the river is already full of poison and that building a highway practically on top of it can only make things worse?

Environment Texas is funded with about two hundred grand a year in grants, some of it from our own Meadows Foundation in Dallas. Well, at least they used to get money from Meadows, until I posted this item.

​Maybe nobody else cares, but my wife and I got curious over the weekend why the city's water mains break in cold weather, since we were left without water for several hours Saturday night. We live in a neighborhood of old houses with poorly insulated pipes. Most people leave their taps running when the temperature dips much below 28. So if all of our household taps are running up and down the block, how does the water in the main freeze?

Charles Stringer, assistant director of Dallas Water Utilities, generously took time out of a busy day today -- there have been more than 100 water main breaks since Wednesday, most caused by the deep freeze -- to answer my stupid questions. First, he said, the water in the main doesn't freeze very often. It's the sudden differential between soil temperature outside the pipe and water temperature inside that cracks old cast-iron pipes.

The three to four hours it takes to fix a main is easy to understand, once Stringer explains the process. First, the city must dispatch a valve crew to shut off the water to the main. There's a valve about every block, but pipe crosses and intersections can raise the number of valves that need to be closed to as many as four or five for one leak. All of those have to be found and shut down.

​I covered a community meeting last night at Winfrey Point on White Rock Lake to discuss plans for a community garden off Fisher Road in East Dallas, and ... what can I say? It was pretty much a total rout for the gardeners, portrayed as an ominous invading horde by an angry crowd of neighbors near the proposed site. And it was sort of a rout for moi.

I have portrayed city officials as an ominous obstructionist horde for dragging their feet on the approval of community gardens on city-owned land. If last night's conclave proved nothing more, it demonstrated that city staff have been right in their view that gardens on city-owned property are a potentially divisive issue requiring fully developed conflict-resolving policies.

I hate it when they're right. More on this in my column for next week's "print product," as we have come to call it. (I use to think of myself as a newspaper man. Now I'm a print product man.)

I'm working on a theory that City Hall is right but in the wrong way. That would make me wrong but in the right way. As I say, workin' on it. Working hard.

Oakwood Place Apartments, where Senior Corporal Norman Smith was killed one year ago tonight

​Apparently on the TV news tonight we will see a story I can only describe as the Dallas's First Truly Awkward Moment of 2010. Dallas Police Lieutenant Regina Smith will lead a cortege of a dozen uniformed officers and several television news crews to strew rose petals at the apartment complex in East Oak Cliff where her husband, Senior Corporal Norman Smith, was slain by gunfire one year ago today while attempting to serve a warrant. The petals will be strewn at 6:14 pm -- the time of her husband's death.

What's awkward?

Well, on the one hand, Smith -- formerly a member of police chief David Kunkle's staff, now in a patrol division -- is a grieving widow. She and her fellow police officers ought to be able to honor the death of her husband and their comrade if they want to and as they see fit. On the other hand, Smith, perhaps in grief, has colored this evening's event with a very political theme, describing the apartment complex where her husband died as "not a safe place." That's very much in dispute.

Immediately after Smith's death the city of Dallas, spurred on by the editorial page of The Dallas Morning News, launched a code-enforcement and law-enforcement blitz against the Oakwood Place Apartments, where the shooting occurred. But the Dallas Observer published a story February 26, 2009, showing that Stolarski, the owner operator, had a stellar record as a crime-fighting landlord.

In July of last year, Smith's commanding officer in the police gang unit was reprimanded and transferred after a departmental investigation found lax procedures in the raid had contributed to the killing.

But today in describing the event she has planned for this evening, Smith's widow clearly was not cutting Stolarski any slack. She conceded that she had not attempted to reach Stolarski or consult him in any way about coming onto his property with police and news crews.

Adam James

​Speaking of Craig James, here goes a big mistake. I'm going to invade Richie's territory and offer an opinion on a sports story. I was actually prohibited from writing about sports once when I was a daily newspaper reporter because of my appalling lack of knowledge. Maybe I'm about to get banned again. But.

The Dallas Morning News today offers us an editorial on the Mike Leach-Texas Tech story presenting two sides of the controversy as if both are equally plausible. One is that Texas Tech coach Mike Leach, recently fired for mistreatment of an injured player, is a dumb son of a bitch who got what he deserved. The other side is that the injured player, Adam James, Son of Craig, is the "spoiled-brat son of a famous dad" who got what he deserved.

Here's my problem. Leach's behavior has been very public and easy for media to report -- threatening to sue the university, issuing statements, being spoken for by an abrasive lawyer. But the kid's role has been far less flamboyant. The basis for the spoiled-brat story, as far as I can tell, is a bunch of e-mails allegedly from fellow players published by CBS sports.

As I have watched this story unfold, I have drifted irresistibly toward memories of the old days, back when news media could still afford to report the news. I remember the drill.

If nothing else, we're pretty sure the city owns Dallas City Hall. Then again, who really knows?

​Dallas City Auditor Craig D. Kinton just published his department's audit of maintenance of city-owned buildings, which makes for some mildly amusing reading this morning. It's after the jump, but what would you imagine the biggest problem might be, in terms of gauging how well the city maintains its buildings? The correct answer is: The city doesn't know which buildings it owns.

The first major finding in the audit, in fact, is: "The city does not maintain a current listing of all city-owned buildings."

Not that it doesn't have any list at all. The auditor found that the city has many lists -- all mutually contradictory.

The audit found one building listed that burned down several years ago. But The Bridge -- the city's downtown homeless assistance centered created with great fanfare and expense -- isn't on any list. A tiny nit we might pick with the auditor is that he castigates the city for failing to include "Zaragozia Recreation Center" on its lists. We're sure he means the Ignacio Zaragoza Rec Center, named for the Mexican general who defeated the French on Cinco de Mayo, 1862. Sarah Gozia is a piano soloist in Joplin, Missouri, according to Google. Different.

Anyway, the audit is pretty good reading, especially if you don't have anything especially useful to do with yourself this afternoon."

David Laney, who at least looks like a Dallas mayor

​Reading The Dallas Morning News is easy. I don't know why people complain. I had at least three conversations Sunday with grumpy people all upset and confused about the Gromer Jeffers story in the Sunday paper: "Issue of Dallas' next mayor isn't so clear cut."

"Where does this come from?" I was asked. "What is this about?" "Why is this in the paper?" Whine, whine, whine.

Look. It's simple. You just have to know how to read The News. In the paper you have three types of stories: legitimate news stories; semi-legitimate, somewhat bent inside-agenda stories; and seriously icky Pravda-type disinformation stories. Once you know the system, you know how to read the paper.

Sunday's piece by Jeffers, about what will happen if Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert ditches out on the city before his current term ends, was a No. 3. Seriously icky. How do we know that? Well, you look for markers. Seriously icky markers.

For example, the story provided a list of front-runners for the office of mayor should Leppert ditch out early. One of them was that famous and well-known man about town, that fellow whose name is on every tongue, that rock star of local politics.

David Laney.

Davie Whoey? That's what you're thinking, right? Who in the hell is David Laney? How in the hell did this David Laney person become a contender for the highest elective office in our fair city? O.K., see, right there: You're onto a marker.

Now, let me fill in a blank for you. It's something Gromer forgot to tell you.

​This may or may not be our last post before we call it quits (I've got to prep for my Christmas Day job, besides). Still, I meant to mention this yesterday: On his way out the door to West Conshohocken, PA, Dallas News columnist Rod Dreher discovered that Schutze is, indeed, his brother from another mother -- at least when it comes to the city's clampdown on neighborhood farmers markets that have the audacity to compete with the city-owned market downtown. Wrote the Crunchy Con, "Jim Schutze drives me crazy, but when he's on, nobody can touch him."

And speaking of Dreher's farewell, over on Beliefnet today he bids adieu to the one thing he'll miss most about Dallas:

I want to mention one in particular, my favorite place in Dallas, a place I'm going to miss fiercely: Central Market, the location on Lovers Lane, at Greenville. It is without question the best supermarket I've ever been to. If you are a foodie in Dallas, this is your St. Peter's, your Hagia Sophia, your Mecca. When we left New York in 2003, Julie had come ahead to scout out the area for a house. She knew I was heartbroken over leaving Brooklyn, so she said the only thing she could that would cheer me up: "I've rented us a house close to Central Market." I knew about CM's reputation from having frequented the store in Austin on trips there; what I wasn't prepared for was how much better even the Dallas store is than the Austin one.

​I want to confess in advance. I, Jim Schutze, am a party to the KwanzaaFest scandal. It's all going to come out now. I knew this would happen. I'm ready for my hands-over-the-face paddy wagon shot now.

Rudy Bush has posted excerpts from the findings of Danny Defenbaugh, the private investigator looking into allegations of corrupt practices in county government. I'm not in it yet. But I will be.

In a December 22 letter to County Judge Jim Foster, Defenbaugh makes several references to KwanzaaFest, the local African American festival founded 18 years ago by Dallas County commissioner John Wiley Price. Defenbaugh cites sworn statements from Dallas County deputy constables who say they were forced to work security at the festival without compensation. He also makes reference to financial statements Price is required by federal law to produce on demand but has refused to make available.

I have been following this element of the investigation with a very personal sense of foreboding. I believe it has a lot to do with Price's extreme hostility toward the Defenbaugh investigation.

​I know what you're thinking: The year is almost over, and I need more Schutze!

More Schutze you say? Me too, which is why I took a look back at his columns from '09 and picked my 10 faves for your reconsideration and, well, appreciation.

For those who don't remember the drill from last year, the list is chronological and void of any commentary from yours truly because, hey, you asked for more Schutze, so that's exactly what you're getting. Enjoy as you visualize Jim reading you the excerpts while delivering this nifty holiday gift.

10. "Low-Rent Landlord Alex Stolarski is City Hall's Fall Guy," February 26

It's all a lie. It's a straight-up lie -- a vicious slander of an honest businessman and involved citizen. As far as I can tell, Stolarski does everything humanly possible to combat crime in his buildings. He is also not a nobody. I don't think it's OK to savage people who happen to be unknown, but Stolarski happens to be known. He has a reputation, and it's good. All anybody had to do to find out was lift a finger, make a couple calls.

Bad enough is the cheap, maudlin exploitation of a terrible death. But this is even worse than that. It goes deeper. This whole line of thinking is a flabby moral self-deception.

You know what really does contribute to tragedies like the recent death of Senior Corporal Norman Smith? City officials and editorial writers who continue to say crap like this. They enable the moral conditions that will produce more cop killings, more crime.

Crime will be reduced when more people start acting better. People don't act bad because of their building owners.

Exactly how dumb do we have to get about this before we take a smart pill?

Patrick Michels

DPD Chief David Kunkle at his retirement press conference on November 12

​As Unfair Park already noted earlier this morning, The Dallas Morning News has a hell of a story this morning about the Dallas Police Department and the feeling of some experts and involved citizens that it has been cooking the books on violent crime.

It's a journalistic triumph for reporters Steve Thompson and Tanya Eiserer, with one small shortcoming, which, of course, I'm going for.

Somebody -- based on my own long years as a daily newspaper reporter, I would suspect some chickenshit mid-level editor -- wanted to dodge a bit of political friction here with the police chief. Please note that there is no fresh quote in this story from Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle. Me in my PJs with my morning joe, I wondered: How could they do a story like this and not go to Kunkle for a new quote? Still in my PJs, I thought: They did go to him. Thompson and Eiserer are too good. They would never miss a beat like that.

So I called the chief. He told me that The News did, indeed, ask for an interview -- a request he declined. Instead -- and this is something the story never spells out -- Kunkle told them he would respond only to written questions.

I asked him why.

​Now, it's on to that community gardens and neighborhood farmers market briefing. Follow along at home. Try to keep up.

A city staff guy, Eric Griffin, is talking to the city council about community gardens. I interviewed Griffin for my story about how City Hall does everything it can to screw up and kill community gardens.

Griffin is describing community gardens in very glowing terms: He's talking about how community gardens in other cities have reduced crime and improved surrounding property values.

He wants the council to establish a strong policy statement in favor of community gardens. Good idea. That's a good way to convey to the staff that community gardens are not a crime.

Second step he says is to "expand land for food production." That, he says, will require re-writing the city's "development code" -- the law governing what you can do with land n the city -- to make sure it allows gardens.

Also he says the council should find a way to open up land owned by the city for gardens. And finally --- uh, oh, here's the killer -- he thinks City Hall should establish an "ombudsman of community gardens" to control who can have one.

Yikes. Why does City Hall always go straight to the Soviet solution? People just want to grow 'maters, man. Why do they need an ombudsman? Butt the hell out why don't you?

Brian Harkin

Linda Koop

​Linda Koop, chair of the city council's Transportation and Environment Committee, and Gary Thomas, president of Dallas Area Rapid Transit, are having a mutual smooch-fest today at this afternoon's committee briefing, congratulating each other on what a terrific job DART did carrying passengers on the day of the Texas-OU game at Fair Park. Koop started off by saying that riding the train that day "was sort of another ride" for people, meaning it was a fun ride like the Ferris wheel or that ship that makes you go upside down.

See, this is the wonderful thing about City Hall. The actual event, as I remember it, was an unmitigated disaster. People missed half the game because DART's new green line was so screwed up. I remember people saying a whole lot of nasty things about DART.

But now that events have been transported to that wonderful realm of altered and improved reality that we call "City Hall," it turns out it was really a triumph. Thomas did concede that DART needs to find ways to "control the number of people getting on the trains."

Believe it or not, you can actually own this poster. Makes a great Christmas gift. Put it next to your JWP bobblehead.

​I owe an apology to the members of the Dallas County Commissioners Court for remarks in my column this week. I write that they sat idly by and did nothing during a recent outburst by Commissioner John Wiley Price, during which he gave the impression he was about to hit Dallas County Judge Jim Foster in the head.

In point of fact, and after careful review of the video, I have to say that Commissioners Ken Mayfield and Maureen Dickey did stand up to him. Mayfield was especially heated, and, of course, he was sitting right next to him. In fact, the initial item about this in Unfair Park sort of suggested that Mayfield may have set the whole thing off by pushing Price's button. I'm not sure where I stand on that.

In my column this week, I threaten to beat up Price, which, we all know, is not a credible threat. A few friends have called to express concern, and I have assured them that I have my own fight strategy: Run like a cheetah, scream like a girl.

In my column, I'm really trying to do what I think Mayfield may have been doing -- push Price's button. I think it's what everybody should do, always, when confronted by a bully. Push the button. Push it again. Push it again. Just keep pushing. Sooner or later he'll wear himself out or do himself in.

Anyway, apologies to Dickey and Mayfield. Hang in there. You're the real heroes. Keep mashing that button. And let me know how it comes out. If he does ever injure you, I will ... man, let me tell you ... I will just ... I will be so pissed.

Sarah Dodd

​[Editor's note at 4:27 p.m.: Jim has opted to turn this item into a live blog concerning the afternoon's doings at Dallas City Hall. The Simon David debate has wrapped with a vote in favor of the store's expansion, so the council has moved on to the University of North Texas Dallas campus plan, which, Jim writes in the comments below, "has to do with County Commissioner John Wiley Price and his manipulation of water supply in that part of the county." Enjoy. Also on the agenda: the Oak Cliff Gateway.]

Like Robert said, the Simon David zoning case is before the Dallas City Council now, and the Sarah Dodd issue has been outed after brewing behind the scenes for the last two years. She's the police chief's wife. She does zoning work for commercial clients. The speaker who just left the podium complained that Dodd's work represents an abuse of her relationship with the chief of police.

As you're no doubt well aware by now, Randalls wants to bust an existing planned development district to build a bigger Tom Thumby store on Inwood Road between Greenway Parks, a white neighborhood, and North Park Love Field, a black neighborhood. Randall's wants to demolish two homes in the black neighborhood and re-route a street.

Randall's lost at the City Plan Commission, because a majority of ballots returned from surrounding property owners were opposed to the zoning change. But since then, Dodd has been working the neighborhood. Now, apparently, the ballots are three-to-one in favor.

A speaker who was not asked to identify herself by the city secretary (normally they are) told the council that elderly citizens in the neighborhood had been told that, "Sarah Dodd and Safeway Stores Simon David misrepresented them." She said she had affidavits from some who had signed favorable ballots saying they are now opposed.

The speaker described Dodd as, "Someone who is willing to abuse his [Chief Kunkle's] power as his wife."

Only problem: I never heard any description of how she had abused his power. Dodd is a well-known former television journalist with her own name in the market. All I know is, if I told my wife she couldn't do her job because it might reflect on me, I think I know what she would decide to cut.

​Well, looks like Randall's Food & Drugs, which owns the Simon David at 7117 Inwood Road, thinks they've got next week's zoning vote at city council in the bag.

I wrote to Connie Yates, their PR person, earlier this week, asking questions about their plan to demolish houses and re-route a street in the historic black neighborhood called North Park Love Field. Unfair Park has been all over this story for months. Yates just wrote back to me saying that Randall's will come to next week's council meeting and basically run the table on the opposition. This all comes down to ballots returned by surrounding property owners.

When this was before the City Plan Commission, the ballots were against Randall's, which is going to formally rebrand the store as a Tom Thumb, and the plan commission turned Randall's down. Since then, Randall's has had Sarah Dodd, ex of KTVT-Channel 11 and Mrs. Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle, working the streets. Yates just messaged me saying the ballots now are going to stack up the other way -- three to one in favor of the zoning change necessary for expansion.

"Many of the neighbors we visited with are excited about Tom Thumb's investment in the community," she writes.

Odds are that council member Angela Hunt will vote with the neighborhood -- meaning, the way Yates says the ballots will go. And by council rules, her vote rules. That means Randall's wins, and the opponents lose, and the company gets what it now refers to as a "new store." Here is the full text of Yates's message:

Sara Kerens

Adamson High School in Oak Cliff, where less than 1 percent of the students are white.

​Jon Dahlander, spokesman for the Dallas Independent School District, posted a comment on Unfair Park today that perfectly expressed the school system's official position on the preservation/demolition of Adamson High School. It blames abandonment of the school on the people who have been fighting to preserve it. And then it says the school system is going to preserve Adamson.

Dahlander's spin was in response to my column of last week, "Adamson High School Alums Are Fighting DISD to Preserve the School Building and Their Bond With Its Students" (I don't write my own headlines anymore). More immediately, it was in response to an item on Unfair Park yesterday reporting that Mike Rhyner over at The Ticket was talking about the column.

Dahlander's lengthy comment made several key points. The first is that Jim Schutze gave a false impression: There are no plans to tear down Adamson.

The second point: "The current campus will remain standing and will be re-purposed."

Third: "There has been structural movement under the existing building since it was initially constructed in 1915. Several attempts have been made to mitigate this but the soil continues to cause shifting."

Fourth: The district hired Corgan Associates, described by Dahlander as "noted historical architects," and Corgan came up with two ideas. One was to preserve only the front wall of the school and tear everything else down. The second was to tear everything down and rebuild a new school that would be a mirror image of the old school, using some of the original bricks.

Then Dahlander said the alumni, who have been fighting to save the school, turned down the mirror-image idea: That, he said, tied the district's hands. Corgan had already said its first idea -- save the front wall only -- was no good because the front wall might fall down while they were working on it and kill some construction workers (so thanks a lot for that idea, Corgan).

Since the alums had nixed the mirror-image idea, DISD had no choice, according to Dahlander, but to abandon the building (which is what I said they were doing in my column. I never said they were demolishing it, even though abandoning will amount over time to the same thing).

If you, like Mike Rhyner, are interested in the historic significance of this Oak Cliff landmark, all ya gotta do is click this.

​Earlier today on The Ticket, Hardline host Mike Rhyner brought up two of our favorite subjects: Dallas's demolition of what little history it has left (especially downtown) and our "well-known city muckraker," who, last week, wrote about the Dallas Independent School District's plans to tear down Adamson High School and replace it with a new building. The great Michael Gruber was kind enough to provide us with the audio, which I completely missed since I was probably on the phone with some Dallas Morning News executive. It's right ... here.

Photos by Patrick Michels

Crews are out at this very moment trying to repair a section of the Trinity River levees that collapsed yesterday.

​Pins and needles here.

At 2:30 pm the Corps of Engineers releases its report on the city's proposed fix for the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. They're doing it not at any public venue but at the Oak Lawn offices of The Trinity Trust, the private lobby group for the Trinity River Project. We can assume that means the Corps has come up with a way to approve the city's proposed fix for the bridge -- piling up more dirt at the end of it -- and green-light completion of the bridge.

The Corps has been close-mouthed all morning abut this event: The public information office of the Fort Worth Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers earlier today was telling reporters, if you can believe it, that they didn't know anything about it. So we can also assume some very close choreography has been going on between the Corps and the city in preparation.

Meanwhile we have the amazingly unbelievable account of a levee break near Regal Row and Stemmons Freeway, supposedly because of a leaky water pipe. Channel 8 reported it last night; their dramatic video of the sinkhole is also after the jump. Our Patrick Michels took pictures today of crews repairing the problem.

The city says the levee broke because a pipe leaked.

The problem with that story is that this break has occurred right where serious mud slides in the levee took place two years ago. And, we are told, there have been other breaks upstream in the levee system due to "wet weather."

The levees can't stand up to wet weather?