This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.
This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, we have another grab bag: the Lege; the Bum Steers from north Texas; updates on the disastrous search for Dallas’ new City Manager; a Prop S suit that has nothing to do with Monty Bennett; Fort Worth political news; news from Denton, Princeton, and other suburbs; school district news, especially around demographic changes; how the North Texas Toll Authority is suing for unpaid tolls; the Washington Post’s long interactive on the former police chief in Maypearl and his history of abusing kids until he was caught; local history and arts news; and a sad story about a local pup with a happy ending.
This week’s post was brought to you by a Spotify playlist called “Christmas Music You Won’t Hate”, which is mostly jazzy takes on Christmas classics featuring names like Vince Guaraldi, Dave Brubeck, and Booker T & the MGs. As a confirmed holiday hater, I found it surprisingly pleasant.
As we move into the holiday season, the news gets quieter. Let’s dive into another short week:
- I said I wasn’t going to get into David Cook (R-Mansfield) and his race for Speaker but Texas Monthly did me a solid and wrote it up for me. That was last week so it’s already out of date, but it’s a nice summary of the circular firing squad going on among Texas Republicans.
- Lone Star Left has some bad climate bills and I specifically note HB553, by our own Jared Patterson, which is all about hating on renewable energy. May it die in committee.
- Collin County’s favorite, Ken Paxton, is not Texas Monthly’s favorite. He’s only the runner-up. But the actual Bum Steer is also from our part of the state: Jerry Jones. I don’t even care about the Cowboys but I agree with this choice.
- The City of Dallas is still looking for a City Manager, a job that nobody in their right mind would want. City Council can’t get their ducks in a row or even a quorum of members to show up to talk about it. KERA and D Magazine have more on that. Meanwhile the Dallas Morning News reports that two of the original semifinalists have withdrawn from consideration and it sounds like the chaotic process is part of the problem, or at least the part they’re willing to talk about.
- The DMN is also doing a series about downtown Dallas in 2025 if that’s your thing. They also have an editorial suggesting reforming parking minimums in the city instead of getting rid of them.
- We knew Prop S was going to cause a wave of lawsuits, but this one isn’t Monty Bennett and his minions: the Neighborhood Coalition of Dallas is going to sue if the City doesn’t get rid of all the termed-out members of boards and commissions. All those folks are under the same term limits as the City Council and Mayor: four consecutive two-year terms. Some folks are still in place long past their limits and others, it’s impossible to tell from looking online. That is something of a silver lining to the Prop S thundercloud.
- Fort Worth City Council is having a moment about Council member Chris Nettles having called Mayor Mattie Parker and a couple of other council members racist back in 2022. An activist released a video of the incident, and related it to some kind of election interference around Marc Veasey’s (CD-33) seat. Nettles is one of the Council members who thinks the fix was in on the selection of Jay Chapa as Fort Worth City Council. Read about it all in the Star-Telegram and the DMN.
- Fort Worth, like Dallas, has a short-term rental ordinance being fought by a lawsuit from the STR owners. The case had a hearing on December 19 and the Fort Worth Report has the details.
- You may recall that Dallas County had some issues with their electronic pollbooks during the November election. The County is ready to give ES&S, their vendor, the heave-ho if they can’t get their software updated and certified in time. We have a city election coming up in May, so the timeline is already tight. More from KERA and the DMN.
- Dallas County is about to pay $1.65 million to female jailers in a discrimination suit. This was in response to a sherriff’s office policy that gave full weekends off to male jailers but not to women. Apparently the Fifth Court of Appeals overturned a bad precedent that limited the kinds of discrimination cases plaintiffs could bring, too, so there’s a double reason for celebration.
- Two items about the Tarrant County Appraisal District. First, unofficial results from the November election are out and we have a list of the incoming members of the board. Second, they’re quitting the state association of appraisal districts because the association disagrees with the district about how long the appraisal cycle should be. Most districts reappraise every year; Tarrant County, as you may recall, wants to go to every other year, which may not be legal.
- Denton just put a controversial nominee on its library board for the next two years. You don’t know Ellen Quinn Sullivan, but you probably have heard of her son Michael Quinn Sullivan of Empower Texans and other Farris/Wilks projects. Council members and the mayor who voted for her said social chatter about her beliefs wasn’t substantiated and she won’t be a book banner.
- The mayoral runoff in Princeton is over and the challenger, who says the city isn’t managing growth properly, beat out the incumbent. Two members of the council also lost to challengers. You may remember Princeton as the suburb that put a six-month moratorium on residential development back in September so the city could upgrade its infrastructure. The Dallas Observer has more about that and what will happen next in Princeton.
- Drones, drones everywhere, and north Texas is no exception. White Settlement, west of Fort Worth, has been seeing them which is a problem because the area near the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth is a no-fly zone. Oops. Meanwhile, in case you needed to know, it’s illegal under federal law to shoot down drones, and it’s illegal in the state of Texas to fly them over private property for surveillance reasons, unless you’re a cop working on reasonable suspicion of a crime, of course.
- Here’s one way to solve underfunding and declining enrollment: Frisco ISD is planning to accept out-of-district transfers to fill 900 places in K-7 grades next year instead of closing schools.
- Texas Monthly hits the same question for Prosper ISD: what happens when the growth stops and when all the shiny facilities that are bringing families in are no longer new? I recommend this one if you’re interested in suburban sprawl and development issues.
- And here’s a DMN editorial on the declining enrollment problem and what needs to be done to deal with it. They include increases in state funding; good luck with that.
- Bonham ISD, which is northeast of Dallas near the Oklahoma border, is facing a civil rights complaint from former students and staff about racism against Black and Latino students and discrimination against students with disabilities. I wish I could say I had confidence this would go somewhere, but with the change of administration, I don’t.
- There was a big interactive expose in the Washington Post this week on Kevin Coffey, who was the police chief in Maypearl until he was ousted in 2015 for sexually abusing a teenaged girl. He was sentenced to 40 years. Maypearl is spitting distance from Scarborough Faire, the north Texas Renaissance festival I’ve been attending for about three decades, and I’d heard nothing about this case. It’s one of those shocking but not surprising stories.
- Fort Worth PD fired an officer for slamming a 60-year activist who was videoing an arrest he was making to the ground back in June. Unsurprisingly, the police union is demanding arbitration and wants to see the officer reinstated.
- An update on the Robert Roberson case: the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is under instructions from Attorney General Ken Paxton to route all communication with Roberson through him. The gist of it is that Roberson may not appear before the House Criminal Jurisprudence committee because of Paxton’s interference. More details from the Texas Tribune.
- Remember the days when Harris County DA Johnny Holmes sent all those cases to the death chamber? These days Tarrant County is the hanging capital of the state. There were six death penalty convictions in Texas in 2024 and three of them were in Tarrant County.
- This week I learned that Dallas-area houses cost four times the median income of the area and that prices here continue to outstrip incomes, as they do nationwide. Also I learned that the city of Dallas could be short up to 76,000 affordable homes over the next decade.
- In related news I also learned that the Metroplex has 8.3 million residents, with growth concentrated in northern suburbs like Prosper and Princeton.
- The Dallas Observer has a report on the extremes of north Texas weather in 2024: highs, lows, wind, rain, hail, and a non-weather bonus earthquake.
- Here’s an interesting story about the North Texas Toll Authority: it’s started filing suits against busi>ness toll scofflaws in the state’s district courts. On the one hand, flagrant long-term toll scofflaws are awful. On the other hand, some of the charges are unproven, as in they may not be owed by the folks the NTTA is suing, and the court allows the NTTA to tack on legal fees. In addition it turns out one of the district judges whose court gets a lot of these suits was a partner in the law firm the NTTA is using. This article is part of the DMN’s investigation into the local toll authority and is worth your time if ride these roads.
- Despite state and local initiatives to improve road safety in Dallas, traffic fatalities this year are slightly higher than they were in 2023 and we’re not quite done yet.
- The Mavericks have a new CEO: Rick Welts, a Hall of Fame NBA executive with the Golden State Warriors. I note this because he was hired by the Adelson folks, and one of Welts’ resume points is his development of a new arena, like the casino arena that the Adelsons want to build.
- KERA has a ten-minute video about the history of Fair Park as the center of racial politics in Dallas. If you want to know about local civil rights icon Juanita Craft and the desegregation of the State Fair, this should be your video. It’s in my to-watch list.
- The Dallas Observer sent a bartender to The Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek to check out one of their $75 cocktails. Too rich for my blood but I’m glad they’re worth it to someone.
- The former Dallas Black Dance Theater dancers, who got their settlement last week, held a benefit this week. It was originally planned to shore up finances after the dancers were fired, but now it serves as a capstone to the whole saga.
- James Turrell has completed the Skyspace installation at Keith House in Fort Worth. It’s on my list.
- In February, an interactive exhibit about the Titanic will open in Dallas. Or rather re-open, since apparently it was at Fair Park in 2000. This time it’s at Pepper Square in the northern part of town, the better to attract all those northern suburban families.
- Last but not least, let’s have a sad story with a happy ending: Twiggy, a two-year old dog, came to the Humane Society of North Texas flea-ridden, sick with worms, and sick with a respiratory infection in early November. When they got that under control, they figured out Twiggy had been shot in the face by someone! The sweet girl is recovering from surgery now and should be ready for her Christmas miracle of a forever home soon.