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 measles, but not an epidemic (yet); new police and fire chiefs in Dallas; Ken Paxton suing Dallas over guns at the State Fair; the Dallas planning department losing $8.6 million; more on Tarrant County redistricting; the Ten Commandments coming to the Tarrant County Courthouse (with a bonus wish from Bo French); the DMN owning up to missing an important story; the Mavs ownership trying to sell the media and the fans on the new post-Luka team; the Wings getting a superstar in the WNBA draft; a great April Fools’ prank from 1986; and the best and worst BBQ in the Metroplex. And more!
This week’s post was brought to you by the music of cellist Julia Kent.
We haven’t had measles in the Metroplex break out widely, yet, but it’s clearly only a matter of time. We had a possible exposure in Grapevine a couple of weeks ago; this week we have a report of a case in Rockwall County after the patient had traveled to West Texas; we have another potential set of exposures in three strip malls in Plano. There’s also all sorts of gossip about potential exposures that haven’t been substantiated; friends of mine in Plano got their MMR updates after reading about a rumored ER closure on Reddit.
Statewide we’re at almost 600 confirmed cases. And in case you didn’t know, the long-term results of measles are gruesome, including brain swelling, hearing loss, and “immune amnesia”, which is when you lose all your immunity to diseases you’ve had and/or been vaccinated against. There is no cure for measles, but you can keep from getting it with a single shot. Y’all reading this almost certainly have already done this yourselves, but if you have friends and family who aren’t vaccinated, or are in the age group that may have to revaccinate, get them to the pharmacy to update their MMRs. Shots are no fun, but measles can kill you.
Meanwhile, in other news:
- Dallas has a sort-of-new fire chief: interim chief Justin Ball got the nod. The DMN will tell you five things you need to know about him, including that he’s an immigrant from the UK.
- Dallas also has an actually new police chief: Daniel Comeaux won the five-way contest for the DPD job. The DMN will also tell you five things you need to know about him, including that he spent most of his career in Houston. Interim Chief Michael Igo, who was also on the short list, retired after Comeaux’s selection was announced.
- Speaking of DPD, the training center controversy continues. The Dallas Observer has a timeline to help you figure it out; D Magazine and KERA have the latest. Part of the problem is that the police academy will need areas for firearm and driving lessons that shouldn’t be on the UT Dallas campus where the rest of the academy will be. But those facilities will run up the cost.
- In a fourth departure, the head of Dallas’ civil pensions is retiring after 20 years.
- You knew it was coming, and here it is: Ken Paxton is suing Dallas over gun restrictions at Fair Park, the Music Hall, and the Majestic Theatre. As mentioned in the article, there are already bills out there to keep Fair Park from restricting guns at the Fair. As a visitor to all three venues, where drinks are served, I don’t want gun gropers waving their weapons around. But that’s common sense, which has nothing to do with the red meat Ken Paxton is throwing to the base in preparation for his Senate primary next spring.
- The Dallas planning department has screwed up a lot in the last few years. Another error has just come out: a consultant screwed up the formula for a hike in fees. Instead of hiking fees, the new fees were lower, to the tune of $8.6 million since May 2024. The linked DMN story and this item at local real estate site Candy’s Dirt show just how bad things have gotten for Dallas’ planning crew.
- The Dallas Observer would like to tell you which Dallas neighborhoods have the biggest increase in housing costs. My zip code, which is zoned to Richardson ISD schools, is just behind Preston Hollow in terms of rising costs. I just got my tax bill from Dallas County and they know all about the increase in prices around here. Ouch.
- RIP Edna Pemberton, known as Mrs. P, a South Dallas civic leader. Among her long list of achievements is helping more than 80,000 refugees after Hurricane Katrina.
- In 2019, not long after I moved here, the Texas Department of Transportation decided to build the “I-30 canyon” to bury the part of I-30 between I-35 and I-45 and let southern Dallas link up to downtown. Since the project was announced, its estimated cost has tripled to $890 million. Most recently the estimate has jumped by another $196 million, split three ways between the North Central Texas Council of Governments’ Regional Transportation Council and TxDOT. Every one of these deck projects is expected to turn out like Klyde Warren Park, and that’s not realistic. Klyde Warren has significant community support and oil money to buy facilities, plus it’s in the Arts District. That’s not the case for that section of I-30.
- I always report these cases for Tarrant County and Fort Worth, so here’s one for Dallas: City Council approved $65,000 to pay off a man who was beaten by a DPD officer who was later sacked. The officer in question had two use-of-force complaints before he was caught on camera punching this man in the face.
- Dallas County has a new pollbook provider for the May election and they tested the new software on Friday. Fingers crossed that next week I can report on a successful test. The new vendor is KNOWiNK, LLC; the old vendor, Election Systems and Services, was decertified after problems with the November election.
- Dallas County is above state and national averages for food insecurity, aka hunger. A quarter of kids in Dallas were food-insecure in 2022. Black and Latino folks are more than twice as likely to be food-insecure as white folks. And that’s without recent cuts to federal money.
- There’s more on Tim O’Hare’s effort to redistrict Tarrant County in the middle of the decade. KERA has some information about the rules for mid-decade redistricting, which the article correctly describes as a political process. The Star-Telegram also has an analysis of the issues and an editorial from the paper against redistricting, which I was surprised but pleased to see. I don’t think anything like public opinion will stop Tim O’Hare and Manny Ramirez from picking their voters if they can, but it’s nice to see someone saying they shouldn’t.
- Meanwhile there are also some change to precincts in Tarrant County for the upcoming May election required under state law. They won’t change the ballots, though.
- The latest from the Tarrant County Jail is fortunately not another report of a death. Instead they’re trying to develop a compassionate release policy. There’s currently an inmate with terminal stomach cancer and if he’s not released, he’ll be another in-custody death.
- The Ten Commandments are coming to Tarrant County: a nonprofit is donating a monument almost identical to the one on the grounds of the Capitol in Austin and Commissioner’s Court voted to accept the gift. I’m never thrilled to see religious statuary on public grounds, but the real corker is what Tarrant County GOP leader posted on Xitter afterwards, screencapped by local journalist Steven Monacelli: Next can we put a gallows up?. Classy.
- Ken Paxton’s investigation into Dallas ISD over their trans student athletes policy is unsurprisingly ending with a whimper instead of a bang. DISD says they’ll follow the law, they’re putting out a memo, and whoever it was that said you could get a birth certificate changed out of state is gone. More red meat for the upcoming Senate primary.
- Speaking of red meat for the base, as one does when mentioning something Ken Paxton does, both Paxton and Senator John Cornyn are now investigating EPIC City, the Muslim-led development in Collin County. While there are a bunch of stories in local news about it, they all amount to the same thing: the usual suspects have their underwear in a knot because Muslims are doing something the same people support when Christians do it. The New York Times has picked up Governor Abbott’s crusade against EPIC City but haven’t picked up on the part our Senator and Attorney General are now playing in fanning the fire.
- You may recall that I’ve talked about the good work of Dallas attorney Mark Melton in preventing landlords from evicting renters without legal representation. Texas Monthly talked to Melton about HB 32, the “anti-squatters” bill that passed the Texas Senate last week. The powers that be are going to keep Melton and his allies from representing people at eviction hearings by removing the hearing requirement. You know what to do: call your reps.
- Let’s talk about regional transit in North Texas. As I’ve mentioned several times, a number of cities in the Metroplex are annoyed they have to pay money to DART. So the Regional Transportation Council wants to make a new plan which sounds like they’re going to vamp until the next decision point. Meanwhile, the Trump administration pulled the grant for high-speed rail between Dallas and Houston; the loss of funds might also kill the Dallas-Fort Worth high-speed train. The Texas Tribune has more on the Dallas-Houston funding cut and efforts in the Lege to kill the whole project.
- The Latter Day Saints are heading back to Fairview with a proposal for a smaller temple instead of a lawsuit.
- You may recall that we had big “Hands Off” protests across the country on April 5. The Dallas Morning News completely failed to cover them. The Public Editor of the paper answers for their failure and talks about how that screw-up happened. What I get from this is, first, they didn’t think protest against the Trump administration would be important to cover. Second, I notice they answer when former Mayor Laura Miller tells them to get their act together. There are more protests on April 19, and maybe the DMN will cover them.
- Why is it that when we find election shenanigans, it’s Republicans? Out in Hood County, a former Granbury city council candidate was arrested for election fraud and perjury of certain election procedures (the latter of which is a state jail felony) for lying about her address. The candidate is also a Hood County GOP official.
- As our host noted, self-driving semis are coming to I-45 between Dallas and Houston. I’m less sanguine than our host about the near-term arrival of these trucks, if only because the Trump administration tariffs are about to upend our trucking industry in a bad way.
- Unsurprisingly, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas and Southwestern Health Resources signed a three-year contract four days after the previous contract expired, accomplishing nothing but upsetting their joint customer base. The DMN has the story of one patient who would have been really screwed if he had to find new doctors on short notice: a young heart patient who’d had emergency surgery at a Texas Health hospital. Imagine that scare multiplied by everyone on those plans, including the half-million educators on the Teacher Retirement System of Texas’ self funded plans.
- I mention this DMN article on the upcoming Republican Senate primary because they name my House Rep, Beth Van Duyne, as a potential wild card. I can’t say anything about the other two potential spoilers, but I think if Van Duyne runs, she’s just raising her profile statewide. She has nothing to offer than Cornyn and Paxton don’t also have except being a woman, which is not a benefit in Republican politics.
- Marc Veasey’s quest to get answers from ICE about that white supremacist prosecutor the Texas Observer found gets some coverage in Salon. I wish him all the luck in the world but they’re going to continue to stonewall him.
- Former Dallas HERO frontman Pete Marocco is out at the State Department, having destroyed USAID. He’s a bad penny who’ll turn up somewhere; I hope it’s not here in Dallas again.
- Wondering who’s behind the upcoming Texas Stock Exchange, which is expected to launch next year? Per SEC filings, the majority owner is local oilman Kelcy Warren.
- This week there was an exclusive Dallas Mavericks media roundtable and D Magazine’s representative has all the details. It sounds awful: awfully hilarious if you’re not a Mavericks fan, and awfully painful if you used to be. It’s clear the Sands people think the fans need to get over Luka. It’s also clear the fans want the head of GM Nico Harrison and will be satisfied with nothing less. The Sands people also want to take the Mavs to Irving, but pissing off the Dallas fans so bad they don’t care if the Mavs leave isn’t the best way to go about it.
- In happier sports news, the Dallas Wings, our local WNBA team, got first pick in the draft and picked up superstar Paige Bueckers. The DMN has ten things you should know about her. I’m excited and am looking forward to attending a Wings game to watch her play. Also, based on this Go Fug Yourself slideshow, the WNBA’s new players, including Paige, are stylin’.
- Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited a north Texas wildlife safari park, the kind where you drive through with your windows open, with his family recently and got himself pecked by an ostrich. There’s video. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer, though I’m glad the toddler in the video didn’t get pecked as well.
- This story about D Magazine’s April Fools 1986 story about Madonna moving to Dallas and the prank that supported it gave me a laugh.
- The historic Oakland Cemetery in South Dallas has been cleaned up and given a historical marker.
- Fort Worth has named a new housing complex with more than half of its 338 units reserved for affordable residences after Grandmother of Juneteenth Opal Lee.
- D Magazine has written up its top 50 BBQ joints in North Texas. My neighborhood favorite, One90, got an honorable mention! But it’s the story about the worst BBQ that was really worth reading.