Back Talk Lake Highlands

Convention center hotel update: Check out the model we paid for

You have to hand it to the Go Hotel people — they're not going to let anything like a potential public smackdown stop them from fulfilling their promise to bring a taxpayer-owned convention center hotel to downtown Dallas. Sam Merten with the Observer points out that Thursday's unveiling of a model of the hotel shows that, public backing or not, they're going to start building a hotel.

Merten's story makes a couple of interesting points. One, the people at Matthews Southwest — the builder "we" have selected for this project — are being realistic about what's going on. Jack Matthews told Merten that by the time a May referendum on the project comes around, at most about $10 million will have been spent readying the site, working up plans and demolishing a parking structure already there (I used to park in that two-story structure when going to Mavs games at Reunion Arena). So for all of the bluster about "pushing forward" with the hotel, no matter what happens with the referendum, Matthews' comment shows this is a pretty empty statement. Leaving another $10 million on the table, assuming the referendum passes, is a drop in the bucket for this $550 million-plus deal.

Second, the pictures of the model itself, along with the computer renderings published in the Observer, are pretty anti-climactic. For a monstrous hotel that Mayor Tom Leppert bragged would and should be iconic, this one seems pretty straight-forward. No stunning visual architecture (like nearby City Hall, for example). No cutting-edge futuristic design. No throw-back to anything else downtown, either. It's just a big, tall glass-sheathed building. (If you really want to see something iconic, check out this link on Matthews' website; it's a picture of a 58-story project the company is building in Canada.)

I guess to a builder like Leppert, who was merely paid to build things in his past career rather than actually designing them, this thing is iconic. I just don't see it, though. For $550 million, I expected something blow-away cool, and this just isn't it. Maybe we need to bring Calatrava in on this deal, too...

City budget watch: Texas, Chicago, New York City make cuts

I’ll post this periodically, which will look at how the city budget –- with its projected seven percent gain in property tax collections and its 1.75 percent increase in sales tax cash –- is doing in real time.

Today, how other governments are dealing with their budgets in the face of the continuing downturn in the economy.

• Gov. Perry, hardly a Chicken Little, has asked state agencies to cut discretionary spending and to limit travel. News-released the governor: “As good stewards of the resources entrusted to us by Texas taxpayers, we are obligated to not only watch the outside forces affecting our economy, but deal with them proactively.” The state, incidentally, projected a $2 billion surplus in May.

• Chicago mayor Richard Daley, facing one of the worst budget crises in a generation, is laying off more than 900 employees and not filling some 1,300 vacancies.

• New York City axed 2.5 percent from all departments last month, and told city agencies to make do with 5 percent less next year.

Technorati Tags: Dallas city budget,property tax values,sales tax

Richardson Youth Leadership

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to serve as a volunteer parent driver for RISD students involved in the Richardson Youth Leadership program. As the student version of "Leadership Richardson," this program exposes high school juniors to the inner workings of the City of Richardson in an attempt to prepare them to lead their school, their organizations, and their community.

Students submit applications during their sophomore year, along with letters of recommendation. Once selected, they attend monthly sessions at various sites in the Richardson area. I drove my group, comprised of a boy on the swim team at Berkner, a girl on Pearce's golf team, a girl involved in the theater magnet at Richardson High, and Pearce's varsity quarterback. What a delightful, intelligent bunch of kids. As they worked together to complete their task, they learned cooperation, leadership, and teamwork. But the best part for me was hearing them compare their schools and ask each other questions. They wondered why Lake Highlands has a theme for Homecoming instead of dressing up in suits and corsages. They discussed the differences between 5A and 4A athletics, and they wondered why Berkner has fewer dances than the others, while Pearce has a dance for each grade. Silly, mundane issues, perhaps, compared to our mission to learn about the city, but it caused them to think about what makes their school great and what needs improvement.

We toured Richardson's traffic control center (shown above with four kids from a different car), fire training facility, animal shelter, municipal courts, and water treatment plant, but my favorite part was the car ride with four outstanding RISD students.

Plastic grocery bags: No tax on them by city hall

Those ubiquitous plastic grocery bags drew some discussion at City Hall Monday, with the city's environmental guy squaring off with a bag maker about how toxic (or not) the bags are, according to a DMN story. Eric Griffin, the city's interim Office of Environmental Quality director, asked the council to consider eliminating the use of plastic grocery-type bags over a five-year period, primarily by levying a five-cent fee to discourage use and banning them completely if the fee didn't work. But councilman Linda Koop, chair of the council committee discussing the issue, flat-out told Griffin she didn't favor taxing the bags. Meanwhile, Griffin and a Hilex vice president (Hilex is one of the world's largest bag producers) argued about whether the bags are toxic and how quickly they break down in the environment. One interesting tidbit: Those of us who are putting the plastic bags in the city's blue recycling bags apparently are creating work for city employees. Since the grocery bags aren't recyclable, they're being sorted out of the blue bags and shipped to the landfill instead. In the end, Koop and omni-present councilman Ron Natinsky agreed that something needs to be done, perhaps requiring that a certain percentage of the grocery bags be manufactured from recycled material.

City Hall's new plasma HDTV: Would you believe $69,995 retail?

If you were running the city and had $500,000 or so jangling around in your pocket, courtesy of city taxpayers, would you fill a bunch of potholes around town or spend $500,000 sprucing up City Hall — including spending "tens of thousands of dollars" on a 103-inch Panasonic plasma screen HD television that retails for $69,995?

Do I need to tell you what at least some of our council members did? Dave Levinthal does on the DMN website, where he details some interesting expenditures downtown that not only the powers that be aren't apologizing for, they actually seem kind of proud of. In the story, Levinthal gently questions whether — given the city's oft-stated comment that money is too tight to give employees much of a raise, not to mention all of the basic city functions that aren't being done — maybe $500,000 to spruce up City Hall or lots and lots of money on a monster TV isn't a little questionable. But city manager Mary Suhm was having none of that, explaining to Levinthal: "When people come into City Hall, we want it to look and feel welcoming."

The stock market crash, municipal bonds, and city projects

This story in Dallas’ Only Daily newspaper, which details how the North Texas Tollway Authority has had to borrow money from a bank -- at a variable interest rate! -- to make a debt payment deadline because it can’t sell its bonds in the wake of the implosion of the world’s credit markets, is incredibly important. It’s also very difficult to understand, so bear with me.

There are a couple of key points:

First, the tollway authority bet on the come a year ago, and didn’t sell $3.5 billion in long-term bonds to finance its Highway 121 deal. It figured it could get a better deal by selling the bonds piecemeal over the next 12 months, instead of being forced to do it when it made the agreement to take over the 121 project. This is apparently very unusual for agencies like the tollway authority, and may be about as close as they can come to creative financing. (Interestingly, the story doesn’t say if the tollway authority got a good deal on that $3 billion-plus or what the variable rate is on the bank loan.)

Second, the story notes that the tollway authority was stuck with $225 million of the $3.5 billion it couldn’t finance via bonds because of the credit market collapse.

So here’s what we need to ask, given that an agency that is “cash rich and credit worthy” can’t sell municipal bonds to finance a current project:

No-hotel petition group turns in 60,000 signatures

If you've been watching the presidential debates this campaign season, you know one of the issues that keeps popping up is the strategy for whether to breach other countries' borders in our search for terrorists. One candidate says we should do it if we have to; the other candidate believes basically the same thing but says: Why telegraph what we're going to do; that just cuts down on our options.

That's the same thing I keep thinking every time Ron Natinsky opens his mouth about the convention center hotel "vote no" petition: Just yesterday, he told the Morning News yet again that "I’m not a lawyer, but I still don’t understand how they intend to enact a law in May 2009 to stop construction of a building that’s going to start going up in a couple of months.”

Trinity Corridor: The latest news about the project

For those of you interested in a Trinity River fix, check out the Trinity River Corridor Project's latest newsletter, which has a lot of information about what's happening with the big project. Although most of the update has to do with the Audubon Center's opening Oct. 18-19, there's an update about form-based zoning (which impacts building everywhere in the city), along with a list of public meetings about various aspects of the project. It's worth signing up for the periodic enewsletter, too, if you don't want to wait for Back Talk to bring you up do date.

City council priorities: a curfew, a promoter and a trans-fat ban?

DMN city council reporter Dave Levinthal apparently spent some time at the city council's retreat this week, and he highlights a few ideas that council members are considering pushing later this year ... here's a sneak peak at what might come up during the next council term:

• "A daytime curfew for school-aged children in an effort to curb truancy," this idea courtesy of mayor pro tem Elba Garcia.

• Additional crime-monitoring cameras in troubled neighborhoods.

Leppert forms 2011 mayoral re-election committee

Good news for those Dallas residents who believe the city is headed the right direction, that our political leaders couldn't be more committed to our welfare, and that there's nothing that can't be accomplished with enough taxpayer dollars ... Mayor Tom Leppert has created a political fundraising committee, ostensibly to prepare to run for mayor again in May 2011.

"We're making good progress," Leppert told the DMN. "We're moving in the right direction, and we're generally feeling good."

Leppert said he hasn't decided to run for mayor again, but he says he hasn't decided not to run, either. So far, no announced opponents are on the horizon, but it's likely that could change if Leppert continues stumbling around on the Ross-Industrial-Chavez name change or winds up losing the convention center hotel referendum (if that comes to pass).