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6/4/9 Where's our
money going?
No, this isn't about where the Messiah is spending our billions in the so-called
Stimulas Package. It's a given that our $$ are going to friends of
the Throne.
What I want to know right now is where our local tax dollars are going and where
the Mayor's going to get $28 Million to study the integrity of the Trinity Sewer
levees?
When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flunked the Trinity River levees in March, it also rescinded it previous assurances that the levees would withstand at least a 100-year flood. When that happened FEMA got busy redrawing the flood risk maps for downtown Dallas, and when its done will present a new set of maps that assumes there is no levee at all.
That could take 18 to 24 months, but when it does happen, anyone who is in the flood zone will have to pay much higher flood insurance rates.
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I'm pretty sure my neighborhood
is not in the Trinity Sewer flood plain if the levees fail, but much of Downtown
is in danger, including City Hall, the Convention Center and the proposed Half
Billion Dollar convention center hotel that Stupid Dallas Voters didn't stop
last month.
Do you understand what I'm talking about?
Most every building Downtown has multiple floors below street level for parking,
utilities, etc. Do you know where water goes when it flows? That
would be down - as in below street level to all the stuff under the streets.
Whenever there is a water main break Downtown (all too frequent occurrences),
nearby buildings lose power and must be evacuated. Relatively minor water
main breaks can cause devastation, as compared to the levees failing on some
occasion when the Trinity is actually acting like a river.
For weeks everybody has been wondering whether Leppert and the Dallas Citizens Council would be able to move enough heaven and earth, politically speaking, to force the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to back down from its findings that the Dallas levee system along the Trinity River is dangerously inadequate. Obviously, the Corps ain't backin'. (Here's the just-posted 55-page briefing on the the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Periodic Inspection Report of the Trinity River floodway the city council will receive Wednesday.)
According to this morning's press conference, at which a Corps representative was present but did not speak, the Corps still says the levees along the Trinity River downtown are screwed and Dallas can forget about its vaunted toll road project between the levees for the better part of two years until somebody figures out how to fix them. So the Trinity River toll road project, 11 years old and counting with nothing to show for it, has just been delivered a yet another gigantic kick in the ass.
The 20-month (at least) delay, in fact, could well turn out to be a death sentence for the road.
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I did not support Con Jerk's Trinity Project in
1998. Time and events have validated my opposition. I did not
support Mayor Leppert's Trinity Toll Road in 2008. An even briefer time
and current events have more firmly validated my opposition. I did not
take a position on the taxpayer funded convention center hotel, but newly
released information that was withheld by government authorities before the
election in May has validated Harlan Crow and Ann Raymond's opposition.
As often mentioned by me, I told those with sad faces at the
No Tollroad
watch party in 2008 that we only lost a battle. All of their efforts had
won the war. There would be no toll road inside the Trinity River flood
plain, inside or on top of the levees. Angela Hunt, Sam Merten, Jim
Schutze and all the others leading the campaign did too good a job exposing the
risks and foolishness of the concept. Stupid Dallas Voters may not have
got the message, but "those in authority" heard it loud and clear.
With all the street level needs going unfunded in this city, it is ludicrous for
Mayor Leppert and the council to continue chasing big ticket projects that have
no chance of ever getting done. Lindenberger's blog piece cited above
needs to be read in its entirety. We are looking at $5 million in annual
costs to maintain the levees, even if the best case scenario comes in from the
$28 million study of the levees' integrity and ability to hold back a
rain/runoff swollen Trinity River from flooding Downtown and much of West Dallas
and Oak Cliff, all the way to southern city limits.
The council election is over and my councilman, Steve Salazar, can't run again,
so I'm not campaigning for him by saying he "has his feet on the ground".
Steve always supports the big ticket projects, but he's more focused on getting
businesses to open up shop in his District 6. A large part of the district
is in NW Dallas, including Northwest Highway. He has been recruiting a
grocery chain to buy and re-do the European Crossroads disaster. All they
want is a commitment from City Hall for a short section of Community Drive to be
redone for their trucks to have delivery access. Ought to be a no brainer
that the city could find bond money for needed street improvements to lure a
company that will be creating nearly a hundred jobs and cleaning up a crime
ridden, code enforcement nightmare.
Northwest Dallas is in desperate need of positive redevelopment like the grocery
store Councilman Salazar is courting. We are in desperate need of a lot of
things.
The new DPD subdivision boundaries are great because our officers are in a more
compact geographic area (like our council districts should be). We see
more squad cars, but we are also seeing a lot more drug activity. Monday
night, my neighbor (across the street) told me several squad cars were in front
of my home at 2:00 a.m., that they had stopped a van, arrested the bunch of
thugs from the van and had the van towed off. There was even a helicopter.
My bedroom is at the back of my house, so I didn't hear or see a thing.
Sgt. Jacques at NW Sub told me later it was even a more dangerous situation than
what my neighbor saw. One guy in the van got crosswise with the others and
almost got knifed before he jumped out and hid behind one of our houses as he
called the cops. His ex-buddies in the van continued to look for him and
got pulled over by our DPD heroes. Lots of cocaine and cash!
Here's another NW Dallas drug deal gone bad the next day:
A man is dead after being shot several times during an apparent drug deal at a northwest Dallas home, authorities said.
Police responded around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday to the 2600 block of Lombardy Lane near Bachman Lake, where they found the man on a porch with several gun shot wounds in his upper body.
... A witness told police that he arrived at the home with the suspect to buy drugs.
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Drug dealers or drug buyers are
not rocket scientists. I don't care if a drug dealer or drug buyer gets
shot or knifed. I care if an innocent neighbor or family member gets
shot when someone is aiming at the drug dealer or drug buyer.
I don't care about a toll road going nowhere I need to be. I want
Brockbank and Community repaved and widened with sidewalks. Lots of people
use those streets. Did you know kids must walk in the street on either
Brockbank or Community to get to school? There are not only few sidewalks,
there are open trenches for water runoff.
It's hard for me to get excited about big ticket projects when I can imagine
great things happening from investing reasonable public funds to improve a
couple of streets in Northwest Dallas.
How can the Mayor ignore real problems while he dreams his big ticket projects?
Is he planning a run for higher office? Might want to check with Con Jerk
on how well that worked for him!
I doubt any sensible person will challenge Mayor Leppert in 2011. The ODB
and the Citizens Council will spend whatever necessary to keep that office in
their hands. Harlan Crow spent millions of his own money on an incredible
campaign, but Stupid Dallas Voters ignored the facts and bought the ODB line.
Don't know about you, things look pretty bleak to me. My neighborhood
isn't likely to flood when the levees fail, but the drug dealers may have run us
all out by then.
sb
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