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Stan Aten
David Tuthill
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3/25/09
or
They should have listened to us!
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It was 1998 when we Aginners were fighting Our
Downtown Betters over the sales taxes for a new arena for Ross, Jr. and Tommy Hicks and a few
months later the Trinity River Project. The last few weeks have given
us a steady opportunity to gloat "Told you so" with all the Trinity Toll
Road news. But, DallasArena.com got started in the arena fight -- so,
Steve Brown's story
German press says Dallas' Victory project in danger of
default
(DallasNews.com, 3/24/9)
is a complete vindication to a bunch of citizen
warriors. If you think we've been gloating over the Trinity Toll Road
news, you ain't seen nothing yet! |
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3/25 Laura
Miller:
I just read the Victory story today.
Re the line: "None of the properties involved
had public-sector support."
Actually, all 67 acres in Victory - all owned by Hillwood, except for
the btball arena - are in a single-owner TIF
that was created as part of the incentives package for the arena.
Property values for all 67 acres were frozen at pre-construction levels
for purposes of the TIF. All
of the property taxes on all of the buildings are paid to the TIF
(instead of the city's general revenue fund) to repay Hillwood for
streetscape and other improvements.
In other words, none of the buildings pay property taxes to the City of
Dallas - Hillwood gets that money through 2018, when the TIF bonds were
estimated to be paid off. (That
date may have changed due to the economy).
So all of the buildings have significant public-sector support.
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| Donna Blumer called Tuesday to tell me about Brown's report. I made her stay on
the phone while I read it so we could enjoy the news together. Then I
immediately called, Dave Capps of Capps Van & Car Rentals, who was a major
contributor and leader in our citizen army of Bad Dealers. Next, I called
Gregg M, our financial genius and creator of DallasArena.com. Then, Dr.
Bill G and Laura Miller and bunches more who worked so hard to stop the arena sales tax. |
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3/25 Bob Hosea
I read Chaos and garner this
feeling of smugness. It is all expected, anticipated, no mystery.
If Dallas can screw it up, Dallas
will screw it up. Simple. The end.
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Robert Wilonsky and Jim Schutze have collected some great quotes related to the
arena bad deal:
Hillwood Responds to German Report About Victory Park
Debt: It's the Economy, Stupid.
(UnFairPark/DallasObserver.com,
3/24/9). The ones I enjoy most
are from Con Jerk/Ron Kirk who The Messiah has just made his Trade Ambassador.
We can only hope he does better trade negotiations for U.S. interests than he
did for the interests of Dallas taxpayers when he gave away the farm to Ross
Perot, Jr. and Tom Hicks.
During the arena campaign, we were described as lacking vision, but recent
events have proven us to be visionaries.
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One of the saddest realities of our 1998 prophesies is the demise of the once
vibrant West End. Their Merchants Assn. went against their own best
interest and supported the arena sales taxes. We warned them the
arena hotel/motel sales tax would hurt if not destroy our convention center
business, which was just as important for their business. Their spokesman told us they got so much business before and
after Reunion arena events, that they couldn't risk having the Stars and
Mavericks leave Downtown for greener pastures where some other town would build
them a new arena. The Stars and Mavericks had no place to go other than
Dallas -- no other city was offering them a new arena or anything else.
Now, the West End is a dead zone -- like Victory is quickly becoming. |
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Mark Gooch:
Hi Sharon!
I know my way around the horseshoe in Dallas and have experienced
first hand the buffoonery of the Dallas City Council in recent
years.
I now live in Australia, and although my friends and close relatives
live in Dallas, I?m not sure I could move
back. EVERYTHING you said in
Chaos
coincides with my experience at City Hall.
I?ll never understand why the citizens and taxpayers don?t demand
more respect and integrity from their representatives.
But, the ?machine? has been
creating smoke for so long, it would take a revolution of sorts to
change things to REALLY make Dallas a world class city.
First, it?s leaders have to have class to begin with.
Keep up the great work and you are doing what I wish I could do down
the line. For now, I?ll have to settle for Sydney?s calming
weather.
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Con Jerk and his thugs promised Victory would be good for Downtown, would
help stimulate its renaissance. Right! Victory has drained the life
out of Downtown. I talked with a local journalist today and compared
Victory to a big tick that has just killed its host by sucking too much blood
while injecting the poor host with a fatal infection.
Uptown and Oak Lawn and Turtle Creek were booming before Victory was conceived,
and those areas continue to prosper. They are natural neighborhoods that
have evolved over decades. It was their success which caught Jr.'s eye for
development opportunities. The land and structures he took through the
city's right of eminent domain from Intervest were already planned for a
residential project that would have kept the historic silos. The project
would have complimented nearby neighborhoods and Downtown. Jr.'s Victory
does not.
One of my pet peeves is that no one seems to remember or sees as significant
when
Perot/Hicks used their leverage on the city council to get the DART light rail
alignment changed from its community-determined route that would have taken it East of the arena down to the West End. The East side route would have
been the most convenient to the hundreds of people who live in Oak Lawn, Turtle
Creek and Uptown neighborhoods and certainly would have benefited businesses
between Stemmons and Central Expressways. Moving the Green line to the
West side of the arena cut off all of Victory's neighbors from light rail.
The kind of upper income folk that Jr. wanted as frequents of Victory are not
likely to make much use of mass transit. DART light rail was intended to
reduce commuter traffic on area freeways. Jr. and Tommy saw DART in the
same light as they view everything else -- how it benefits them, exclusively.
Today's news about Victory's financial problems follows
The Dallas Managed News'
hit piece on the Mayor,
Leppert
forged ahead with Trinity Parkway plan despite corps' concerns
(by
MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER,
DallasNews.com,
3/22/9). Lindenberger includes one
of the most incredibly tactful statements you will ever read or hear:
Dallas
City Council
member
Angela Hunt
is the one
council
member who
has opposed
the Trinity
toll road
from the
beginning.
She said she
thinks the
mayor's
sales
efforts in
2007 got
ahead of the
facts.
"The
mayor is a
salesman,"
Hunt said.
"I was
there,
telling him
the corps
had not
approved
this thing.
He knew that
what he was
saying was
not
accurate.
But I think
he believed
he could
make it
accurate,
given some
time.
He sincerely
believed
this project
would win
approval and
that, a year
down the
road,
everything
would be
just fine."
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Is that great? She
does not call him a liar. Just inaccurate!
Actually, I think Mayor Leppert's real problem is lack of history. He
doesn't know what we know about the doings in this town. The only people
he knows are ODB or ODB-wannabe's. He thinks they are his friends, and he
can trust them. Clearly, he can't trust them.
When The Dallas Managed News
lets a reporter do a story like
Leppert forged
ahead on
a sitting Mayor who was the ODB's candidate, something's seriously wrong.
Well, we can assume something is seriously wrong because they never printed
anything bad about Mary Poss, Ron Kirk, or Annette Strauss. When Ray Hunt
decided he and the ODB no longer wanted Steve Bartlett to be Mayor and wanted a
Black Mayor instead, the DMN
did begin to find fault with him.
The DMN
has never found fault with Con Jerk. None of
the stories around town about him ever made it to print. Just like the
DMN isn't
covering the questionable financial doings of our Bail Bondsman DA.
I supported Mayor Leppert in his runoff. I have disagreed with several of
his priorities since. But, when the DMN
seems displeased with someone, their target suddenly starts looking sympathetic
to me. That includes Mayor Leppert.
I'm not into Horoscope stuff or Numerology, etc., but something is just not
right in the world of the ODB. They like order and progress. They do
not like problems like sand in the levees, public referendums where taxpayers
might put a crimp in their plans for using our money to make themselves and
their friends richer.
What we mere mortals may find interesting and downright confusing, the ODB
find terrifying and chaotic.
The ODB do not like chaos. They expected Tom Leppert to deliver for them
and keep the populous in check like Ron Kirk did during his reign of terror.
Con Jerk/Ron Kirk only had to deal with Dallas.Org (Allen Gwinn),
BarkingDogs.org (Avi Adelman) and DallasArena.com (Sharon Boyd). He tried to
shut us down, but we're still here. Mayor Leppert has DallasObserver.com's
UnFairPark and several other very good blogs dogging every move he makes.
I don't know who they have in mind to replace Mayor Leppert, but I sure don't
want another Con Jerk. Guess I'm going to have to watch the Mayor's back
since the DMN
and the ODB seem to have a bull's eye painted on his
rear.
Oh, by the way -- I'm voting against the referendum forcing tax abatements of $1
million or more to voter approval. No one hates tax abatements more than
me, but this is a shakedown by New York union thugs.
Back to Victory's financial woes -- We were right in 1998. We are still
right!
If you believe something to be right, don't hide your light under a bushel.
You don't have to be a big shot to make a difference. You will be abused
by the ODB and the DMN,
but you will meet people who will become your friends for life. You will
know they are honorable because they stood up for their beliefs.
sb
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