In Plain Sight

They are not going to do anything. They didn't do anything when it was all happening.

Think about it. There were 15 plan commissioners and 15 council members serving when Don Hill, D'Angelo Lee and James Fantroy were misbehaving. Some of those 30 people were smarter than others. When Fantroy's proxy was pushing through his agenda for unneeded apartment complexes, only three spoke out against: former Mayor Laura Miller, Councilwomen Elba Garcia and Sandy Greyson.

On Hill's council of shame were the following:

District	1	Dr Elba Garcia	District	8	James Fantroy (deceased)
District	2	John Loza	District	9	Gary Griffith
District	3	Ed Oakley	District	10	Bill Blaydes
District	4	Maxine Thornton-Reese	District	11	Lois Finkelman
District	5	Don Hill	District	12	Sandy Greyson
District	6	Steve Salazar	District	13	Mitch Rasansky
District	7	Leo Chaney	District	14	Villetta Lill (Princess Velveeta)
			Mayor		Laura Miller

They were all there when Maxine Thornton-Reese (Brain Dead) made James Fantroy's motions for him approving a zoning case involving Bill Fisher because Fantroy had a conflict of interest. They knew what was going on. Please stop here and re-read Crooks in Low Places. John Loza, Ed Oakley, Maxine Thornton-Reese, Bill Blaydes and Mitch Rasansky all acknowledged in the discussion that they knew what Fantroy wanted done on the case, even though Sec. 12A-3 from the City Code says:

I made my peace with James Fantroy because he kept Al Lipscomb off the council. It may not have been enough for the FBI or the Federal Judge, but keeping Al Lipscomb off the council atoned for a lot of sins with me. You can't hold Brain-Dead Thornton-Reese accountable for her participation in that bad day at City Hall because the woman really is cerebrally challenged. But, John Loza, Ed Oakley, Bill Blaydes and Mitch Rasansky knew they should not have conversed with James Fantroy about that particularly zoning case. Oakley, Blaydes, Rasansky and Fantroy served on the plan commission together before moving up to the council. Makes you wonder what happened on the plan commission under their watch?

We have a different council now:

District	1	Delia Jasso	District	8	Tennell Atkins
District	2	Pauline Medrano	District	9	Sheffie Kadane
District	3	Dave Neumann	District	10	Jerry Allen
District	4	Dwaine Caraway	District	11	Linda Koop
District	5	Vonciel Hill	District	12	Ron Natinksy
District	6	Steve Salazar	District	13	Ann Margolin
District	7	Carolyn Davis	District	14	Angela Hunt
			Mayor		Tom Leppert

Carolyn Davis is possibly dumber than Brain Dead. Sheffie Kadane is just happy to have some friends to sing Happy Birthday with.

If there is anyone who would show the same brass balls as Laura Miller when something is clearly wrong, my money would be on Ann Margolin. She's smart enough to catch something off, and she speaks her mind.

The council is apparently not rolling over for Mayor Leppert and accepting his "ethics" reforms. Nothing he has proposed will make a difference, except to muddy the water at City Hall. Rudy Bush did a great job covering the council's discussion. Below he quotes Councilwoman Vonciel Hill:

"Corruption is not corrected by my having to do some other council member's work. Corruption comes when I don't have enough time to do the work that supports my family," she said.

"I need to be a council member who works for a living, but I don't need to do your work in your district ... . This simply adds more to the work and detracts from the honest living some of us are trying to make," she said.

Trust me, I am as surprised as you to be agreeing with Vonciel Hill about anything. But, I want council members who have other jobs or business outside of their City Hall hours. They don't need to be down there as much as they are. They need to be working at real jobs in a real world outside of City Hall. I very much respect Councilman Salazar for maintaining his law practice while serving on the council. Knowing that she is also maintaining her law practice, I have to say I respect Councilwoman Hill, as well. What kind of a moron would put their career or business on hold for an 8-year (at best) temporary job paying $37,000? I don't want someone like that making decisions about a billion dollar budget or any of the other important decisions council members make every week.

Jim Schutze and Neil Emmons think the council should be paid more:

I went to lunch recently with Neil Emmons, who is going off the city plan commission after filling out his term limit. Emmons, an appointee of District 14 city council member Angela Hunt, has watched all of this from way on the inside.

"You've got to give council members a decent salary," he said. "But then you also have to provide them with independent staff capable of doing legislative analysis."

... All of this?the corruption, the salary structure, the lack of independent staff?goes to explain the outcome, which is a City Hall that shuts out the city's middle classes. You wind up with two players in control?the business interests with money to give and the hungry people on the council who are willing to take.

It's how the American Airlines Center got built, how the Trinity River project got passed, how the downtown convention hotel got done, how the strong mayor reform was defeated. It's why we can't have community gardens or neighborhood farmers markets.

Everything is controlled by a partnership of the very rich with the very poor. The rich get jewels?monumental theaters and opera centers downtown, fake suspension bridges over the river, things to make us look good in The New York Times. The poor get crumbs, but they go for crumbs. Their price is their price. The people who get priced out of this system are the ones in the middle, the ones who want all those boring things like better public schools, pothole repairs and clean city parks.

The council doesn't need more money. The council needs to let professional staff run things, with the council setting policy. They are briefed on cases, they hear testimony and they make a decision -- just like judges do daily. Judges rely on their staff and their clerks to administer the Court.

It's interesting that Schutze would interview an unemployed loser about what needs to be done at City Hall. Lying Neil Emmons was on the plan commission when D'Angelo Lee was doing the dirty things the jury heard about. Was Emmons oblivious to what Lee was doing? Why didn't he call him out or alert someone or even file an ethics complaint? Same reason most of the council members were unconcerned with Fantroy's contract or with (c)(1) of Sec. 12A-3 which prohibited their discussing a case with Fantroy when he and they knew he had a conflict of interest.

We have enough rules and restrictions. What we are lacking is enforcement and consequences. We should not need the FBI to police council members or plan commissioners. We need some council members and plan commissioners who will not tolerate wrong doing.

Actually, "some council members and plan commissioners" would not be enough. We need to have at least 8 council members and at least 8 plan commissioners who will not tolerate wrong doing. We don't and probably never will have those brave 8. That's the real problem.

What we really need is to do away with most of their subcommittees. Things should be heard and decided by the council and commission as a whole. They should not be involved in minutiae. Plan commissioners should not be involved in zoning negotiations. No one caused more harm on the P&Z than Schutze's buddy, Lying Emmons. Thanks to Emmons, we will not have a St Regis on Turtle Creek. Thanks to Emmons, the abandoned apartment complex on Lovers Ln. that was to be redeveloped with luxury units by Fairfield Properties will continue to be a plague in the area. With his and Angela Hunt's political dithering and delays, the developers got caught in the economic downtown and have turned the property back to the bank. Steve Brown has an interesting story about it, Lenders take over site of planned redevelopment project on Lovers ... (DallasNews.com, 9/23/9). Two projects that would have added hundreds of millions to the city's property tax base are lost forever.

My councilman, Steve Salazar, has the good sense not to have given up his law practice while representing his district. He has been incredibly available to Northwest Dallas and is always looking for new businesses to buy into older, underutilized parts of our area. Under his watch, Harry Hines has become a major wholesale market area. Salazar's appointee to the Plan Commission is also pro-business. Yet, both Salazar and Lozano have been strong in helping us close rogue bars and massage parlors. Neither of them would have closed down a Woodard Paint & Body in District 6. Neither of them would have rejected a St. Regis or a new luxury apartment development to replace a crime ridden apartment complex. But then, both of them have maintained their law practices while holding their City Hall positions.

We don't need fulltime council members or plan commissioners. We need working people who have one foot in reality and one foot in the play world of City Hall. We need people with courage and integrity who will not tolerate illegal or unethical behavior from their colleagues.

We need a city council where people keep their eyes open.

sb