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David Tuthill
Gehrig Saldaña
James Murphy
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9/20/07 Mayor Leppert's
worrying me.
Whenever someone says something critical about what
Mayor Leppert has done in his first few months in office, I have a stock
response: 'so far he has done nothing that Ed Oakley would not have done'.
Mayor Leppert hasn't tried to rezone someone's property to force its sale to a
developer. That's something Ed would have done. Mayor Leppert has
gotten Verified Response repealed. That's something that Ed would not have
done. Mayor Leppert has shafted Angela Hunt by denying her any
chairmanship of a council committee. That's something that Ed would have
done, but Ed would have done the same thing to Mitch Rasansky. My support
and vote for Mayor Leppert weren't mistakes.
I was hoping that Mayor Leppert wouldn't just not be any worse than Ed Oakley, I
wanted him to be a lot better.
Dallas needed a mayor to bring us together, but Mayor Leppert seems to think
that "us" only includes Our Downtown Betters and their shills and/or employees
and wannabe's. He's been making the rounds of all the "civic" groups for
their endorsement. So, what? Most of the membership in Dallas civic
groups don't live in the city limits of Dallas.
Mayor Leppert seems to be a very hopeful man who believes that if you dream it
(scheme it), someone can build it and some bureaucrat will cut whatever corners
necessary to facilitate it. Rather than bother with specifics or
statistics or real dollar numbers, he thinks it's enough to be "comfortable that
it works". Dallas Blog's Sam Merten has a very telling and very
chilling interview with Mayor Leppert. Here is an excerpt, but you use the
link to read the entire interview. It will not make you comfortable.
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I caught up with Mayor Tom Leppert after Tuesday’s Vote No! Save the Trinity press conference to ask him some questions. Here is our conversation virtually in its entirety.
Dallas Blog: If there is no final cost for the project, then how do you know that it’s the most cost effective?
Mayor Leppert: “You know for a number of different reasons. First of all, there have been an awful lot of estimates that have been done. Those estimates build in contingencies and they keep the contingencies the same way they do as the others. Plus, there are certain things that we also know. We know that under this scenario, we own the land so we don’t have that cost. We know that under other scenarios, we don’t own the land and we’d have to acquire those. We know that there are environmental issues so you start putting in cost and you look at it on a relative basis.”
DB: A lot of what has caused the cost increase in the current proposal has been the fact that the road has been put in a floodway, would you agree with that?
ML: “No, the biggest increase in cost has been the delays. Without a question, it has been the delays.”
DB: Haven’t a lot of the delays been because of the engineering problems associated with putting the road in a floodway?
ML: “What I can do is relate and again, it’s important to note I am not one…I have never voted for this in terms of being on the council or anything else. I have never designed any pieces of it so I come in as someone who should be one of the more objective people looking at this. So I start from that perspective. Everybody that I talked to -- I visited with the Corps, I visited with TxDOT and I visited with the NTTA -- is comfortable that it works. Everyone is comfortable that everything you’ve seen are accurate interpretations of what to expect.” ...
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The Mayor's first response
turned my blood to ice.
First of all, there have been an awful lot
of estimates that have been done.
Estimates? Guesses? Lies? What about tests and experience?
Well, there can't be any tests or experience because no other city has been
stupid enough to consider building a road in the middle of a sewer trough that
occasionally looks like a river.
The Mayor is a very educated man, but he seems to have a limited vocabulary
because almost every comment he makes includes "comfortable with".
That's sounds "lukewarm" or "average" or "mundane", when we need certainty.
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"All the parties, including the corps, are comfortable with the graphics and the direction its going. It's an accurate depiction and a good rendering of what's going to happen," Mr. Leppert said.
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Please read the entire article.
It will not make you comfortable that the Corps is willing to allow something it
has not done elsewhere -- trees on the levees. Jim Schutze keeps
appropriately comparing the Trinity Project to the levee catastrophe triggered
by Katrina. Granted we are not likely to have a hurricane hit Dallas, but
this past Spring and Summer we certainly had rain of historic proportions.
Maybe not "Forty Days and Forty Nights", but we had lots of rain, lots of
flooding.
The Trinity Project is so huge, so complicated, so impossible, and Mayor Leppert wants
us to be "comfortable" with estimates. That's beyond hopeful and
optimistic. It's moronic.
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Pumping the House Organ
By Jim Schutze, Sept 19, 2007 |
...It’s
just absolutely astonishing, in the
wake of the horrors of Katrina, that
a responsible official in the Fort
Worth division of U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers failed to pick up the damn
telephone yesterday, call Levinthal
and say what he or she should have
said: “No, the road can be nowhere
near the position that Mayor Leppert
is showing it in his graphics, and,
no, there can be no trees planted on
or near levees.”
Then we have
Leppert and
company telling us in the story that
maybe they can get an exception
to that rule. Uh, mayor … tree roots
weaken levees. I don’t think we want
to weaken the levees. Please tell me
that you do not want to weaken the
levees....
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This is why I'm getting worried
about Mayor Leppert. All these "comfortable with" and "maybe" being thrown
around by him do not add up to a single fact or $ amount.
I am getting very annoyed that Mayor Leppert and his campaign cohorts are trying
to personalize the toll road opposition as Angela Hunt and her zombies.
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Schutze is Shocked,
Shocked!
By Robert Wilonsky, Sept 18, 2007 |
Jim Schutze is in the car and on the phone, heading north -- to Oklahoma, most likely, where he likes to gamble with the missus' paycheck. Stuck in traffic, he phones in with this report from today's Vote NO! Save The Trinity circle jerk at the Hilton Anatole, attended by Mayor Tom, John Wiley Price, Royce West, Lee Jackson and "lesser-known persons," sayeth Schutze.
Jim's going to write more about this (no, ya think?), but he's outraged -- "and shocked, shocked," he'll tell you. So he called in to say, "They showed the road built into the levees and, in some places, on top of the levees, and that's just a flat deception."...
"The séance took place in the appropriately named Nana -- and it would have been more appropriate only if the place was named Nyah-Nyah," Jim says, laughing himself straight onto the service road. Among the media attendees, Jim says: "six bewildered television reporters, Dave Levinthal and Sam Merten ... and, oh, wait, I forgot, Tim Rogers and Zac Crain, sitting way in the back with the kitchen staff." He also noted that Dallas County Judge Jim Foster, a late arrival, wound up sitting with the press "by accident -- and he spent most of the time staring out the window."
Jim says ringleader Leppert presented "fraudulent animations of the project." As in: "Both animations were flyovers forcing you to look to the left as you fly, so you can only see the road, which is on the right-hand side, out of the extreme corner of your right eyeball, if that makes sense. And Leppert would continually say, during his own voice-over, 'See, you can hardly see the road.'" Again, you should hear Jim laughing.
"I had to leave before it was over," says Dr. Schutze, "but all the literature refers to the entire referendum effort as the 'Angela Hunt Plan.' Did I not predict this? I was extremely hurt it did not refer to it as the 'Angela Hunt-Jim Schutze Plan.'"
Also noted: When Jim was trying to get out of paying the parking-lot attendant the seven bucks necessary for exiting, nowhere on her list of scheduled events did she see the words "Trinity" anything. "Then I told her it was in Nana," Jim says, "and she found it immediately -- under 'Crow Holdings event.'" Methinks Jim just totaled his Hyundai.
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The people who back Angela Hunt
are some of the smartest folks in this town. They are not following Angela
Hunt. They are backing her. They are supporting her. They are
marching with her.
Why is it when a woman steps out and has an independent thought that the ODB and
their lackeys target her personally? It's like a mere female should stay
in her place. It is even more galling to the ODB and their lackeys that
Angela Hunt is not wealthy or married to a wealthy man or the daughter of a
wealthy man. If she were rich or married to a rich man or the daughter of
a rich man, then she would have a lot more credibility to the ODB. Lucy
Billingsley (as in Crow) is given much more credit than she will ever deserve,
primarily because she was born to a rich man and managed to learn the family
business.
Throughout his campaign, Mayor Leppert constantly mentioned his mother and
frequently talked about how much he respected her and the sacrifices she made
for him as a single mother. I believe his affection and respect for his
mother are sincere. However, his actions toward Angela Hunt are what you
would expect from a man who has never really like women. His actions
indicate he disapproves of strong women.
It is worrisome that
Mayor Leppert is content to be "comfortable" regarding questions that he nor
anyone promoting the toll road can specifically answer. During the budget
discussions, he frequently said "I'm comfortable with" this or that.
Don't know about you, but I want to be sure about the facts. I certainly
want the Mayor of Dallas to be sure before he starts spouting happy talk that is
not based on reality.
Here's the reality -- there's not all that much space between the existing
Trinity River levees. The toll road must have its own levee to protect it
from future flooding.
I'm going to ask the same question that Laura Miller asked before she drank the
water at City Hall.
Where's the water? Where will be there be room for the water?
Mayor Leppert, I am not comfortable with your cavalier attitude about a project
of this enormity.
Wishing and hoping won't get us there.
sb
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