|
Gehrig Saldaña
Gehrig Saldaña
Angela Hunt
| |
11/08/07 We lost the
battle, but they've lost the toll road war!
 |
|
Angela Hunt rocks! That's just all there is to
it.
The job she has done for the citizens of this city the past year has
been nothing short of heroic. This picture does not look like
Angela Hunt of November 2007. Her hair is now long, and her cheeks
are hollow -- she's probably 2 dress sizes smaller than she was in
January. |
| |
|
|
|
|
It's always amazing when you
meet someone who just does the right thing -- because it's the right thing to
do. That's our Ms. Hunt. For months, the suits and politicians have been struggling
to comprehend her very existence. With her integrity and intelligence, she
is beyond anything in their frame of reference. Got to be a "dark side" to
her, as Rufus Shaw claims on DallasBlog.com. He doesn't know what it is,
but he's sure she has a dark side because she's not on the take and not beholden to Our
Downtown Betters or even on good terms with Mayor T.
There still are people in this World and even in Dallas who are
honorable and altruistic. People who don't live for self gain.
People who sacrifice their personal time and even their own financial
resources when they believe in something. I know many Dallas
residents who fit that description, and Angela Hunt is certainly one of
them. If you don't recognize the personal sacrifices she has made over
the past year, then you are one of those who are too selfish to recognize
altruism in others. |
|
|
11/08 Walter Kilroy:
Tuesday was a disappointment. Sometimes,
Democracy leads us in a direction we, or the generations to follow
us, regret.
A coworker asked me if
the results mean we have a toll road
instead of a park. I
said we can?t tell yet. The
voters decided where the toll road should go, but
neither the NTTA or the Corps of
Engineers have cast their votes.
I did
predict someday we would find out the city not only
will provide the land in the Park to NTTA
for free, but has come up with a way (a
new Bond?) of raising that land above the high water mark so that
NTTA could save some construction cost.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
As a Texas native, I grew up expecting people to be straight shooters because
that's who Texas people were. A lot of Texans still are straight shooters,
but there are a lot of people in this town at this time who would rather
climb a tree to tell a lie than stand flat footed and tell the truth.
I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon and specifically call anyone on the VOTE
NO! team a liar, but plenty of others are calling Mayor T just that. |
|
|
11/08 Stan Aten:
I thought we had a better chance of winning this election. I was
wrong. Checking out the Dallas Morning Snooze
Wednesday morning, it appears that NTTA is still hedging their
commitment to the toll
road which won't start at the earliest until 2010. |
|
I thought we would win the election. I called voters in
my neighborhood and just north of me, and the numbers were staggering in our
favor. My NW Dallas precinct did go YES, but not as lopsided as the call
response was indicating. That brings up a point about the validity of any
phone polls these days with caller ID and cell phones -- but that's another
story.
A couple of weeks ago, I started saying we can't lose, regardless of the
election outcome. The TrinityVote campaign was primarily about keeping a
giant honking toll road out of the river floodway. I'm going to swim
upriver here (just not in the Trinity) and make a prophesy:
There will be no
freeway or toll road built inside the Trinity River levees. It's just not
going to happen.
Of course, I could be wrong -- I have been on occasion. If they do put a
toll road inside the floodway, it will cost at least $2 Billion and will flood
and cause more flooding. I don't want that to happen just so we can say
"told you so", but we can't continue to defy nature. We have paved over
most of our prairie and rain water has to go somewhere. We saw the Trinity
Sewer Trough lapping at the tops of the levees this year.
Think of how high it will go when they build another levee (support for the toll
road) and its necessary floodwall right through the river. Putting a few
more feet on top of the existing levees will not hold the excess water the
Trinity can no longer contain. Put it in another picture -- you know those
jeans you wore when you were in your 20's -- the ones you are going to get back
into one of these days? I know you have a pair that you pull out ever so
often. Even if you lay on the bed and actually get them zipped up and
fastened, the excess rolls over the top. I know that's a horrible graphic,
but you do know what I'm talking about. If you don't, you have lived a
saintly life of deprivation and probably don't vote or commit any other normal
sins.
Mayor T kept saying Angela didn't have a plan for an alternative for building
the toll road inside the levees. Well, Mayor T and his toll road gang don't
have an approved plan either. They are at least 2 years away from getting
a plan approval, if that soon, if at all.
I have another prophesy that's in a shorter time frame:
They will not break ground on a floodway
toll road in Mayor T's first term.
I sincerely hope there is no second term for Mayor T. He probably did not
promise Our Downtown Betters (the ODB) a second term. I mean -- Hawaii's
calling and all that. Now, that he's an accomplished politician having won
2 elections back to back, he may set his sights on something bigger than just
being Mayor T. We can only pray that his ego will make him yearn for
bigger waters than merely being mayor over Dallas.
Speaking of aspirations, Tom Pauken of DallasBlog.com jumped on Angela Hunt in
Rufus Right, Sam Wrong on Trinity Toll Road Vote.
He says:
|
Another consequence of this election was that Angela
Hunt?s ambitious bid to parlay the Trinity River Toll Road issue into
the Mayor?s seat has been derailed. Make no bones about it ? this was
her issue. Had Angela Hunt?s side won, we probably were looking at Mayor
Angela Hunt a few years from now. That looks like a much less likely
prospect at the moment. Councilwoman Hunt rolled the dice on this
controversial issue, and she lost. |
Look at the elections result
map,
Interactive map:
Trinity toll road voting by precinct, voter turnout.
Ron Natinsky and Linda Koop may have reason to feel secure in their district
because most of their precincts went AGAINST, but Elba Garcia (District 1),
Pauline Medrano (District 2), Dave
Neumann (District 3), Steve Salazar (District 6), Tennell Atkins (District 8),
Sheffie Kadane (District 9), Jerry Allen (District 10) -- all have lots of BLUE
precincts in their districts.
People all over this city know Angela Hunt's name now -- thanks to Mayor T's
personal attacks on her during the campaign. The average person in this
town doesn't even know the name of their council member, and certainly could not
list 2 or more of them. They don't know who is the Mayor Pro Tem or the
Deputy Mayor Pro Tem. They know Angela
Hunt. In politics, name
recognition goes a long way.
The Dallas Managed News
is trying to pile on Angela, too.
In Trinity road loss,
Angela Hunt's road uncertain
(by Rudolph Bush, Dallas Morning News, 11/08/07.
Trying to paint her as damaged political goods is just not
going to play. She's a hero in her District 14, where they love her
courage. The DMN mentions Princess
Velveeta (the brunt of everyone's jokes during the Trinity campaign) as
someone who could unseat Angela in District 14. They are dreaming!
Look at the map. Angela carried almost every precinct in her district.
The
few she lost were not by many votes.
If there are people whose political fortunes were damaged by the Trinity
election, Princess Velveeta would be at the top. No one will ever take her
seriously again (why they ever did is beyond me). Another who should be
worried is Sheffie Kadane in District 9. A strong community person could
give him a serious run in 2009. Elba Garcia really looks bad today when
you look at the precincts in her Oak Cliff District 1.
Someone who knows he's lost a bunch of supporters is Mitchell Rasansky in
District 13. Yes, he is now hooked up with Mayor T and was with the winning
side for a change, but he has forever lost his credibility as the taxpayer's
watchdog at City Hall. He can no longer credibly challenge waste in the
city's budget, because he supported the most wasteful project this city has ever
seen. Can't have it both ways. What's so sad, this very smart man
didn't have a clue what he was talking about with the Trinity Project or the
toll road.
Get on the
bus as
some city
council members
tour the Trinity River --
for, um,
like the very
first time?
(by
Jim Schutze, UnFair Park, DallasObserver.com, 10/31/07).
No one
knows what has happened to Mitch in the past 2 years. He may hope his
former supporters will put all this behind them now that the election is over,
but at least 4 will not -- 4 really close former
supporters. There was already resentment over how he treated Tommy Hines,
his former appointee to the Park Department Board. When he decided to
replace Tommy with Ann Margolin (Rasansky's anointed successor) on the Park
Board, Mitch did not even call Tommy to tell him he was not going to be
reappointed. That's really chicken stuff. Tommy had planned to
support Ed Oakley in the mayoral runoff, but backed away when Mitch blew up at
him over it. City Hall politics is not about merit. It's always a
power game.
It's really sad for me to see this turn in Mitch Rasansky because I truly
thought he was his own man. Instead, he's just another politician who
can't run for reelection and is now showing another side of him that I didn't
want to know existed.
No one knows better than I what it feels like to have Decherd/Belo, the Mayor
and the entire ODB vilifying you and trying to crush you. They and their
underlings are
terrified of strong women who aren't afraid of them. It shakes their
foundation, and they are not the type to go out looking for thrill rides.
They want things easy and their way. When some mere female nobody makes
waves and rocks their boat, they get very mean and very desperate.
When you are tough enough (or naive enough) to step out there and sign up for
the abuse, you are strong enough to shake it off. They tried to crush me
almost 10 years ago, but I'm still here and going strong. Ron Kirk tried
to shut down DallasArena.com, but you are still reading it and the
DMN even asked me
to do a ViewPoint. Obviously, I haven't gone away or shut up or been
intimidated. Picking on and piling on people who have already stood up to
the ODB heat does not make us go away. It emboldens and empowers us.
I am a private citizen, so it doesn't matter one way or the other.
Angela is an elected official, and the more they pile on her the more they
elevate her above the rest of the city council no names. She's not going
away. She's got a city wide base that is bigger than the mayor's or any
other council member. Mayor T's 52.9% victory margin is no mandate.
Angela's courageous effort will be remembered long after Mayor T has retired to
Hawaii.
So, don't cry for Angela Hunt. She's a star now! She's popular in
her district. She's married to her high school sweetheart (and he is a
darling). She's so skinny now, she can eat her way through the holidays
and still look good for New Years Eve! Can't ask for much more than that.
sb
| |
|
