The
DMN editorial " Miller Time Now the Team Building Must Begin"
suggesting Mayor Miller abandon two of the primary goals she promised to
pursue if elected misses the point of her election. DMN opinion
editors need to rethink the Dallas Morning News editorial priorities and
our Mayor needs to maintain hers.
The suggestion that the City of Dallas continue to pursue the billion
dollar Trinity River Floodway Toll Road / Suspension Bridge Boondoggle
for developers and engineering company promoters because the City
Council has already adopted a plan, fails to acknowledge the plan is
hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and that most of it is an un-funded
fantasy.
The suggestion that Dallas cannot afford to pay our Police Officers and
Firefighters a competitive wage and that our Mayor and City Council
don't have the will to prioritize and fund public safety leads to the
conclusion that DMN editorial writers fail to recognize the will of a
clear majority of Dallas voters in the Mayoral election.
Joe Wells
|
Miller
wins; Now
it's time for Dallas to pull together
DMN, Editorials,
02/18/2002
. . . The former City
Council member tapped into a strong voter sentiment that City Hall has
abandoned basic services in order to fund high-visibility projects.
Ms. Miller's election as
mayor, which some have compared to television broadcaster Wes Wise's
upset of Avery Mays in the early 1970s, signals a new direction for
Dallas.
The trend may have begun
in 1998, when Dallas voters narrowly approved a record bond issue that
included major funding for Trinity River improvements. In the same year,
the electorate approved a financing plan for the American Airlines
Center on the northwest edge of downtown by a pencil-thin margin. The
tough campaigns showed a growing concern in North Dallas over the
funding of "big ticket" items. Opposition to Dallas' bid to
host the 2012 Summer Olympics was further evidence of the changing mood.
. . . Current
council members already have approved a number of projects that seemed
to draw criticism in Laura Miller's advertising. She spoke of wanting
"signature schools" rather than "signature bridges,"
a poke at the proposed Trinity bridges by Spanish architect Santiago
Calatrava. Unfortunately, that was a false choice, because combining
federal, city and private money to bridge downtown and areas that need
development would not take money from the schools, which just got a
major boost from a billion-dollar bond approval. |
