City on the Brink

06/03/02 We're broke, and it ain't OK!

We are laying off employees when we don't have enough staff to enforce current city ordinances. Those we keep may get a 10% pay cut, but last week 9 council crooks signed away $43 Million in future property tax revenue to Hicks and Ross, Jr. and a California Dude.

If you did not see Colleen McCain Nelson's story, you should stop and read it before you go further:

	City predicts $83 million shortfall 'We're all going to have to share this pain,' council member warns 06/01/2002 By COLLEEN McCAIN NELSON / The Dallas Morning News
. . .Council member Alan Walne cautioned that even without a tax increase, many homeowners will pay more in property taxes because of an increase in property values. . . .

Like he cares about the plight of Dallas homeowners! Duh Alan Walne knows we "will pay more in property taxes" because he and other council crooks have continuously voted for tax abatements removing millions and millions from current and future property tax revenue with little or nothing in return.

For instance, Mark Cuban's Yahoo/Broadcast.com received almost $4 Million in TWO tax abatements JUST TO STAY IN DEEP ELLUM, when they were looking at a site INSIDE Dallas city limits up at Webb Chapel near LBJ in an old shopping center that had been specifically refurbished and redeveloped for Yahoo, where they would pay PROPERTY TAX. They were supposed to hire several new employees in return for the first tax abatement -- didn't happen. The very next year they came back for $2 Million more because they had decided to put an atrium in their first building and take over a second building in Deep Ellum to house their new hires -- which were non-existent. They promised to hire 600 employees -- didn't happen. As a matter of fact, just a few months after Send Me Some Money John Loza asked them to come back the next year for a THIRD tax abatement, they laid off over 100 employees.

Did anyone at City Hall consider canceling Yahoo's tax abatement because they had failed to perform? You know the answer to that!

Another company got a tax abatement to STAY in their location near NorthPark.

Hicks and Ross, Jr. got a $23 Million tax abatement just a few months after they had Kathy Nealy steal enough mail-in ballot votes to get them just over 50.1% of the votes in the 1998 arena sales tax election.

No one goes back and pulls these tax abatements when the recipient fails to perform.

Speaking of mail-in ballot vote frauds --- If Kathy Nealy is the Queen of this sleazy business, Federal employee Joe May is her biggest rival. Joe May is an idiot savant, who can't come in out of the rain but he has an effective team of thugs to work elderly voters and get them to hand over their ballots to him. In a story in the Dallas Observer, Joe May showed Patrick Williams a copy of Pete Vaca's application for a mail-in ballot which had been given to someone else who claimed not to be working with May. It was illegal for May to have that application, much less show it to anyone other than a County Elections official, but no one prosecuted.

Buzz By Patrick Williams April 8, 1999

Model citizen, part II
    Vaca's pre-election drive to become a better citizen didn't stop with his paid-up tax bill. He also vowed to vote. If he serves on a jury and donates blood, he'll get Buzz's vote for citizen of the year.
    There's one problem, though: Who does Vaca plan to vote for?
A few weeks ago, before Vaca announced his candidacy, political operative Joe May's street-level get-out-the-vote drive was knocking on doors in East Dallas, giving people forms they need to receive mail-in absentee ballots. The volunteers asked voters to cast their ballot for Loza. They found Vaca, who eagerly pledged to vote for John Loza, May says. Vaca's wife also agreed to vote for Loza. Apparently, at least one of them has had a change of heart.
   A gleeful May, who is helping manage Loza's campaign against Vaca, faxed Buzz a copy of the couple's ballot applications. (Buzz loves election season. Everyone gets so nasty.) May joked that the Vacas "owe us 66 cents for postage" for sending in their forms.

Now, Pete Vaca and Joe May are both running for the School Board from District 8.

DISD contests start to take shape 06/03/2002 By TAWNELL D. HOBBS / The Dallas Morning News

In District 8, Ms. Leos is vacating her post after seven years to accept an appointment under U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige. Competing for her seat is mediator Pete Vaca and business development specialist Joe May, both of whom rallied for a third Latino-majority seat in the redistricting process.
Mr. Vaca won a lawsuit against the district after contending that the redistricting process was flawed. Mr. May's involvement stems from his creation of a map that called for a third majority-Latino seat.

Talk about between a rock and a hard place. Neither one of these guys has any business running for office or making decisions on budgets or policy or the time of day. I worked in Pete Vaca's campaign against John Loza -- kept the books as a matter of fact, among lots of other stuff. His best asset is his wife, and she's not running. The biggest job the people who were doing the real work in the campaign had was to keep Pete from meeting anyone important and to get him out to campaign. Vaca would be Leo Chaney's equivalent on the School Board, but Joe May as an elected official makes Pete Vaca look much better with all of his warts and baggage. Surely, there is someone else!

There is some good news! School Boards cannot participate in tax abatements anymore, which brings us back to our current crisis at City Hall.

District 13 Councilman Mitch Rasansky told his townhall gathering (over 200 people) that existing tax abatements are costing us over $9 Million a year in lost property tax revenue. You will hear council members like Ed Oakley claim that tax abatements don't cost us anything, which is a good example of how uninformed he and many on the council are. If a property is worth $200 million with its improvements, but is only taxed at its raw land value of $1-2 million, that's millions in lost property tax revenue. Yes, the property owner is taxing himself and supposed to be making infrastructure improvements with the WITHHELD PROPERTY TAX REVENUE, but that means he gets to move his property needs ahead of your neighborhood's needs.

While you get taxed through the nose, but must wait in line to get your street paved or street lighting for security, Tom Hicks and Ross Perot, Jr. get to withhold what should rightfully go into the general budget for the entire community's needs and spend it inside the lines of their own property. If you are one of those like Duh Walne or Oakley or Send Me Some Money Loza or Beat that Indictment Fantroy or Mayor PreTend Poss who think the rich are better than the rest of us and their needs should go before everyone else, then you likely think bankrupting the city to accommodate Hicks and Ross, Jr., et al is appropriate.

I say NO MORE TAX ABATEMENTS!!

I say AUDIT EVERY CURRENT TAX ABATEMENT!!

I say make every NON-COMPLYING TAX ABATEMENT RECIPIENT RETURN OUR MONEY or the city confiscates the improvements for back taxes!! Just like they would do to some poor widow in South Dallas or my neighborhood!!

We are in big trouble. We have the worst City Manager in our history, but who could we get to come into this city to take over that job? There are only so many good guys like Mike Moses out there -- there are many, many like Ted Benavides available or worse like Lounge Lizard Bill Rojas.

Is Ted Benavides going to get a 10% pay cut? Can't you hear the council already telling him what a good job he has done and how he deserves a raise and a bonus?

Our finances are in such a mess that we cannot attract a quality candidate for City Manager. Until last week when Asst. CM Jill Jordan dropped that bomb on the Mayor about historic preservation issues preventing running all proposed Trinity roads on the Downtown side, she would have been my choice among city hall staff to be moved up to CM. She is an engineer, but she is also a well rounded bureaucrat. Unfortunately, she showed herself to be a puppet of Our Downtown Betters who want the Trinity Project just like THEY DREW IT. There is big money moving on this Trinity Project, and some of the ODB are desperate that they be the ones who spend it.

We should just stop everything for awhile.

We should not accept any donations of public facilities that we cannot afford to maintain once we are the property owners. When we get that property, it goes OFF THE TAX ROLLS like the Hicks/Perot arena. We spend millions annually maintaining the Meyerson. We don't have millions to spare. We certainly should not be participating in a new performance hall and absolutely should not be the ultimate owners of that facility. If there is a demand for an opera hall, the market will cover it. It is not your or my responsibility to provide a facility for Park Cities taxpayers to go and recreate. Keep that property on the tax rolls!

We should immediately audit every current tax abatement and pull any that are not in full-compliance with the agreement the recipient made with the city. Unfortunately, many of the agreements are so loosey-goosey that the recipient pretty much gets the tax abatement and doesn't have to do a thing. Between John Ware and Ted Benavides, the City MisManager's Office has given away the farm and all future crops, and we are stuck with the livestock for which we have to buy feed and hire someone to protect!

When a new office building is constructed, there are new demands on our general budget -- police and fire protection, water/sewer, street maintenance, traffic control, etc. When a tax abatement removes new improvements from the tax rolls, there is no additional money to pay for the new drains on the general budget -- like at Pinnacle Park. That project was going to get done without a tax abatement. Hunt has the resources to pay for their own police department -- but why spend Hunt money when you can drain the city budget?

The only council members who have a right to comment on the disastrous $83 million shortfall we are facing are those who voted against the Palladium abatement -- Mayor Laura Miller, Mark Housewright, Sandy Greyson, Lois Finkelman, Mitch Rasansky and Velleta Lill.   The other 9 are less than blithering idiots -- they are crooks. They all had something to gain, whether social or financial from backing that $43 million tax abatement. None of the 9 who voted for it should dare open their mouths about our budget shortfall -- particularly Duh Walne or Mayor PreTend Poss or Ed Oakley. They are more responsible for it than almost anyone else.

City MisManager Benavides told McCain Nelson that "It's just disappointing that we can't seem to find the bottom." It would be nice to have a City Manager with a plan to make things happen instead of one who wrings his hands as the chickens from his bad management come home to roost.

We need retail in this city -- for real people who like to shop at Target and Wal-Mart, Kohls, etc. We have enough high end stores without enough people with big bucks to keep them all afloat. If we must have malls, they should not be so grand as to discourage people of moderate income from spending their money there. If you have lived in Dallas for 30 years, you can remember suburban people complaining about their lack of places to shop with all the good stores in Downtown Dallas or NorthPark. The tables have turned.

Rather than tax abatements for unneeded office buildings or hotels or high-end shopping malls, we should be out there recruiting mid-price retailers to locate INSIDE our city limits -- not just near us in the Metroplex. We don't share sales tax collected by Plano or Addison.

If we are going to avoid going bankrupt, we need to replace at least 9 council members next May. Of course, Duh Walne and MPT Poss are gone no matter what. Oakley is not likely to beat Housewright, even if he runs. If the Courts don't remove T-Reese from the council, Duncan will beat her again with all eyes watching. Then there's Dwaine Caraway who wants to challenge T-Reese, too. In a Caraway/T-Reese race, I would have to go with Husband Dwaine. Hopefully, Danny Harrison is going to challenge Lois Finkelman. It would be physically dangerous for anyone to seriously challenge Hill, Fantroy and Chaney's political machines. Elba Garcia probably will not even draw an opponent, but Domingo might tell her to step aside for him to take back the seat now that they have drawn Steve Salazar out of their district.

Help is on the way, but may not get here in time to keep us from going over the edge.