07/08/02  Boyd announces for City Council District 6!

What a shock this must be to everyone!  I am stepping out of the moaners and groaners category into the fray.  There is just too much at risk to stay on the sidelines.  

Currently, my council district has no representation at city hall.  Our council member, Ed Oakley, is already running for council from District 3 against Mark Housewright.  Our concerns are of no concern to Oakley.  He never has a townhall meeting up here, so he does not know what we want.  It's not like he can't find us because the North Dallas precincts of District 6 were his winning margin and then some.  The voters up here went for him over 95%.  

Oakley is no different than previous council members from District 6 (Mattie Nash or Barbara Mallory Caraway) about ignoring this area once they were elected.  With the recent redistricting, we are now only split between Mitch Rasansky's District 13 and Oakley's District 6 -- rather than 3-ways under the old lines.  Councilman Rasansky has regular townhall meetings that we attend (like other citizens from all over Dallas).  Before him, this area's best friend on the council was Donna Blumer -- not our council representative.

We have been making progress in some areas despite interference and indifference from city council (our own and other district representatives).  We have been moving the sex clubs over to the industrial side of Northwest Highway (west of Stemmons), but it has been a painfully slow process.  My likely opponent in this race, Steve Salazar, almost always voted with the sex clubs and any other bars in our area.  When community leaders tried to clean up the wild clubs in European Crossroads, Salazar went to bat for the clubs -- not the community.  We can't afford even two years of him.

Salazar was not the only council member who sabotaged us at every turn.  Our worst enemy was Old Al Lipscomb.  The community knew something was going on along Northwest Highway when anyone could walk into the sex clubs with a hidden camera and capture illegal sexual contact going on between the dancer/hookers and the patrons/johns -- but there was no police enforcement of the anti-lewdness laws.  You can just imagine the pain when it was confirmed that Old Al Lipscomb and some high-ranking police officer (T.B.) were assisting Caligula Nick Rizos by banning DPD officers from enforcing Dallas city laws in the clubs.

What made it more difficult to believe was that Old Al sold us out so cheap -- just a few thousand dollars.  Caligula Nick probably made that back the first weekend his whores could work openly on their johns.  On top of that, Caligula Nick now has another sex club (The Lodge) and a second club on NW Hwy where he has a liquor license and is trying to get a dance hall permit.  Caligula Nick was given immunity to testify against Old Al -- so, he can continue to do damage to my community.

The money Caligula Nick gave Old Al was small potatoes compared to what Floyd Richards (Yellow Cab) paid the old crook over several years for "assisting" his company at city hall.  It is just outrageous that The Dallas Managed News is trying to make Lipscomb's crime seem victimless.  

Below are some excerptions from Todd Bensman's story about Old Al's appeal.  The comments in the "Bad Deal" gold column are mine.

The appeal is always on his mind, Lipscomb says   Halfway through sentence, ex-council member still has hope    07/02/2002 by TODD BENSMAN / The Dallas Morning News

DallasArena.com:

More than halfway through his 41-month home confinement sentence, former Dallas City Council member Al Lipscomb says he spends nearly every waking moment preoccupied with this:   Will a federal appeals court ever overturn his bribery conviction, set him free and clear his name? . . .     "I'm constantly in prayer. Why am I with this [electronic] collar? Why am I still here?" 1*   Mr. Lipscomb, 77, was forced to give up his City Council seat and his freedom after a federal jury in Amarillo found him guilty of 65 counts of conspiracy and bribery in January 2000 for taking payments from a cab company owner in exchange for his vote. . . .The main legal contention in Mr. Lipscomb's appeal is that government prosecutors improperly charged him under federal statutes for what amounted to a state crime. Legal experts question whether conservative appeal court justices in New Orleans will overturn a jury conviction. . . .  2*   Mr. Lipscomb began serving the sentence in his modest Red Bird-area home April 28, 2000, tethered by an electronic bracelet on his wrist that sets off alarms if he strays too far from a monitor in the house. Some of the restrictions of home confinement imposed by U.S. District Judge Joe Kendall recently have been eased.  3* . . . Mr. Lipscomb goes to Sunday services and Bible study each Wednesday at the church he has attended for more than 70 years. So far this year, U.S. District Judge Jerry Buchmeyer, who is now supervising Mr. Lipscomb, has granted permission to attend four funerals.   Mr. Lipscomb also said he holds meetings with friends and politicians at his home, where he lives with his wife, Lovie. 4* . . .The charges against Mr. Lipscomb were related to cash payments that he accepted during the 1990s from Yellow Cab Co. owner Floyd Richards. Mr. Richards pleaded guilty to buying Mr. Lipscomb's help in strengthening his company's dominance in the area taxicab business.   Immediately after the verdict, Mr. Lipscomb said, "I am innocent, and I'm going to continue to fight it."   Guilt is not the issue in New Orleans. The judges are considering whether government prosecutors had grounds to charge him with federal crimes, which carry heavier punishments than state-level corruption charges that his attorneys say would have been more appropriate.  . . .Another contention in Mr. Lipscomb's appeal is whether Judge Kendall properly moved the trial from Dallas to Amarillo, where an all-white jury with no knowledge of Mr. Lipscomb's civil rights work heard the case. . . . Mr. Lipscomb said he can live with home confinement a little longer, but what he wants most is for his conviction to be overturned.   At stake in New Orleans, he said, is nothing less than "my whole life, my citizenship, my name, my family, my church, and all of the things I've tried to accomplish." 5*

1.  The man confessed in open court that he took money from Floyd Richards as a council member and did favors in return for Yellow Cab.  Hundreds of cab drivers and other cab companies were damaged by the decisions made on Old Al's vote.  2.  Thank goodness they are not denying he was a bribe taker -- just that the Fed Prosecutor used the wrong law to nail him. 3.  No mention of how grateful Old Al, his family and supporters (including Senatorial candidate Ron Kirk) were that the Judge allowed him to serve his term in the comfort of his home in front of his big size television and in the new room his supporters built for him, rather than in a prison cell where he belongs. 4.  A convicted bribe taker  gets to make political endorsements and hold meetings with all who come seeking his blessing.  He should have the same rules for visitors as any other federal prisoner.  You have to pre-register with the prison and can only visit on certain days between certain hours.  It is ludicrous that he is allowed trips to church and funerals.  What other federal inmate gets those privileges? 5.  The man admitted taking illegal contributions from Caligula Nick and Floyd Richards and he is worried about his "name", his "church", etc.?  What about the lives of the cabbies that he ruined by forcing them to lose their livelihood?  What about the families and businesses in the Bachman-NW Hwy area who have suffered from the results of his assistance to the sex clubs?

Isn't that how most criminals get out of their predicaments -- on technicalities?  He doesn't think he did anything wrong!  But then -- how many "guilty" bad guys are in prison?  Well, Old Al certainly is not in prison.  He is plopped right down in front of his big screen TV -- except when he goes to church or entertains his supporters and supplicants in his newly expanded house.

That's one blatant reason why I have to run for city council.  When Paul Fielding went to prison for talking with Old Al about creating a fake minority-owned business, Mayor PreTend Poss was "embarrassed", but she was sympathetic to Old Al (as was most of the council) and he actually took bribes!  One current council member has been indicted and another got in trouble for exploiting a fiduciary position on the board of a failed hospital.  They both voted for Palladium, as did Mary Poss.

The Mayor can't clean up the mess at City Hall alone.  When she has the likes of Brain Dead Thornton-Reese and Beat that Indictment Fantroy berating her and voting against every effort to bring order to city government, it is clear new people have to be ready to run and be in a position to vote for clean government.  That is not to say Steve Salazar would not work with the Mayor, but his past record and agendas would indicate otherwise.

I did not oppose the arena sales tax because I don't like sports.  I did not oppose the additional tax abatements for the arena and Victory project because I am against development in the area.  I opposed the sales tax because we already had an arena and private businesses should pay for their own business facilities.  The city is not sharing in any revenue from the Hicks/Perot arena or Reunion (which still boggles my mind).  I opposed tax abatements for the area around their arena because re-development was already occurring before the Robber Barons picked that site for their business facility.

If a new arena was to be built at all with any public monies, it should have been in a blighted area like the Cedars which would have stimulated economic activity South of City Hall.  Please don't let anyone tell you the Robber Barons cleaned up a "brown field".  The area where they plopped down their arena was no more blighted than the nearby site where JPI built their huge apartment complex.  JPI removed contaminated soil from their site before they built  -- part of their cost of doing business.

Rather than pouring money into an area that was already hot real estate, we should have been spending money on the streets in the Regal Row area and around Stemmons where we have hundreds of real businesses producing real products and employing thousands of real people -- not a handful of millionaires and a couple of hundred managers and floor sweepers.  The Regal Row area, Carpenter Freeway and West Stemmons corridor are in District 6.  Companies that have invested and stayed in that area deserve every bit as much attention from council as do the Robber Barons and newcomers, but they have been ignored by past District 6 council representatives.

There are other issues facing District 6 which goes from North of LBJ to South of Jefferson Blvd. in Oak Cliff.  There are large areas where no one lives.  The lower third is cut off from the rest of the district by the Trinity River.  The district lines are no more logical than the  lines of District 1, 2 or 14.  They ignore geographic barriers and neighborhoods.

It's not enough to sit back and moan and groan -- even as loudly as I complain with DallasArena.com.  Things have been happening and I can only comment from a distance.  

When all the council went against the Police and Firefighters Pay Referendum, I would have stepped out for their raise.  Our taxes were going to be raised regardless of what happened in that referendum.  Had it passed, we would have at least known where some of our money was really going rather than for  pet projects of the various council members.  I would have told voters there was no guarantee the police and firefighters would get that 5-5-5 raises.  There was a clear implication from the opposition campaign that the voters were choosing between a 17% raise and a 15% raise.  That was not the case.

When the council voted to give $43 million to Palladium and the Robber Barons, I would not have been as timid as were Lois Finkelman and Sandy Greyson in my opposition.  I would have called the Robber Barons greedy and dishonest and reminded all who would listen of their un-kept promises.  Since former councilman Salazar campaigned for the arena sales tax and the Trinity Bond-doogle, it would be logical to expect him to support any future tax abatements requested by the Robber Barons.  He voted for that first tax abatement which was rushed through so the DISD could be included in the tax give away.  

Former State Rep Domingo Garcia got through legislation that prohibits school districts from participating in tax abatements.  With an illegal August vote at council that preceded the September deadline for DISD participation, the DISD Trustees were allowed to give away millions in lost tax revenue to the Robber Barons -- money that will never go to teachers or children or school buildings.  

These are just some of the reasons why it should not be a surprise to anyone that I am a candidate for city council from District 6.  I am out early so I can walk ALL the neighborhoods of the district and meet as many of the legitimate business owners as possible between now and May.  There is no reason why District 6 should not have full representation at City Hall.

But, but, but -- as a council member, I will be voting on issues that impact residents and businesses in every part of the city.  My first priority will always be to protect and promote legitimate businesses that are already here, as well as our residential neighborhoods.  I will not support tax abatements that put local Dallas businesses at a disadvantage to some out of town outfit that may take our tax abatements and deliver none of their promises or leave when some other city bribes them with more.

I will also be continuously trying to determine which current tax abatement recipients are not complying with the terms of their deal with the city.  Those who have not delivered -- like Yahoo in Deep Ellum should have to pay back the abated taxes or we foreclose on them for back taxes just like we would on any other dead beat.

It's time to stop making nice and start seriously addressing the real world of chaos that is City Hall.  It's time for a new City Manager and a new Police Chief.

There are other districts where new blood is needed -- new energy -- new priorities.  Hopefully, Larry Duncan will prevail in District 4 on July 27th.  If you haven't called him to volunteer or sent him some money, today's the day.  His e-mail is larryduncan2001@hotmail.com.  If Duncan prevails, he should be a strong ally for the Mayor.  Then, there's Handsome Danny out there who is in a decision-making mode about whether to run in 2003.  If Plan Commissioner Bill Blaydes runs for Alan Walne's vacant seat, he will win and be a strong voice for common sense at City Hall.  One of the Staff's must run for MPT Poss's vacant seat -- either would be great -- what an incredible couple.

We have DISD candidates like Jack Lowe and Mike Martinez who will continue on the efforts of Past Board President Roxan Staff and Kathleen Leos and be supportive of current Board President Ken Zornes and Superintendent Mike Moses.  

With things improving at DISD and new people at City Hall, this time next year we could have a council and DISD Board we can praise rather than excuse.