Halloween

It's that time of year when adorable little costumed munchkins come rapping on your door squealing "trick or treat". That's fun. It's not so fun when the bigger kids coming banging on your door, demanding treats with implied threats of tricks.

There's another whole level of fright when big bad politicians wearing fake smiles and false faces are running around and you know the threats are real.

At my neighborhood's last Crime Watch meeting, our speakers were City Councilman Ed Oakley and Asst. Police Chief Edwards. Nothing the councilman or the Asst. Chief said scared me, but the woman from Code Enforcement made some of my neighbors start contemplating life in the suburbs.

We are a single family neighborhood surrounded by apartments. We don't have a problem with that, but we do have a problem with a bunch of people living in a single family residence as if it was an apartment house. To get the issue in front of our councilman, I asked him what we could do. He turned to the two code enforcement people behind him. The man said nothing, the woman shrugged. She absolutely said there was nothing we could do, and nothing she or the city would do. She smugly said the people living illegally in a single-family residence could even pave their back yard and park surplus cars back there, and the city would do nothing! Trick or Treat!

How does an indifferent and/or incompetent city worker tie back to Ron Kirk? She's indicative of the evil spell he cast over this city.

Ron Kirk claims he kept property taxes in Dallas from being raised. We all know our city services were diminished and our fees were simultaneously increased, while our tax bill went up because of increased appraisals. Increased appraisals are great if you are ready to leave town and want to sell your house. If you had planned to live in your home the rest of your life, increased appraisals are just raised property taxes by another name -- intended to force middle class people out of Dallas.

A couple of years ago when Ed Oakley helped Ron Kirk change the way Dallas homeowners get hit for water use, Ron Kirk made it very clear he had no use for property owners North of Northwest Highway unless they are millionaires like his buddies, Tom Hicks, Mark Cuban, et al. What Kirk and Oakley pulled off was to create a 4th tier of water billing for people with yards. Trick or Treat!

My neighborhood has deed restrictions regarding our front yards. We can't build in our front yards because when our homes were built in the 50's, it was intended to preserve our street fronts. Our front yards are miniscule compared to those in neighborhoods just on the other side of Walnut Hill from us. Their yards are also modest compared to those closer to the Tollway. The only thing we can do to minimize the watering necessary to keep our lawns respectable, is to let them dry up and turn brown and make the whole neighborhood less attractive and the area less desirable.

I will never forget that council meeting. Sandy Greyson and Mitch Rasansky tried to explain this 4th tier water rate was a new use tax on their constituents. It was also a new use tax on Ed Oakley's constituents, the voters who delivered the winning margin for his election. Ron Kirk said "If you like your nice big lawns and your fountains and pools, you can pay for them". Trick or Treat!

Ron Kirk pretends to sympathize with environmentalists. We know better in Dallas. When he was making light of those North Dallas lawns, he was referring to yards of middle-class homeowners, not the grounds of his rich buddies' estates. Our front yards, our grass, our plants, our trees all improve the aesthetics of our city, the environment of our city, and many of us spend a lot of time and money maintaining our greenery. Rather than encourage us to improve the city, Ron Kirk hit us with a new use tax. Trick or Treat!

Our new water tax was just another in a series of Ron Kirk's assaults on Dallas and our quality of life. One of his most egregious acts was the destruction of the trees at Tennyson Park and the theft of park land from Dallas taxpayers for use by the "almighty tourist" as a golf course where nearby residents can no longer afford the green fees. Trick or Treat!

How does this tie back to that indifferent woman from Code Enforcement? She's indicative of the general attitude Ron Kirk left behind at City Hall toward middle income Dallas residents and homeowners who live in North Dallas. We don't count. We just get to pay the bills. Trick or Treat!

While Ron Kirk was arranging tax abatements for Paul Allen and Mark Cuban and Ross Perot, Jr. and Tom Hicks and their business associates, he was encouraging staff to stick it to middle class homeowners in North Dallas.

I wish I could see Ron Kirk's race for the U.S. Senate as just a political campaign -- just politics. Middle class Dallas residents know better.

We know we will have no voice in D.C. if Ron Kirk joins Kay Bailey Hutchinson in the Senate. There's a bond between Ron and Kay that scares the dickens out of me.
Hutchinson's husband is the city's bond lawyer -- a good buddy of Ron Kirk. So, don't try to say my opposition to Ron Kirk is partisan. You can be assured that I will never vote for Kay Bailey Hutchinson again under any circumstance, whether she is the GOP candidate next time up or not.

Dallas nor Texas can afford to have this trick or treat team in the Senate at the same time. If you think as an average person you don't count now?

This is my first Halloween living in a neighborhood with children. When the munchkins come calling, I will have treats for them. They are just wearing costumes.

The real monster is Ron Kirk.

I for one am sick of his bag of tricks and hope next Tuesday his evil spell is finally broken.