Council Recap: Atmos and Oncor

Clocking just 75 minutes, the Richardson City Council held a relatively short work session August 07, 2023. Agenda items were a review of the upcoming Corporate Challenge, reviews of utility rate requests by Atmos and Oncor, and action items setting dates for public hearings on the proposed tax rate and municipal budget, and naming a temporary location as the official City Hall.

By my count, although all of the Councilmembers said something, none offered any suggestions for change on any matter. The three matters put to a vote all passed unanimously.

Towards an Award-winning Comp Plan

After the long 3.5 hours the Richardson City Council and City Plan Commission devoted to updating the Comprehensive Plan, there were three comments that stuck with me.

Joe Corcoran: "I do think that if the Comp Plan was just, hey, here's five reinvestment zones, I kind of consider it a little bit a failure, not to be dramatic. But it's important to talk about all this other stuff as well."

Joe Costantino: "I'm not for less studying, I'm just like, understanding how some of the other bullet points are going to be fleshed out...How are those other areas going to be studied?"

Dan Barrios: "I'd like to see that whatever comes out of this is something that hopefully is an award-winning plan. We have a lot of great things in Richardson, and I hope this is one of those things we can add to it. Because it'll either be great or we're going to look back 10 years from now and go 'Wow, where did we go wrong?' "

Source: The Wheel.

Our Little Angel

No context.

Mayor Bob Dubey: "Our little angel, our Charlie's Angel"

How Comprehensive is the Comprehensive Plan?

Recently, I've been meddling in the City of Richardson's efforts to update its Comprehensive Plan. To decide who is off the rails—them, me, or maybe neither—I've decided I need to back up (to first principles), or pull up (for a birds-eye view), to understand just what the City thinks is included in this effort.

Council Recap: Planning a Comp Plan

The Richardson City Council and the City Plan Commission held a rare joint work session July 31. The main topic on the agenda was "REVIEW AND DISCUSS THE ENVISION RICHARDSON COMPREHENSIVE PLAN UPDATE AND COMMUNITY SUMMIT ONE." That took almost all of the 3.5 hours the meeting lasted.

What To Do with the Doghouse When Fido Dies

In Facebook's "Richardson Urban and Neighborhood Discussions", Andrew Laska shared an announcement by the City of Richardson about open houses to gather community feedback about the City Hall/Comp Plans. He offered his own priorities, the first one (two?) of which were "1) Legalize missing middle housing. 1a) Legalize ADUs."

Council Recap: All Budget

The Richardson City Council held a work session July 24-25 focused solely on development of the 2023-2024 budget. Attendance by the public was sparse. There will be public hearings on the proposed tax rate and budget in mid- to late-August.

Semiannual Campaign Finance Reports

In Texas, officeholders and candidates for local offices must file semiannual reports. In addition, candidates who have an opponent must file two pre-election reports, one 30 days before the election and one 8 days before. Political action committees have these same deadlines to file.

The Wheel has previously looked at the 30-Day reports (twice: here and here) and the 8-Day reports here. Today we look at the July 15 semiannual reports.

Council Recap: Audit, Audit, Audit

The Richardson City Council held a work session July 17. There were several topics on the agenda for which the Council received lengthy presentations: National Parks Month, Park maintenance strategies, IT work plan, and Drainage utility strategies. There was one other item on the agenda that received little time. Less than six minutes, in fact. That topic was "Review and discuss the 2021-2022 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) Presentation." Because the Council's review and discussion was perfunctory, those six minutes are what I want to talk about.

ACFR: Christmas in July

For city finance wonks, Christmas comes twice a year: once in August when the city budget is set and again in February when the city financial audit is published. The budget specifies the city's cash flow (its planned revenues and expenses). The financial audit details the city's assets (the value of city property, bank accounts, etc.) and its liabilities (outstanding debt, pension obligations, etc.).

For some reason, Christmas is coming late this year. The Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) for fiscal 2022 is being published in July, not February as before. I'm sure there's a good explanation, but I don't know what it is. Fire??? The public will see it when it's presented at the July 17 City Council meeting.

Council Recap: Food Truck, Police Radios, Massage

The Richardson City Council held a five hour marathon session Monday night. The first 90 minutes of it were taken up by a topic not even on the agenda: a possible NRA move to Richardson. I've covered that in "Richardson, Guns, and the NRA". Here I want to focus on the intended agenda, presentations, and Councilmembers' questions, comments, and policy suggestions. Oh, and one important fact check at the end.

Richardson, Guns, and the NRA

The Richardson City Council held a 5 hour marathon session Monday night. The first 90 minutes of it were taken up by a topic not even on the agenda: a possible NRA move to Richardson. That story was exaggerated in one direction before the meeting (that the NRA is coming to Richardson) and then exaggerated in the other direction afterwards (that the NRA is not coming to Richardson). In fact, according to the NRA itself, "Texas remains a preferred choice for a future HQ. That said, the NRA Board of Directors has not made any decision." For its part, State Farm issued a statement saying that they "are not actively marketing space for sublease at City Line." So, is the NRA coming to Richardson? Probably not, but nothing said by anyone rules out the possibility that it could still happen.

How Richardson's New City Hall Went Wrong

U of Wis Humanities Building

The City of Richardson is in process of getting public input that will shape the design of a new City Hall. I'm here to report on lessons-learned from another building, new in 1969, from a university campus a thousand miles away that I always think of when I think about Richardson's own municipal campus. That building is the UW Humanities building on the campus of the University of Wisconsin—Madison. There are lessons for Richardson to learn from that building if you don't want to see a headline like the above sometime in the future.

Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Promising Change

After apologizing for the "Texas Chain Saw Massacre", the City of Richardson pledged on Facebook, "We will also do everything in our power to make sure this never happens again."

Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Condition of trees? Dead.
Cause of death? Chain saw.
Chief suspect? City of Richardson.
Statement by the accused? Sorry, not sorry.

Thinking Outside the Big Orange Box

Richardson taxpayers voted to approve issuing $46 million in bonds to partially pay for a new City Hall, the old one having suffered a disastrous fire. The City hired consultants to gather inputs from Richardson stakeholders. They interviewed Councilmembers already. If they had interviewed me, what I would have told them is below. The rest of the public can now weigh in, too.

Council Sound Bites: 2023/06/19

The City of Richardson had a City Council worksession June 19, 2023. The agenda had some weighty topics: DART, Comprehensive Plan, and Mobility Work Plan. I'm not going to cover what was presented. You can review the slides used in the presentation yourself. Or watch the four hour video. I'm just going to cherry pick a few questions, comments, and suggestions made by Councilmembers. Call these my nominees for the best comments of the night.

TIL: What's With All the Vacant Storefronts?

Once a Wendy's, then vacant.
Then a Quizno's, now vacant.
Maybe soon a Lucky's Chicken.

Have you ever seen one of your favorite restaurants, one that seemed popular and busy, go out of business, with the owner explaining that the landlord raised the rent to an unaffordable level? And then watch the now vacant building sit empty for months or years with a "For Lease" sign out front? What's with that?

Coaching from the Stands

An open letter to Coach,

You are probably tired of me heckling from the cheap seats in the grandstand, so I thought I'd take the time to write a fan letter instead. I do more booing than I'm proud of. Once I even called on you to quit coaching. You're not good at it, I said. It's not even your job, I said. I now admit I was wrong. You were right. I'm embarrassed if I ever sound like that fan in the picture above.

City Council meets to revise zoning; discuss policing research, universal basic income

Source: June MacDonald.

"Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore."
— Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz

That's the feeling I had when I read that headline. Head snap. Spit take. WTF? I had the feeling I wasn't in Texas anymore. And indeed I wasn't. The story appeared in Ann Arbor's "The Michigan Daily", a student-run newspaper for the University of Michigan.