POTD: Sunda Kelapa

From 2015 03 11 Jakarta

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Jakarta, Indonesia. It will be of interest to lovers of history and the sea. It was taken in Sunda Kelapa, the old port of Jakarta. The port dates back at least 800 years and served as the main port of Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies until the late 19th century.

Modern ships have outgrown the port, but it's still home to pinisi, traditional two-masted wooden sailing ships that carry cargo between Indonesia's many islands. It's still an active port. Walking down the long dock, observing the loading and unloading of ships, is like taking a step back in time, and not some historical re-creation but the real thing. Good times.

Meet the Mayor: Paul Voelker

Following a unlikely chain of falling dominoes, Paul Voelker was sworn in as Mayor of Richardson Monday night. (If you've been on Mars the last few months and don't know what all those dominoes were, tough. Here at The Wheel that's so yesterday's news.)

Voelker's selection wasn't a complete surprise. We had Bob Townsend as the slight favorite (or maybe Mark Solomon, depending on how much fight Townsend had in him), but Paul Voelker was our favorite to come out of a deadlocked executive session. And deadlocked it appeared to be, as the council took almost exactly an hour to decide on a pick. After the clock ticked away, it was no surprise when the council eventually named Paul Voelker as Mayor and Mark Solomon as Mayor Pro Tem.

POTD: RU LIVING in a BUBBLE?

From 2015 05 07 Portland

Today's photo-of-the-day is from Portland, Oregon. President Obama visited the city for a fundraiser downtown and a speech at Nike headquarters in Beaverton promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement. He was met by several hundred protestors, including the woman in the photo above who went to some trouble to make not just a sign but a costume. The whole scene struck me a little like something from the television series Portlandia.

Sweet Jesus, $47 Million?

"Sweet Jesus, $47 Million?" That's what Unfair Park's Eric Nicholson exclaimed when learning the total of the City of Richardson's economic development agreement for the construction of apartments, offices and retail in the Palisades development.

Is he right to be flabbergasted? On the one hand, $47 million is a big number. No doubt about that. But compared to what? And what does the city get for its $47 million? Spoiler alert: the more I think about this, the less certain I am of what I should think.

Picking a Mayor Behind Closed Doors

Two years ago, after the last city council election in Richardson, I had this to say about the new council's first agenda item for the new term:

It's that time again. Now that Richardson's city council election is over, now that the sturm und drang of an election campaign has abated, now that the voters themselves have elected their next mayor, it's time to seat the new council and have them choose from among themselves, with no say from the voters, who should be their mayor -- mayor pro tem, anyway. What?!? If that sounds like maybe we haven't made as much change as we thought we were making, it's because it's true.

Source: The Wheel.

Well, this year it's the same story. Only this time, the new council's pick for Mayor Pro Tem will immediately become Mayor and serve in that position for the next two years. (For those who have been out of town for the last two months or so, that's because Mayor Laura Maczka has said she will decline to serve another term, thus creating a vacancy to be filled by the new Mayor Pro Tem.) In effect, we're back to having the council pick not only the Mayor Pro Tem, but the Mayor, too. The amount of change our amended city charter brought us two years ago is even less of a change than I thought then.

It's interesting to re-read everything that I wrote then, given everything that's happened since. I stand by some of it. Some I would change. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which is which.

It's worth noting that there will be one change from two years ago. A change to eliminate an innovation introduced two years ago. A change that really does take us back to the way things were done before.