Paying Salaries With Bonds

Ian McCann, in the The Dallas Morning News Richardson blog, reports that the City Council of Richardson plans that "Spending on 14 employees whose salaries are covered by bond debt will be moved to the general fund. The actual source of the funds will transition to the general fund over several years."

McCann doesn't say what reasoning was behind that decision. Because the city didn't telecast this council work session (unlike all other work sessions -- more about that here), and I didn't attend in person, I can only speculate on what's going on. It sounds like an implicit admission by the city that its critics were right. During the bond election campaign, opponents made a big deal of the fact that the bond package included salaries for city employees who would be managing the bond projects in some way. Supporters of the bond largely ignored the charge, voters did too, and the bond package passed. This week's decision to move those salaries out of the bond debt suggests that someone at city hall did notice the critics, after all.

Why Pete Sessions Will Win

Pete Sessions is running for re-election in US House District 32. He is the GOP candidate and faces Democrat Grier Raggio and Libertarian John Jay Myers in November's general election.

After the jump, why the candidate no one likes will win anyway.

City Council Retreats From Open Government

I won't be blogging about the Richardson City Council meeting this week. I won't be watching. The meeting won't be shown via cable telecast. That's because the Richardson City Council is meeting not at its usual city hall venue, but at the Richardson Woman's Club instead. The work session is billed as a "retreat." But it's still a council meeting and an important one at that, one in which the council will deliberate the 2010-2011 budget. The meeting is still subject to the Texas Open Meetings Act. It's still open to the public. It's really no different from any other council meeting other than this meeting will be witnessed only by those members of the public who follow the council members in person to the unusual venue for this one meeting. In other words, things are back to the way they were a year ago, before the public demanded and received, in the interest of open government, cable telecasts and Internet streaming of council meetings. These annual "retreats" may be a long-standing tradition, but it's a tradition that needs updating. Until the cameras follow the council, these "retreats" limit public access in a way that is no longer considered acceptable week in and week out at city hall. Calling a regular weekly meeting a "retreat" shouldn't change our expectations about open government. It shouldn't change how open our city government is.

Richardson - Not Enough Ambiance For Some

In its July issue, D[allas] Magazine has published its ranking of Dallas suburbs. I know what you're thinking. What does D Magazine, host to the FrontBurner blog, self-described as a "snarky celebration of ignorance," know about Dallas suburbs?

After the jump, let's hear them out.

OTBR: A Different Kind of Statue

Latitude: 35.617900° N
Longitude: 117.665300° W

A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously last month that are "off the blue roads".