We're into the filing period for the Richardson City Council election (May 14) and the list of announced candidates is slim despite a dozen or more potential candidates having picked up packets from city hall. Where are all the candidates?
After the jump, a review of the field ... so far.
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| Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates |
Now that the commotion over rezoning the open land around the Bush DART station has quieted down, it's time for some housecleaning. Little noticed in the effort to derail the new zoning was one little detail about this potential mixed-use development. And just as the recent introduction of flashing yellow arrows to control left turns brought out the curmudgeon in many of us, expect this latest little wrinkle in how we all drive to stir up the curmudgeons again, if and when the concrete is poured and the stripes are painted on the pavement.
After the jump, the coming distress over back-in/head-out angle parking.
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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".
I don't mean deciding maybe you want chicken instead of beef for dinner. I mean something more fundamental. A belief about what's real and what isn't. Like you can't deny any longer that evolution really is the best explanation for the diversity of life on Earth, or that the planet really is warming and humans have something to do with it. I've blogged before on the subject, identifying some major flip-flops in my own thinking over the years. All of those flip-flops were flip-flops in my judgment of the best strategy to deal with certain facts. Kind of like, when faced with a charging bear, changing my mind whether I should play dead or run like hell. None of my flip-flops were changes in my belief in the facts underpinning my beliefs. The bear is still a bear in any case.
After the jump, some recent readings on what it might take to change my mind about some fundamental facts.
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| Joeff Davis |
Last spring, it was Gov. Rick Perry slyly suggesting that Texas just might want to secede from the Union if the Tea Party didn't get its way.
This winter, secession is again being talked about, this time prompted by the associations of another Texas politician. After the jump, does Texas Congressman Ron Paul -- and possibly future senator -- also believe in secession?
Maybe I should say north Texas. But I'll call it the Dallas Super Bowl because that's the way the rest of the country views it and it's the rest of the country that's going to make the decision. So, will Dallas ever get another Super Bowl? The answer is yes. Not because Dallas is perfect. It isn't. It's because all cities are flawed. Patrick Kennedy identifies three characteristics the NFL looks for in picking a Super Bowl city:
He then runs through the usual list of Super Bowl cities and points out how each one comes up short in one or more of these requirements (Indianapolis - 2012 - and East Rutherford, NJ - 2014 - obviously fail requirement #2). North Texas is neither significantly better nor worse than other cities in this regard. In no way are we disqualified. We'll get more Super Bowls, maybe not as soon as we'd like or as often as we'd like, but we'll get them.
After the jump, how Patrick Kennedy wants the Super Bowl experience to be simultaneously broader and smaller. Is he trying to have his cake and eat it, too? Maybe a little.
The Richardson local elections on May 14 promise to offer important choices for voters. Whether those choices turn out to be controversial or highly contested is another matter. So far, there are no fireworks visible on the horizon. But it's still early.
After the jump, a look at how the school district and city council elections are shaping up.